Mad Men #9: The Politics of Personal Progress
This jumped out at me from the New York Times recap of yesterday's episode:
It never seemed as if Peggy would really go for the whole bohemian scene — the artists she met at the downtown party with Joyce were portrayed as moronic egomaniacs. And the point of Sunday night was to show us that the men who wanted to change the world with their protests and bellowing opinions didn’t care to change it enough to correct for the inequalities women were suffering in the mainstream.
Well, maybe; I'd like to hear what the a guy in the mock turtleneck and the leather jacket is supposed to do to 'correct' for Peggy's workplace 'suffering.' Sure, Mad Men trades in the now-standard narratives that dominate the American conversation about the politics of personal progress. No, the integration of women into professional life was not a speedy, seamless process. Ditto the full integration of black Americans into American life. But Mad Men keeps working as a show because it keeps doing what art is supposed to do. And what art is supposed to do is keep it personal.
Whatever politics of personal progress we get out of the show comes strongly, stubbornly filtered, as it should be, through the particularities of each character's situation, personality, and relationships. It's not that anyone ought to use our thick interpersonal webs, and the contingencies they multiply, as excuses to be incurious about the broader political questions confronting our society. (This is true whether you're on the left or the right. We can imagine a brilliant drama about the ad business today -- bobo hipster-yuppies too tangled up each other's issues fail to 'correct for' the barren maternalism and systemic infantilization wrought by the therapeutic corporate clerisy that rules their world.) Rather, social progress, however defined, does violence to society itself when political action demands behavioral changes that have yet to develop out of a personal context.
Decisions about whether that violence is 'worth it' are inevitable; either you free the slaves now, no matter who's 'not ready' for that, or you don't. Mad Men is far too interested in its particular late twentieth century working women to generate any glib political answers about which race or sex or class is to blame for the travails of the group those characters represent.
Good art reminds us that we all have travails. Where the artistic rubber meets the road, the source of our sufferings large and small becomes incidental to the relationships we make possible and impossible from within it. Art isn't politics, and it isn't supposed to be -- as those moronic egomaniacs make plain. But its relentless focus on individual persons can check lazy, self-congratulatory, and self-indulgent political thinking. Without that check, 'the mainstream' suffers an awful fate, fragmenting into resentful tribes for whom everything, no matter how personal, is political. Leaving this kind of world behind? Now that's progress.
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Mad Men #9: The Politics of Personal Progress
I note that this was the season closer James. Will you be transferring your deconstructionist skills to a new show with the Fall season? Two and Half Men? or GLEE perhaps?
Aug '10
Re: Mad Men #9: The Politics of Personal Progress
Trace,
You're the second person I've read tonight who referred to the season as being concluded, but it looks like there are three or four more episodes to go, including the one with a video clip listed in the coming attractions on AMC.
On the other hand, I can certainly see viewers checking out after Jon Hamm's comments on Bill Maher's show this weekend -- or as Michael Moynihan puts it at Reason,"Don Draper Thinks You Might Have a Hidden, Racist Agenda."
I wonder if Mark Steyn will be having a run on these products as a result.
Re: Mad Men #9: The Politics of Personal Progress
That wasn't the season finale. It was a piece of comedy light and dark with a few clunky moments, some unnerving undertones - Sally's relationship with her father is horribly askew - and some masterful deft editing to underscore the title: The Beautiful Girls. There were a few quick cuts when Don was trying to get his daughter out of the office - every archetype of the moment was present, from the secretary to the career woman to the child who would grow up to assume for granted all the things they were trying to do. For a show as well written as this one, it's remarkable that the best moments are usually wordless.
On top of that, an old man mourning an old woman he knew when they both were young. "She was born in a barn in 1898 and died on the 32nd floor of a skyscraper. She was an astronaut."
Jul '10
Re: Mad Men #9: The Politics of Personal Progress
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James Lileks:
On top of that, an old man mourning an old woman he knew when they both were young. "She was born in a barn in 1898 and died on the 32nd floor of a skyscraper. She was an astronaut." · Sep 20 at 10:38pm
Best line of the show, if not the season. My grandfather was born the same year, but luckily he lived until 1982.
Edited on Sep 21, 2010 at 8:40pm