It seems appropriate to me that the Mad Men premiere should take place the weekend of the Assumption of Mary, a celebration of motherhood. For those of you not raised on unleaven bread and communally spit-in grape juice, that's when Mary, instead of dying, was raised bodily into heaven. Technically making her luckier than Jesus, who had to shed his mortal coil first.
What's the connection, you say? Well, if you watch the show (which you should, tonight, 10pm, AMC) you're thinking I'm going to draw some Betty Draper metaphor here. You're wrong. In many ways, fuck Betty Draper. I'm a Peggy Olson girl. Just dressing impeccably and having nervous breakdowns does not make me a fan, even though January Jones is the closest thing to Grace Kelly I've ever seen alive. She's a living Barbie doll.
The connection here between Mary Mother of God and the best drama on television at the moment is my own blessed mother. A devout Catholic, a humanitarian, a nifty nurse, adopter of strays, and a huge TV addict. She doesn't have cable, normally, but I thought for sure if I brought over a DVD, she would get into this show. After all, period costumes? Witty dialogue? Realistic depictions of social issues? So my sister and I went to the video store last Thanksgiving, and railroaded my brother into getting the first season of Mad Men as our family activity for the day.
My mother was not having it. She wouldn't even watch it. According to her, it reminded her too much of when she was a secretary in the 60s; the smoking, the drinking, racism, uncomfortable bras, and rampant sexual harassment. She found nothing entertaining in the nostalgia of a time period that represented everything that the 70s, and she, had rebelled against.
The interesting part about this is that my mother's attitude towards this show seems to be the minority. Over half of the audience from last season seemed to be over 50, at least according to this. Of course, that could be because nobody my age watches tv anymore, we all watch it online or wait to get it through Netflix. It certainly seems to be true that all the people I know who watch it are girls hovering around 30 who spend too much money at vintage stores. But that might just be all the people I know anyway. It's been widely proclaimed to be a feminine show, and 2/3rd of the writers for the show are women. It's a period soap opera. Girlfriends get raped. Office assistants have abortions. Housewives have neurological breakdowns. Every single husband or boyfriend cheats.
Maybe the disconnect here is that people would rather forget that the world used to be this blatantly bad, and so they can watch because they don't put themselves in that dirtiness. All these problems still exist, but we've hidden them under a guise of trying to be politically correct, and making an effort to see ourselves as evolved. The fact that the show also gives us beautiful dresses and glamour, that the characters themselves are oblivious to their societal ugliness, it allows us to write off these moments as soap opera rather than facing the fact that all this crap really happened to, and was perpetuated by, people we still know. We react in the same way that the characters react to it, incorporating it, accepting it, but not getting angry about it. Yet. I have high hopes for the story arc.
Mad Men's depiction of the lives of our mothers should act as a magnifying lens to anti-feminist sentiment, classism, and racism in our own lives. It should point out to us how much they fought against to make our lives better, and how we shouldn't allow the same shit to happen today. Every character's storyline points out another aspect of America's problems and America's ugliness. What I enjoy most about the show is how it deflates the generalized view of the 60s that has become acceptable history. My mother and father lived through the 50s and 60s, and understand the details. But for my generation, the details are lost in stereotypes of flower children and McCarthy monsters. We dehumanize, romanticize, and forget. I wonder if this has happened to members of my parents' generation - they choose to forget and accept watching from a distance, not directly associating themselves with any of it. Or is the demographic audience age so high because they do remember?
Of course, it is a show about an advertising agency, not Everytown USA. And it's an entertaining show. But I understand why my mother doesn't like it. Sometimes you remember all too well, and you just don't want to.
Hey - i found your blog through a friend on livejournal.
ReplyDeleteMy mother is the more typical example you mention - her first day working on wall street there was a typewriter on her desk and she firmly moved it to another desk before she sat down - and she loves the show. I like what it has to say in the face of anti-feminism as well.
Something you almost said but didnt say, is that we like to bemoan the "fall of america" from every angle (political or religious or philosophical) these days. And its good to be reminded how far we have come. I hate the privileged and overeducated in my life that like to claim that people used to have more general knowledge than they do today ("Talk television has to fill you in on the details because the average viewer doesnt even read the newspaper! They never used to do that back in the good old days")