MAD MEN -- Season FIVE Official Thread....

Basically we have a show that castigates the 1940s-50s adults for their inane naivete and it's inherent self destruction. Jews? Ugh!! Negroes? Ha hahaha. Cigarettes? Bring em on!! Booze? all day and all night!! Nixon? Yes!! Music? So what! Sex? Hide it! Viet Nam? Where's that?

Draper Sterling Cooper and Pryce are the clueless and crass buffoons doing what? Desperately selling crap.
The era they find themselves in is beyond their grasp and so is the future.

I wouldn't be surprised if Draper doesn't push his young and pointed wife down the elevator shaft after another small biting critique of his asinine lifestyle and job.

 

This is a really broad topic and I’m not sure if it’s something we can adequately address here, but I do have a few thoughts. As far as the experiences of Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson and the rest go, great artists are often prone to extreme states of mind, addiction and madness. It seems to come with the territory and I’m not sure if you can cleanly separate the brilliant work they create with these more dangerous impulses. Brian Wilson was the musical visionary he was in large part as the result of his painful upbringing and his genetics, which ultimately led him to debilitating drug abuse, but would he have delivered all that amazing music, would we even be talking about him now if he hadn’t been the kind of unstable personality who reaches for drugs? This is not to validate the behavior, but it’s simply the who he was. Great artists often go places that ordinary people can’t, translating the experiences through their work, sometimes at great cost to their psyches, and while it’s stupid to naively glorify this kind of behavior, I also don’t see much point in trying to wish it away either. This phenomenon certainly wasn’t limited to the 60’s, though the confluence of the newly “turned on” pop music scene and the mass media hoopla helped to popularize all of it at the time.

As a small side note, I would also point out that far, far more people die every year in this country as the result of alcohol, tobacco and prescription drug abuse than have ever died as a result of pot or acid and yet society tolerates and even promotes the use of the former. Yes, LSD can be a dangerous thing for some people, particularly those that are already predisposed to mental illness, but as far as I’m concerned, there were worse demons in society back in the 60’s and today. (It’s quite possible that in the future, the show will have Roger or one of his friends have a very bad trip and that’s valid to present as well. I trust the producers to handle this artfully.)

Of course, psychedelic drugs were just one aspect of the 60’s and it’s a relatively small thread on Mad Men thus far (as opposed to the ever present booze and cigs), but your objections to the 60’s seem to extend far beyond this boogeyman to encompass virtually all of the culture, the attitudes and the spiritual impulses of the time. Interestingly, I don’t think either of us actually lived through it, so we’re getting much of our attitudes second hand from cultural artifacts and histories of the time. I’ll confess that a large part of my affection for the 60’s comes from my lifelong love of the music, though I’ve also come to embrace some of the political/philosophical perspectives as well—the civil rights and anti-war movements, the importance of questioning authority and insatiable consumerism, ecology, eastern spirituality, etc. It was certainly a colorful time of upheaval in our country with plenty to celebrate and deride, which is part of what makes the show so interesting (though it’s ultimately the strength of the characters that carries the day). I can recognize the excesses of the period and cringe at some of the silliness while still embracing the positive aspects, but you seem intent on pointedly ridiculing the overwhelming idiocy of it all. You can’t lay this all at Matt Weiner’s feet. I’ve had no problems whatsoever with the way the show presents all of this—just your relentlessly negative interpretation. I’ve grown really weary of coming back here week after week to have things that I value get trashed this way.

 

If you really, really had to be there in order to understand the 60s (or any other era in the past), then Mad Men is doomed to failure, as Matt Weiner was born in 1965, and therefore wasn't there, and can't understand the era he is writing about.

 

What things that you value are bring trashed? LSD use? The Hare Krishna movement? The show has presented these topics, and I've commented on them. Is there only one opinion allowed, that LSD wasn't that big a problem? I guess that's why they had to set up free clinics in Haight Ashbury to treat all of the teenage runaways/drug users who converged on San Francisico in 1966/67 and ended up having bad trips, not good ones. I'm not sure how the fact that legal, and universally available, drugs such as alcohol, cause more problems than illegal drugs makes illegal drugs OK. On several occasions, I've commented that Don nearly drank himself to death last season. I'm surprised no one has gotten upset with me for trashing alcohol or being negative about the cocktail culture of the 50s.

As for "trashing" things you value, here's a post from the past 24 hours trashing the entire show:

I disagree with pretty much everything Olompali has to say here, but I don't demand that he stop posting. Looking forward to your essay concerning his relentlessly negative interpretation of the show, but there's also something called the ignore list that allows us to ignore people whose posts we want to ignore.

 

Lame conversation at all levels. Let it go.

 

I don't think he's trashing the show at all. One doesn't have to agree with the motives of the characters to enjoy a show. I tend to agree with Olompali that most of these people are reprehensible. I think it's a mistake to view Don Draper as a protagonist.

 

Done. I'm out.

 

I also tend to agree with Olompali about the reprehensible nature of many characters, and in fact the first few seasons I was both fascinated and repulsed by this show because I could not "enjoy" any of the characters. I hadn't ever watched the Sopranos (still haven't, not into gangster stuff) and so wasn't prepared for certain aspects of Weiner's drama style.

 

Considering the show's creators are exposing the shallow condition of the pre 60's generation, I'm hardly trashing it with my summation.
It is doing a terrific job at exposing the empty conformist grey flannel suit of a 50's sales force lost amid the raising consciousness of a new social climate.

Heinz. Baked. Beans.

Not to worry. The young Jewish kid and pot smoking girl will pull you through.

Pete Campbell will run screaming from the job and suburbs with Rory Gilmore and his Pynchon.

 

Found it!
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/home_blog/2012/03/mad-men-don-drapers-apartment.html

 

Consider that they may also be, if not more so, exposing the shallowness of the boomers.

 

My take on it all is that the revolutions of the 60s were pretty much like the French Revolution: things were pretty bad in the ancien régime, and then unfortunately got even worse after the revolution.

 

Think you missed a spot.

 

A Baby Boomer is to be born after WW2. VE Day was in 1945, thus a starting boomer would be born in 46. The show began at the turn of the decade. Peggy, one of the youngest of the characters, would be have to be 14, season 1, to qualify as a boomer.
I think the entire cast (w/ few exceptions) is pre Boom. The vacant and disinterested martinis @ 3 then off to bed in the suburbs with the good wife set.
Mantovani!

Unless you are referring to the customers of SCDP's clientele. They will become the biggest consumers on the planet. I agree. Bought and sold like cattle.

 

There are casualties from every "bad" habit and vice known to man. Diabetes and heart disease from excess sweetener and junk food, cigarettes, alcohol. At some point we all have to take personal responsiblity for most of the good and bad stuff that happens in our lives. Don't outlaw Big Macs, just don't eat 10 at time. I'm not a big proponent of drugs legal or otherwise, but some people just don't have an off switch, when it comes to excessive behaviour. Hell you can od on baby aspirin if you want to.

 

Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.
~Marcus Tullius Cicero

 

You are correct.

 

I'm not sure I understand the point here: psychedelic drugs are OK, because cigarettes and alcohol are bad, too? Of course, Mad Men has portrayed Roger having a heart attack from drinking and smoking, Freddie Rumsen getting sacked from Sterling Cooper because he was an alcoholic, and Don nearly drinking himself to death in Season Four. So I think that the show has hardly sugarcoated the effects of the vices of the 50s. Interesting, though, how so many seen so determined to sugarcoat the effects of the vices of the 60s. Replacing Jim Beam and the three-martini lunch with marijuana and LSD wasn't a leap forward in man's consciousness; it was one more case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

 

The world would be a much better place if people chose cannabis over alcohol.
The two couldn't be more different.

I saw a young comedian who said that if you can't have sex just hold your urine all day and when you finally let it go..it's the same thing!

The audience was silent and embarrassed for the guy.

 

Sally (the daughter), who was 12 in 1966 -- as I was -- would be a Boomer.

I agree that the attitudes and personalities of the central characters in the show were pretty typical of people born in the 1930s and early 1940s. My own parents were definitely like that, only even more conservative (and less likely to drop acid). Lots of alcohol and prescription drugs, though.

 

Don Draper was born in 1926 - his surprise 40th birthday party started off this season. My own father was born in 1920 - funny to see Don rip the needle off of The Beatles record as my father hated The Beatles. He hated them for such a long time - it wasn't until the early 80s that he started warming to them.

Since my father was/is six years older than Don, that puts him closer to Roger's age. And like Roger, my father had a problem with Japanese people after fighting and being wounded in WWII. Though this, as his hatred for The Beatles, changed over the years. By the late 70s/early 80s he no longer had any negative feelings.

He had been a drinker but stopped in the early 80s. Hhmm... connected?

 

My father was born in 1929, and it was a similar deal. But one of my fondest memories of that era was him coming home in the summer of 1964, singing "A Hard Day's Night" when he walked in the front door. So even somebody in their mid-30s was listening to Top 40 and had to admit, "ya know, some of this teen crap is not so bad." But I think most 1960s parents thought that the Beatles sucked, like Alan Sherman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgKCQJfAVgI

Don... I dunno. I think his inability to get the pop culture changes going on in 1966-1967 could eventually bite him.

 

Same thing with my dad. Duane Eddy or Ray Price were his usual picks on the HiFi.

Speaking of HiFis, I finally tracked down a picture of our '60s "HiFi" : http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v168/scopdom/SearsMedalistHiFi.jpg

It was a Sears Silvertone. It wasn't stereo, but it sounded incredible.

 

My parents were born in 1923/24, and I don't recall any particular objection to The Beatles. They may have been amused by all the furor, but there was no negativity.

 

I think my father (born in '32) would have rather I liked the Beatles than play "Miles Davis at Fillmore" over and over again!