And you thought you were binge-watching before.
I've been, too, but I've been focused on re-watching Mad Men,
a show I've held pretty close to my heart since I was introduced to
it by a remarkably shitty ex-roommate. I watched it,
episode-by-episode, week-by-week, as we always used to, and finally
got around to watching the whole thing again, the first time I've
re-watched a drama in full (which like binging in general, is
something the general populace as a whole does that I've never been
very good at).
So I was treated to a dual experience, both the standard experience
of revisiting a work from a previous stage of one's life, as well as
the experience of viewing something in a completely new way, in this
case in a condensed version, where the themes that Matthew Weiner and
Co. chose to underline were starker, more obvious.
Spoiler alert, and all that.
Some things, of course, remained wonderful – the richness and depth
of the characters and the very specific ways in which they change and
evolve, the gorgeous cinematography informed by 1950s and 1960s
American cinema, the dreamy montages presenting the characters'
mundane lives in counterpoint, the occasional streaks of dark humor,
and perhaps best of all, the slips into the surreal – dead
characters reappearing, a suddenly empty elevator shaft.
(That's right, I used a gif from a popular TV show in its own right instead of using it as a pointless throwaway gag)
And simultaneously, I cringe even more at the glibly
self-congratulatory moments were we the audience are reminded how
much better the present day is than the past – the arrogant tobacco
execs, the scene where a young Sally Draper wears a plastic
dry-cleaning bag to play astronauts, and her mother stops her, only
to tell her the laundry better not be on the floor, the way the
camera lingers over trash left behind by the Draper Family after a
picnic.
I can't speak to the historical accuracy of the show. I obviously
wasn't in a New York office space between 1959 and 1970, and
increasingly few people were. And since art trades in vibes more than
facts, I hesitate to apply any kind of data-based analysis to what
the show is or isn't, what it does or doesn't portray. What interests
me is not the era itself, but the lens the showrunners chose to
examine that era through.
One can be forgiven for thinking of the show as possessing a
fundamentally progressive worldview. The script champions women
taking a more assertive role within the office, and all of the major
characters seem to be more or less on board with the Civil Rights
Movement. By the end, they've all become sickened by the Vietnam War,
and the struggles of the show's few gay characters are treated with
real empathy.
But yet upon second watching, it all seemed like window-dressing.
The version of feminism that is proffered is the Lean In
variety, one in which, being a girl-boss is seen as the
transcendental goal, and the status quo is in no way meaningfully
questioned. The characters often find themselves shattered by the
contradictions in their own life, but those are problems resulting
not from any kind of structural failings in the society in which they
live, but by their interior psychodramas. And when each major
character resolves those contradictions in the end – Peggy Olson
finally opening her heart up to love with the dopey artist down the
hall, Joan Harris starting her own company, Roger Sterling finally
settling down with a woman his own age instead of chasing 20 year-old
secretaries, Pete Campbell accepting a gilded corporate gig and
returning to his family – they do so with a full commitment to the
machine.
In probably the most noxious version of all, our hero, Don Draper, a
man whose entire life is built on lies, finds salvation at a commune
presumably modeled on the Esalen Institute (look it up, it was a
major force for the boomer generation but has largely been
forgotten), it is by saluting the sun on a cliff over the Pacific.
The final scene closes. He smiles as he chants an Om, and the scene
cuts to the famous 1971 Coke ad with the teenagers singing on the
hilltop in Italy, the presumed message being that he returned to work
at McCann-Erickson and thought it up.
“I
did hear rumblings of people talking about the ad being corny. It's a
little bit disturbing to me, that cynicism. I'm not saying
advertising's not corny, but I'm saying that the people who find that
ad corny, they're probably experiencing a lot of life that way, and
they're missing out on something.” – Matthew Weiner, in an
interview with the Hollywood Reporter
Nah,
fuck that.
The
end message is further evidence that only the worst parts of the '60s
survived – the half-baked spirituality and Westernized version of
Eastern religion, the mask of inclusivity covering up rapacious
capitalism, a Whiggish faith in the inevitability of human progress,
and the reduction of all human endeavor to individual choice and
self-expression.
A sort of mediocre liberal centrism, the kind long since de rigueur
in Oscar-noms, has become the standard perspective of American
scripted television, at least in its “prestige” sector
(reactionary programming now being confined to reality television and
the sorts of fucking dumb “SALUTES TO OUR ARMED FORCES” that I
skip over whenever I torrent an NFL game). Few are the shows – The
Wire and Deadwood being two magnificent examples – that
take an honest look behind the curtain.
With the first episode, featuring lots of idiotic old boys' club
joking designed for the audience to be horrified by, I was afraid
that Mad Men would become another thing, like so many others,
that was ruined for me. I may have liked The Breakfast Club when
I was 16, but it's fucking unwatchable now. I've been told not to
re-watch Dead Poets' Society, and I have no intention of doing
so.
But here's the thing – regardless of the many eye rolls, Mad Men
is still a joy to watch. Each character is treated with real empathy,
even at their worst, and I'm rooting for them, dammit! Certain
sequences still took my breath away as much as they did when I first
watch them. I take far more umbrage at the notion that art must
contain a correct perspective (I'm listening to Wagner right now, for
the-Christ-I-don't-believe-in's sake), than the various sins of the
showrunners
