|
babydonthurtme posted:Tom and Lorenzo (if you love the clothes on the show and you haven't read their Mad Style series, you are missing out) Came here to post this. They're what got me into the show. Anyways, since there was some discussion as to the purpose of this most recent episode, I'll give my take and hope it isn't completely retarded. At first blush, the episode is a setup for future turf wars that will play out over the course of the season: Pete v. Roger, Betty v. Megan, Ginsburg v. Peggy and Henry v. Don -- but that last one is interesting since it seems so one-sided. I blazed through the first four seasons on Netflix so I totally may have missed something, but I don't recall Don ever reacting to Henry with anything equaling the palpable disdain that Henry has for him. Similarly, Ginsburg has no animosity towards Peggy, but rather feels a kinship towards her, albeit expressed awkwardly. Okay, that makes sense for a second episode in a season. But the title ("Tea Leaves") gave me pause -- in the titular scene, a medium completely misreads Betty's fortune (or, at least, as Betty sees it). She can't see the future because no one can; and that, I think, in a strange way, is what is fueling these rivalries. The people in them are unsure of their futures because they are unsure of their presents. To put it in a way that makes sense, they have competition from someone -- specifically someone who fills the same role in their world as them. And because of this other person, they're worried that their no longer special. (Admittedly, I'm taking some serious liberty here, since only Betty really came close to expressing this anxiety and I'm just relying on subtext for all the others.) So, Don is sort of the nucleus around which all these rivalries orbit. Both Pete and Roger want to be in control of the Mohawk Airlines account and both of them want to show Don they're in control. Pete does so by proudly proclaiming how he secured the account while Roger constantly chimes in during the convo with Peggy about hiring a new copy writer with details about the execs tastes, wants and histories. Pete is saying "I know this business" while Roger is saying "I know these guys" and both of them are saying "I'm making this account happen. I'm important." Peggy doesn't like Ginsburg because he wants to be Don's protégé, and Peggy is already Don's protégée. She spent the first interview trumping up her importance in the hiring process and how she knew Don and "got" Don and he didn't, and during the second interview she was clearly more worried about what the Ginsburg interview said about her and her value to Don rather than whether Ginsburg was gonna work as an addition to the team. As for the scene of Ginsburg and his dad, I believe it was meant to underscore the similarities between his ethnic, working-class, religious, single parent, presumably Brooklyn-based background and Peggy's near-identical upbringing. In a sense, she's looking at herself. I'm reminded of a news article about Queen Elizabeth I read once, of the eleven or twelve prime ministers that have served under her reign, the only one her Majesty did not get along with was Margaret Thatcher. Both of them were so used to being the only woman in the room that when another woman of power showed up, they couldn't really deal with it. I suspect that the similarities between Peggy and Ginsburg will lead Peggy to feel like she's not unique and therefore not special, or something. As for Betty, she openly worried about being eclipsed by Megan, and Megan for her part was more upset when Don wouldn't go to fire island than when she heard Betty was sick. Betty, the first wife, needs to know that Don still cares about her because she feels threatened by the new wife, and Megan needs Don to be with her and on her side because, I suspect, she feels threatened by - or at least like she's competing with - Don's lingering affections towards his first wife and the mother of his children, which makes Betty a permanent part of Don's life and a piece of his past brought into the present - something Megan isn't too keen on. Don's initial refusal to go to fire island angered Megan because it meant (to her) that he was putting the ex-wife over the now-wife. Also, RE: Betty's cancer diagnosis - I believe that it was benign, and that she didn't tell Don because she wanted him to fret over her. I think Betty still loves Don, even if she doesn't know it and his concern is a way for her to feel love from him. (Side note: The Francis household, with it's heavy stonework, dark rooms and antique furniture? That place is a loving mausoleum. Betty's on a fast track to become Miss Havasham). And speaking of the Francis household, Henry is in competition with Don for Betty's affections -- or rather, he's in competition with Betty's history with Don. Like Megan, he is giving all his love to someone who is dividing their love between two people. And he is super pissed about that. The irony is that Don isn't playing that game at all, even though he seems to be winning. His concern for Betty is astonishingly genuine (even to himself). And Henry can't respond to it with anything but barely-checked anger. What makes all of these that much more fraught is the fact that Don isn't the most... capable when it comes to dealing with people's emotions. And it seems so many people are contingent on him for their happiness that there's no way he's gonna navigate that minefield successfully. And let's not forget everyone's favorite dork: Harry Crane. A man whose desperate attempt to sound hip and cool to a bunch of teenagers backstage at a rock concert just confirms how out-of-touch he is. A man who tries to talk business with the Rolling Stones and has no idea he has the wrong band until its too late. We first saw that the men and women of Sterling-Cooper were on the wrong side of the cultural shift when they threw their weight behind Nixon in season 1, and now that rift will only get rapidly wider. Harry's little gaffe is a portent of bigger things to come (and soon). When the Vietnam protests go mainstream, I expect war veterans Don and Roger will have a lot to say about patriotism and service (and I expect Sally will try her hand at social activism, much to Don's disapproval). And therein lies the significance of the Rolling Stones subplot - and the larger Heinz campaign (which I think is gonna fizzle - or bomb and become a laughingstock): time is not on SCDP's side. Too many of the key players are too old or too old at heart to keep up with the social tumult that is crashing like waves on a shore, engulfing everything (including loving beans. It's so ridiculous when you think about it). Harry touched upon in during his stoned pity-party, but I don't think he realized it. In any case, Heinz knows what they want, but I doubt SCDP will be able to deliver. OR, Ginsburg will whip up something and Peggy will be thrown in a tailspin. Something like that. And that end song, "16 going on 17", a song about the naïveté coming up against the world of cynical, conniving adults is perfect as an ironic punctuation mark to the episode because it is the adults who are naïve about the world they are entering, one where they are struggling to catch up rather than being the ones that call the shots. And in this world, there will be no clear place for them (if there is a place at all). So many of them are already worried about their place and their value; it's only gonna get worse for them out there. If you read all that it's your own drat fault.
|
| # ¿ Apr 4, 2012 10:58 |
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 25, 2013 12:18 |
|
|
God drat this thread moves fast. Okay, 1. I watch the show with my mother who suspects that since Ken has become a less prominent character in later seasons than he was in the earlier ones, she wonders if he'll get out of the ad game (whether by choice, or - more likely - by force) and go off to become a full-time writer. And they've at least hinted at that dilemma for him. 2. I was tickled by Ken's latest nom de plume: Dave Algonquin. The Algonquin roundtable, if you don't know, was a social group of mostly writers that would meet for drinks at the New York hotel the Algonquin in the 1920's. "Members" (there was no formal membership) would sit around, play parlor games and be witty, all of them dropping their best bonnes mots. Rather famous in their day, the group's reputation could be summed up best by a damning quote from one of its own members, Dorothy Parker: quote:These were no giants. Think who was writing in those days—Lardner, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Hemingway. Those were the real giants. The Round Table was just a lot of people telling jokes and telling each other how good they were. Just a bunch of loudmouths showing off, saving their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring them....There was no truth in anything they said. It was the terrible day of the wisecrack, so there didn't have to be any truth... 3. And then I thought back to that scene in season 2(?) with the Playtex "All women are a Marilyn or a Jackie" campaign. And when Peggy asks which one is she, Ken says Gertrude Stein. Now, Stein was a big butch lesbian, but she was also a radically inventive avant-garde poet and prose writer. And, at the time, that line read as an insult (Peggy is sexless and mannish!), but now, given how simpatico he is with Peggy, I wonder if it had a trace of praise to it. I mean, it's still 99% insult, but it's as if he hid a double-secret-probation compliment inside (Peggy is sexless and mannish, but dammit she's got a way with words!). Eh, probably not; but its great how meticulously the show is crafted that Stein was Ken's go-to for the slam. Of course he would just have, like, the entire Modernist literary canon as casual reference points! Really, what other show thinks to give their characters those kind of backstory details? 4. This is the second time I recall Trudy being enamored with the prestige of a pedigree. In this episode it was the history of Cos Cob, but in season 1, she knew (or at least cared) more about Pete's family tree than Pete when they first saw the apartment. She also once met with the Docent council of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, presumably with the possibility of becoming one herself. It's such a lightly touched-on detail (the other thing Mad Men does so well), but Trudy's got a bit of the history buff in her and finds history so fascinating, while Pete seems so burdened by the dead weight of the past. Trudy sees Cos Cob as this storied, distinguished hamlet and all Pete can add is a sarcastic remark that (if I'm recalling it correctly) is the Algonquin (!!!) word for suitcase, revealing his own feelings that it's a boring place for boring stuffed-shirt types. BONUS DOROTHY PARKER QUOTE: quote:(When asked to use the word 'horticulture' in a sentence: "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think"
|
| # ¿ Apr 18, 2012 16:09 |
|
|
It could happen to the best of us (but it happened to you) Double burn!
|
| # ¿ Apr 21, 2012 11:18 |
|
|
Tinfoil hat time: Roger's marriage is crumbling/ has crumbled while Don's marriage looks great. When Don doesn't wanna go be a horndog with Rog and instead wants to go with Megan, Roger bows out, but doesn't kill the plan. Don, with Roger's implicit consent, takes Megan and bolts the office. When everyone, esp. Bert, asks where Don is, Roger, motivated by a selfish "bros before hos" credo, can say "he just decided to take Megan on a long weekend", most likely leaving out the parts about a) it ostensibly being a fact-finding business expedition and b) it being Roger's idea. So Don's marriage almost completely explodes because Roger is a pissy jerkoff. That being said, I really want to believe that Don is getting better, or that Megan will help him become a better person, but man on man, poo poo like what he did tonight makes me think "at best, he's got a loooooooooong way to go". As a final note, this is perhaps of interest only to me, but the proliferation of Tibetan buddhist errata in in Jane's friend's house (dinner party) put the owner on the bleeding edge of mid-60's religious cultural trends. The first Tibetan Buddhist schools would've opened in the states barely more than five years ago. Robert Thurman (as in Uma's dad) the first American scholar of Tibetan buddhism and first American-born buddhist monk took his vows only one year before. Robert Thurman also did a translation of the Tibetan book of the dead mentioned episode, but best as I could tell, not until the 1990's, so the people at the party probably had read the first translation from 1927. No word on how accurate it was. And speaking of Robert Thurman and LSD, his second wife is the former wife of Timothy Leary and would have been married to Leary at this time; I think that's really interesting. But I'm still choosing Roger over those bores because, horrible subterfuge of his former bff aside, dammit the man's just so charming. And I absolutely love his office. Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:Were upscale LSD parties a thing that actually happened? I, like many, have always associated LSD with hippies and the like so it was incredibly strange and absurd to me to see all these well dressed people at a fancy house party tripping balls and crawling around on the floor. From what I could find, LSD was heavily researched for psycho-pharmacological purposes in the 1950's and early 60's, so medical and psychology bigwigs would've had access to it; also, one of its biggest advocates, a man named Alfred Matthew Hubbard, spend many years promoting it influential academicians, scientists and politicians, so in both cases the people who could acquire it initially would be people of education, wealth and social status. And it was Jane's therapist who provided it for the guests.
|
| # ¿ Apr 23, 2012 07:35 |
|
|
Astroman posted:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjg5...feature=related It's rather astonishing to take the bravado in his little speech in that scene with its quasi-Orwellian "We control Desire" kinda vibe and compare it to recent client requests (Heinz, Chevalier Blanc) that the commercial confirm to the established interests of the consumer. "I will tell you what you want" versus "Tell me what you want". Not that this is at all a surprise, but the contrast is remarkable all the same.
|
| # ¿ May 12, 2012 07:26 |
|
|
"Can you keep a secret?" "No." And he didn't. Bless his heart.
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2012 07:54 |
|
|
Don't wanna read all that? Read this! An article about Harry's behavior by the actor Richard Sommer. And another! I was curious, so I looked up "American Hurrah", the play they attended. It's a condemnation of American consumerism and involvement in the Vietnam War. The dialogue appears to alternate banal conversation with casual violence, explicit destruction, sexual posturing, and accounts of gore, illness, tragedy and indifference in three one-act segments The play is performed in a "fugue" style; I couldn't find a definition of fugue as it applies to theater, but the definition I found for a fuge in music was that two or more 'voices' (singers or musicians) perform a thematically similar piece. Each voice performs a different take on it and the voices combine/alternate for the purpose of contrast and juxtaposition. I looked at some excepts of fugue-style plays including "American Hurrah" and it seems to be a style of writing and performance where the characters speak to themselves or the audience, but not much to each other. Each speaks with equal or mostly equal prominence on the same (or a similar) subject matter, but they do not communicate, so instead of a conversation there is a series of interwoven and simultaneously fragmented monologues. A bizarre discord born out of an extreme unity of character and content. Here is an article that describes a scene from the play in an act called "Motel" that Don would have just loved. The playwright, Jean-Claude van Itallie was Belgian-born, came to America as a child to flee the Nazis, and has taught at many universities and institutions on I'm English and Theater, but his website also champions his workshops on Eastern Mysticism which he is still teaching (he's 76). He's also acted a little in his own works, directed other plays, and has been lauded for his translations of Chekov. In the 60's, he was a quintessential counter-culture artist and counted literati and cultural heavyweights of the time like Norman Mailer as fans. Contemporary theater authorities like playwright Tony Kushner also laud his talents. America Hurrah premiered at the LaMaMa Experimental theater club, which had only opened in 1961 in the basement of a fashion boutique in 1964-65 in a "working draft" phase, and formally debuted at the Pocket Theater on November 7, 1966. I looked for information about the Pocket Theater and came up empty-handed except that at some point it became a porno theater. Seems strangely appropriate given the theme of the play. It was an off-broadway playhouse and the play has appeared in anthologies such as Eight Plays from Off-Off Broadway and The Off Off Broadway Book: The Plays, People, Theatre but it wasn't hindered by it's alternative status; it was lauded by the theater community and ran for 634 perfomances. It also performed to acclaim in London and Sydney, where fans blocked police from arresting the actors following shows. Which makes me think of the shots of the audience (to bring it all back to Mad Men). That theater looked quite large if I recall, and the audience quite establishment, more Don than Megan. And I was wondering if, given that the play would have opened only four-to-six weeks prior, if the audience portrayed was not a correct representation of the actual audience who would've attended at that time. I think it'd still be rather "underground" at the time. Megan could've easily learned about it from actor friends or alternative newspapers, but I'm guessing her GORGEOUS, heavily-embellished shift dress would've read as the kind of money and consumerism that the play and its cast and audience bemoaned and would've stood out in a bad way at an actual staging. I also am guessing the Pocket Theater, based solely on its name, was probably quite tiny. As for the acting in the play, which felt rather wooden to me, I'm guessing it was just to make it look like students like Megan and new actors were cast. I initially interpreted it as visual shorthand for "alternative", but decided Weiner is too good for such a stunt. More likely it underscores the dvide between Don and the young actors and playwright (van Itallie was only 30 at the premiere), and also one between Don and Megan. As a final note, van Itallie was quite cute back in the day; and he's still got that Clint Eastwood hotness now. And now you know. And knowing is half the battle.
|
| # ¿ May 22, 2012 08:40 |
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 25, 2013 12:18 |
|
|
RE: Pete's new moral low: I would argue that this move outweighs his push for Trudy to sleep with the publisher (or any of his other dick moves) based on scope -- a lot of people were implicated to go along with this scam to gain the edge by indulging a corrupt businessman in exchange to buy his vote for an ad campaign worth millions. Everything else was fairly contained. The ramifications of this move could be quite far-reaching, depending on how Weiner approaches next season, even. RE: Peggy's new position: I wonder if we'll still see Peggy, but now as Don sees her: competition. She can show up to client pitches, trade expos, whatever, as a rival, but one who is as close to a friend as Don's ever gonna have in this biz. Given their intimacy, it would be a very checkered dynamic.
|
| # ¿ May 29, 2012 10:27 |
|
