Footnotes of Mad Men: Goodbye, All Our Pretty Horses @4:32 PM
Of all the metaphors this season, the strongest seemed to be the horse. That could seem old, pony-furred hat if we were not in the strong hands of the Mad Men writers room. The partner of the wayward man making his claim on the land; the embodiment of stubborn independence; since cigarette ads immemorial, a symbol of virile Americanism. Of course horses are also chattel, and we Americans will gladly take our spirit animals, chop them up and serve 'em to our pups if there is good business to be had, even if we have to lie about it. Also, horses can kill you! (RIP, Papa Whitman.) READ MORE 109
Footnotes of Mad Men: How You Get Your News @4:30 PM
Not to be contrary for the sake of it—because what can you say about November 22, 1963 that hasn't already been borrowed three times over?—but the Kennedy family has only limited emotional resonance for those of us born to the baby boomers. This is particularly true for those of us who grew up in the West, far beyond the sway of East coast political dynasties. Sure, we can identify the Kennedys as a cultural shift, as style icons, as political talking points. We can also relate to the transformational power of their tragedies—hypnotic television coverage, live carnage, and, last night, an unmoored Betty Draper unable to make sense out of any of it. But for us now, that afternoon Dallas is more illustrative of something else: the swift and unscrupulous pace of history. Particularly, recent American history and how it is so phenomenally compressed. In just one generation, the psychic trauma of RFK and JFK has been largely erased. So maybe Don Draper's aloof attitude is enlightened rather than repressive: "Everything's going to be OK. We'll have a new president. And everyone is going to be sad for a little bit." READ MORE 63
Footnotes of Mad Men: Misfits, Horse Meat and Clark Gable @1:51 PM
In Edward Albee's 1962 play,Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, George, after having served as a punching bag all night for Martha's verbal roundhouses, decides to have out with it. He and his wife had put on a pretty good act for a their guests, the young and obnoxiously naïve Nick and Honey. Right before George divulges his wife's big secret-it is of Dick Whitman proportions-he starts to peel the label off his liquor bottle. He turns to a confused Honey and explains, "We all peel labels, sweetie; and when you get through the skin, all three layers, through the muscle, slosh aside the organs, them which is still sloshable-and get down to bone… you know what you do then?" Yes: go for the marrow! Nice, horsey marrow. READ MORE 62
Footnotes of Mad Men: The Liberation of Betty Draper–Or Not @4:20 PM
At the end of season two, Betty became convinced that Don was cheating on her. (Crazy, right?) She spent much of a day tearing apart the house, looking for clues of infidelity. Shoving her hands inside pants pockets (smoking), pulling out desk drawers (drinking), reading every scrap of paper in the house (sweating), Betty, in a deflated and droopy party dress, found nothing. Generally, TV shows will afford one scene to this sort of lipstick-on-the-collar scenario, but instead we were drawn into the hunt over the course of the entire episode. READ MORE 17
Footnotes of Mad Men: "They See In Her Disaster" or, Love Amongst the Cheaters @4:41 PM
Monogamy can be such a grind, right? Cheating is tough too, though. There's that terrifying halo of guilt that radiates around you after the act. It serves as both repellent and aphrodisiac, causing one's partner to inch ever-closer to you after a tryst. Then there's a particular upswing from the adrenaline. What a fool you were to put such a thing at risk! After all that comes the slow-boiling and consuming resentment towards your partner, the one who has robbed you of spontaneity and anonymity. You know what helps? A sudden trip and/or a new hairdo. READ MORE 61
The Footnotes of Mad Men: Suburban Rococo @3:46 PM
Oh, no! The world is tugging away at Don Draper's individuality one thread at a time! First it started with the sexy maypole teacher pointing out that Don's nihilistic quest for self-indulgence is no different from all the other 'bored' Ossissingite daddies—he's even donning the same shirt as them! Then Roger characterizes Don's personal brand as someone else's (The Ogs). Some barbituated crazed kids think of him as just another spook (the nerve of those wayward hippies!). And Don's own hearth, the place where he puts up his feet and thinks about the majestic Mohawk nation, has been invaded by a home designer who undoubtedly has put the same 'modern Chinoiserie' design into the homes of hundreds of other stylish couples. I guess none of us can be too different, huh? We're all muscle and blood after all. READ MORE 52
Footnotes of Mad Men: American Grit @4:49 PM
"Japan" is the explanation that Bert Cooper offers his British bosses for why they're standing in their socks inside his office. Japan and our role in WWII can also be offered as the explanation for what cinched America's role as the then-new empire. It must be a bit awkward for citizens of the waning imperial power that was England to strip down to their socks together. (Did you notice the armor lurking in the corner of Bert's office? And the buffed knight's suit standing guard in Lane's? Empire-building does come with some marvelous accessories.) READ MORE 21
Footnotes of Mad Men: Your Prison, Your School, Your Hospital @12:27 PM
The Foucauldian adage goes something like: prisons, hospitals, and schools have the same architecture because they are all centers of confinement. (But is there anything more confining than the suburban nuclear family? Not according to John Cheever or Matthew Weiner!) In Mad Men episode 305, "The Fog," we got a field trip to all three institutions! A sexy school teacher, a surly prison guard and a McMurphy-hating maternity nurse all served as uniformed ambassadors. So how much has changed and how much has stayed the same inside these linoleum-plastered hallways? READ MORE 25
Footnotes of Mad Men: The Fathers of Madison Avenue @2:59 PM
Mad Men episode 304, "The Arrangements": It was all about daddies this week. Dads fighting for the glory of empire in Prussia or Korea, wearing the hats of dead men, clinging to their tattered copies of Roman history while they sleep. Betty's dad, the millionaire named Ho-Ho's dad, and, most importantly, Sally Draper's daddy. Let's curl up together in our tutus, cease our sobbing, crack open our 1962 copy of Time magazine, and figure out exactly who each daddy is. READ MORE 19
Footnotes of Mad Men: The Conquest of Decor @9:20 AM
Too much ink has already been spilled on the arresting design aspects of Mad Men. It's fabulous and meticulous. But Sunday's episode, "My Old Kentucky Home," #303, finally gave a walloping amount of substance to all that style everyone's been going on about. In the mid-seventies, artist Marcel Broodthaers began work on an installation that he called Décor: The Conquest. He placed objects in two separate rooms; each depicted a different century. One room was suggestive of the 19th, all lined with stiff ornate wooden chairs, palm trees, and rusting cannons placed on tidy squares of grass. The other room, outfitted with aqua blue furniture, machine guns and streamlined bookshelves was presumably meant to reflect the tastes of the modern era. Let's go inside two other starkly different interiors: Roger Sterling's country club bash and Joan Holloway's Manhattan digs. READ MORE 6
