nostalgia . . . the pain of old wounds

Because Mad Men (the television show) is about the late 1950s/1960s as is The Conquest of Cool and because we're paying some attention to various genres of re-presenting the past, I included the show in our syllabus.  That decision also obligated me to watch some episodes, read about the show, and think about it beyond mere plot summary.  Today in class we watched a few clips and included my former teaching partner, Chris Galdieri,  in the conversation via skype from his new post at St. Anselm College.   The technology was a little clunky, but fun for the novelty.

Chris pushed us to think about a notion Don Draper introduces in his pitch to Eastman-Kodak, namely that nostalgia is related to the pain of old wounds.  I have checked the etymology; that is not precisely correct, but it will do for our purposes.  Since the show has evoked and builds on a sort of nostalgia for the 1960s we can ask what "old wounds" it is exploring.  And what sort of portrayal does it provide?  Is this a representation intended to probe those wounds or to heal them?  Whose wounds, the old wounds the characters feel or the wounds they inflict upon their descendants, literal and generational?

One of the authors I read, J. M. Tyree, pointed out that the creator of the show, like the Coen brothers who wrote A Serious Man set in the approximately the same pre-1968 era, did not live through these years as an adult, if at all.   Thus, if the show is indeed returning to old wounds, they have been experienced indirectly.  Perhaps, to oversimplify, the children raised according to the precepts of Dr. Spock are exploring the genesis of their own experiences.  (Maybe the times are a bit off.)  Alan Anderson, an Australian argues that "we" like the show because it portrays a time freer of government regulation in which people may have behaved badly, but they were also held accountable for their behavior.  I"m not convinced that the last is true.  It seems to me that the show is filled with people being able to hide their deliberate disregard for social norms, though perhaps this is merely an indication of the prevalence of  some sort of double standard for public and private behavior.  If so, we'd need to pay close attention to how and where that line is drawn.

A blogger who offers detailed and fascinating analysis of the costuming notes that his mother, or the mother of a friend, like the character Peggy Olson was a recently graduated secretary from Brooklyn working in a Manhattan office in precisely these years.  She is uninterested in the show and does not find it to provide an accurate portrayal of her experience.  No doubt not everyone participated in this "life style" even if the clothes, furniture, cuisine, and other decorative details are on target.

Tyree offers this: "An American paradox is that the much-vaunted Emersonian characteristic of self-reliance dovetails rather nicely with the goals of big business to create a nation of isolated, vulnerable, and greedy selves who can be persuaded that buying products is a form self-expression. . . . then Don Draper and Peggy Olson are emblematic figures in the rise of a funny kind of freedom."  Certainly these two characters have wounds and acquire them even as they exercise their freedom.  That in itself might be a lesson worth pondering: the exercise of freedom is likely to produce injury as well as pleasure.  And a challenge we Americans have not yet met is to tend to the injury, to one's self as well as to others, not only to celebrated the pleasures.

deep maps

"How a world is imagined and lived in begins with 'maps' far more profoundly ingrained that those of the cartographer.  It includes a deep sense of home and of the familiar places likened to it.  It also includes a sense of the distant and unfamiliar.  Mapping the known world has always included, at its periphery, the unknown world, terra incognita, which the imagination may conceive as shadowy and frightful or as golden and glorious."  Diana Eck, India: A Sacred Geography

Paul Bunyan & Babe the Big Blue Ox: Bemidji, MN

I'm finding this book fascinating for what it is teaching me about India, for what it is showing me about the relationships between human beings, our collective identities, and landscape, and for what it is causing me to wonder about these dynamics in North America where our shared mythology is so young.  Indian identification of sacred places (fords, crossing points), of dwellings of the divine, and routes of pilgrimage are many centuries old.  The mythology and the landscape are intricately tied by repeated rituals and long memory.

It may be that individual Americans and perhaps their closest family and friends have a few decades or even a century of layering, but as a people our mythological mapping is more thin than deep.  Nonetheless, I'm curious about what there is and how it is developing.  How might family vacations to national and state parks be understood within this framework?  Do historic landmarks play a part?  What of those odd, local markers and annual town festivals, like the Defeat of Jesse James Day here in my town?  What would be learned from paying serious attention to these roadside attractions?

the illusion of conversation in sips of connection

"WE expect more from technology and less from one another and seem increasingly drawn to technologies that provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of relationship. Always-on/always-on-you devices provide three powerful fantasies: that we will always be heard; that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be; and that we never have to be alone. Indeed our new devices have turned being alone into a problem that can be solved." 

Thanks to Beth for sending along the LINK to this piece in the New York Times by Sherry Turkle, wise student and observer of human interactions with and use of technology. Turkle notes that real conversations, that are the stuff of real relationships, take time and encourage reflection.  These can be enhanced by instant modes of communication, which she designates as "sips," but she asserts those texts, tweets, and FB messages do not substitute for relationship and can be used to avoid genuine solitude.  If the technology has limited effectiveness for individual relationships, one wonders if the limits are even more limited for building community?

Notice that limited effectiveness does not imply no effectiveness, only that some types of interaction require time and physical presence.  In this regard a resident college offers its students a precious opportunity to live, study, eat, and converse in real-time, face-to-face over an extended period of time.  That this most often takes place when students are in their late teens and early twenties probably magnifies the benefit.  Perhaps it might even foster a desire to seek out other communities once they graduate from college life.

Back to tableware: this time, ads over time

1847

1929

We know that tableware has both a functional value and a symbolic value.  This dual quality makes it a prime example for considering how advertisers present this product to potential buyers.  Here we see four examples that span more than a century.  Although this is not a carefully selected sample, it does seem to suggest that into the early 20th century silver tableware was presented as a luxury item that confirmed one's high social status.  The ad from the 1950s is consistent with the common view that that was a era in which household domesticity was a widely held ideal.   (No mention in the ad, of course, of the communal, utopian experiment where Onedia tableware originated.)  The Dansk ad has the minimalist style of the 1960s and shows us the product itself so that we can make our decision about the unconventional shapes and lack of ornamentation.  The text of the Dansk ad does appeal to expert aesthetic (rather than scientific) opinion by its mention of museums and awards.  Perhaps this echos the 1847 ad's assertion that there is art in the silverware.  All this fits with what we've been reading, but a larger sample would be needed for a conclusive interpretation.

1953

1961

reading about writing

Merely reading fine writing does have the potential to train one's ability to write.  At least it helps form one's judgement about what constitutes fine writing.  

NPR comes through with recommendations of three books that go another step: they are ABOUT writing, more specifically about writing for ordinary readers.

LINK

Stephen King is quoted: "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot."

"joys of the soul"

"When I think about what really makes me happy, what I really crave, I come up with a very different list: concentrated, purposeful work, especially creative work; being with people I love; feeling like I’m part of something larger. Meaning, connectedness, doing strenuously what you do well: not sights, not thrills, and not even pleasures, as welcome as they are. Not passivity, not letting the world come in and tickle you, but creativity, curiosity, altruism, engagement, craft. Raising children, or teaching students, or hanging out with friends. Playing music, not listening to it. Making things, or making them happen. Thinking hard and feeling deeply."  This by William Deresiewiez blogging in The American Scholar LINK

In three paragraphs (the second quoted above) Deresiewicz considers what makes life worth living.  His comments are prompted in part by reading another author (Steven Weinberg, in the New York Review of Books) reflecting upon "the consolations of life in the absence of belief in the hereafter."  Deresiewicz argues in favor of the "joys of the soul" rather than of the "pleasures of the body" as a richer set of consolations.  His rejection of a consumerist notion of the self would makes him a valuable contributor to conversation with our current reading about advertizing in the 1960s.

And the exchange of comments that follow his brief posting make lively reading that points us toward large issues such as the power of status, the value of social connections, and the difference religious belief makes.  I recommend those as well.

carnivalesque consumerism

"But for all of its studies and surveys, its rules and its white lab coats, the advertising of the 1950s was ill-attuned to the carnivalesque spirit that undergirds American consumerism.  Order and stability also meant stagnation and stasis, the direct opposite of the 'new and daring' that have long animated American affluence."  Thomas Frank, p. 49

In what sense is consumerism carnivalesque? 

• Maybe when we buy things to construct a masquerade?  That is to suggest that buying things to invent or to reinforce our identities is a masquerade.  Is that only possible when what we buy falls into the "non-use" function of the goods?  Or at least when we have means adequate to allow us to make those sorts of choices among available options?
• There is also the phenomenon of Black Friday sales which do seem to foster a sort of wild abandon consistent with carnival in medieval Florence or contemporary Rio.
• Is there another way?  Is he suggesting that American consumerism is inherently destabilizing of  social order?  If so, how?  Perhaps because "new money" can buy a person into a new social class.  Still I'm not entirely convinced because I observe that often consumer purchases are intended to consolidate as much as to disrupt one's social position.

unhappy, post-1960s world?

 

"For many, the world with which 'the sixties' left us is a distinctly unhappy one."

 Thomas Frank on the opening page of The Conquest of Cool

This seems to suggest that we are living in an unhappy world and that the reasons for our unhappiness are to found in the 1960s.  Two assumptions, or assertions, I'm not ready to take as true on the face of it.  Both will be subjects of our conversations for several class periods.

Inside Conversation

M. Cassatt, "The Conversation"

At yesterday's Admitted Student Day, in the session on the four Conversations programs, a prospective student said: "The student I stayed with last night told me that AmCon is the B-team to The Great Conversation."

My reply, "The Great Conversation does tend to promote a sort of arrogance.  In AmCon we are more interested in democracy."  Then a few more remarks about varying topics and approaches and how those are valued.  Finally, which ever program a person is in, it will take your whole brain and lots of time. Karen als spoke up to emphasize that if a student has been admitted to St. Olaf, odds are that that student could do the work in any one of these four programs.

Later I wished that I had thought to offer an analogy to music organzations.   Is being in the band more or less serious than being in orchestra or a choir?  And isn't it the case that what each choir sings is a significant factor in each one's reputation, since all three of the upper-class choirs are excellent in quality?

Noticing happiness in poems

It is national poetry month so yesterday a group of faculty read poetry to each other: some poems written by the reader and some not.  These were not poems about happiness.  Indeed some had topics quite the opposite: sorrow, guilt, or mourning.  Nonetheless, the act of gathering to read and then reading did generate a sort of joy in the shared appreciation for the beauty of the words.

"My apologies to happiness for taking you as my due."

This line from "Under One Star" by Wislawa Szymborska was perhaps the only direct reference to happiness and it is in passing.  I'm noticing this.  Happiness often appears in poems in passing.  It is noticed rather than examined.  This morning I read another poem (Another Insane Devotion by Gerald Stern) in which happiness appear as a single word sentence drawing upon the three details that precede it.

"[...]I think I gave the cat

half of my sandwich to buy my life, I think

I broke it in half as a decent sacrifice.

It was this I bought, the red coleus,

the split rocking chair, the silk lampshade.

Happiness. I watched him with pleasure.

I bought memory. I could have lost it."

Without dismissing the value of careful analysis and reflection, I'm inclined to agree with these poets and their example of noticing happiness.

(not) writing about happiness

"In truth, books about joy are hard to find because happiness is nearly impossible to write about. Narrative thrives on conflict." 

Lauen Goff on NPR's You Must Read This Book about Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim LINK

There is poetry about happiness, however.  For example, this collection titled Happiness by Deborah Keenan.  I wonder if this is because poetry can focus our attention on a moment and happiness is experienced in moments?

HAPPY Good Friday???????

Everywhere I went yesterday, even church, I was offered this blessing.

Is it a profound theological point?  There is that notion that the fall of humanity into sin is the cause of greater good.  Maybe that makes Good Friday a day to be be happy. 

And we do call it GOOD Friday, so perhaps happy is an appropriate response to the day's event.  Theologians do speak of the happy exchange in which Jesus assumes human sin and humans receive his righteousness.

And it was a gorgeous day, warmish and clear.  I did have lunch with my dear friend.  I WAS happy.

Even the bulletin at the Good Friday service instructed me that the appropriate attitude is not mournful since Christians know that Jesus death on the cross is not the end of the story, but a new beginning transforming death into life.

Nonetheless, I've never been greeted "Happy funeral," so I stand by my uncomfortable reaction and continue to search for a more appropriate greeting.

practicing freedom

We should care that as the public sphere becomes increasingly chaotic and threatening, what we think of as freedom consists of insularity and retreat.  Marketers welcome this development, but a consumerist mentality allows us to turn spiritual practices, which traditionally have been aimed at making us more responsive to the legitimate needs of the world, into self-indulgence. 

Kathleen Norris

Poet and essayist Kathleen Norris raises the startling possibility that 21st century Americans are less attentive to the "legitimate needs of the world" then were the desert hermits of 4th century Egypt.  Most often our immediate response to those ancient men and women is to disdain their withdrawal from the real world and to dismiss their spirituality as selfish.  Norris, who has dwelt with them, has a different response, a more admiring one that allows her to learn from their sayings and their example of wrestling with demons and their desire to see the world honestly.

But, that is a longer and subtle discussion.  In these two sentences Norris turns her attention to her own world and ours.  She notices that self-help is more likely to promise fulfilling "what I want" than to counsel self-examination.  There are exceptions, there are always exceptions.  If her critique is extreme, it is still true.  Freedom can, often does, devolve into self-indulgence marked by insistence upon being given many options and uninhibited power to chose between them.

The easiest example are consumer decisions.  Many, many types of phones and several service providers to decide among, but no option to not have a phone, to be fully engaged with the person in the room with me rather than always eager for the next distraction.  This example is not simple.   To regard the ubiquity of cell phones as self-indulgent and isolating requires some thought beyond the emotional appeal of the ads suggesting that virtual presence is as good as real presence.  It requires assessing the long effects of the tool on life and relationships, not only the convenience.

If the easiest examples need careful unfolding, the more complex examples, decisions about private relationships and public life, are more insidious still.  A long look would bring us back to our earlier discussions of happiness as an individual concern and happiness as a result of cultivating public virtue.  This may go beyond Ben Franklin's famous system for keeping track of his own moral progress, which was not so different from individuals counting calories or logging miles run.  The practices of freedom are not limited to voting and external actions.  They also involve facing difficult realities about our selves and seeing the world honestly so that we can attend to its legitimate needs, not only indulge our own own desires.

How to get change

This from Adrienne Rich, “Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity,” (1982) 

This essay, then, has no conclusions: it is another beginning for me. Not just a way of saying, in 1982 Right Wing America, I , too, will wear the yellow star. It’s a moving into accountability, enlarging the range of accountability. I know that in the rest of my life, the next half century or so, every aspect of my identity will have to be engaged. The middle-class white girl taught to trade obedience for privilege. The Jewish lesbian raised to be a heterosexual gentile. The woman who first heard oppression named and analyzed in the Black Civil Rights struggle. The woman with three sons, the feminist who hates male violence. The woman limping with a cane, the woman who has stopped bleeding are also accountable. The poet who knows that beautiful language can lie, that the oppressor’s language sometimes sounds beautiful. The woman trying, as part of her resistance, to clean up her act.

 I'm struck by the way she links identity with accountability.  To claim one's identity, she seems to say, is not to withdraw into ever smaller circles, but rather to increase one's responsibility for one's self and one's engagement with the world.  This is a strategy for stimulating and pursuing change.

"Like" it on Facebook

The suggestion appears in so many places.  "Like us on Facebook."  Every posting (almost) offers the possibility to like what one has just read.  I find myself liking this, a bit to my surprise.  Why the positive response?

1)  Grammatical reason:  like is after all a verb.  I like that the word like is being used in a way close to what I take to be its central meaning, one that indicates approval, perhaps even affection.

2) Attitudinal reason: like indicates a positive response.  I like that I'm being offered the opportunity to express approval, perhaps even affection, without the corresponding negative options.  Of course I could type those in, but the default for response is "like."  Maybe this is a bit like the adage, "If you don't have something good to say, don't say anything."  Nonetheless, I like that I'm being encouraged to express my approval, delight, appreciation, or other positive responses.

NB: I do not, by this approval of liking, mean to suggest that there are no situations in which disapproval or protest is necessary; only that casual negative response is not healthy for individuals or conducive to community life.

What kind of change?

The tag line, "Change begins with a whisper," prompted us to ask what sort of change, if any, takes place in the course of The Help.  Reading documents from the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Rights/Women's Liberation movement extends the question.  What sorts of changes were called for?  What changes were actually accomplished? 

More bluntly, how is the United States different now than it was before, say, Brown v. Board of Education in the mid-1950s or before Title IX?  Thinking about this question, I'm reminded of our earlier observations about the interaction of social constraints and permissions with individual action.  Some constraints have been lifted by legal changes, thus opening up possibilities.  The likelihood of a person walking through the open doors is effected by factors beyond legality: access to quality education, family expectations, health, and many more.  And so much depends upon the measures we use to make comparisons and the scale of our sample.  Have women achieved the goal of equal pay for equal work?  Has this woman, employed in this company, achieved equal pay for each work? 

While the temptation to ask, "Are Americans happier now?" lurks, I think that the question is too vague.  Has the "problem that has no name" disappeared?  That might be a question we could tackle with some survey data and a look at a range of publications.  My hunch is that we'd find that it has not been eradicated, but that there is less of it.  What kind of changes are involved?  Some are in educational policy and practice, some are economic, some are personal.  What has not gone away: the persistent tension between self-interest and commitment to groups including the people to whom one is most intimately related.