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.