tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post574516881188773277..comments2024-03-11T02:18:33.966-05:00Comments on Kritik: Mad World on Kritik: Mad Men Season 6.13 "The Only Unpardonable Sin" Guest Writer: Lauren GoodladAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13200566567765991464noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-50702418467715825332016-10-18T12:28:16.787-05:002016-10-18T12:28:16.787-05:00Find out how 1,000's of people like YOU are ma...Find out how <b>1,000's</b> of people like YOU are <b>making a LIVING from home</b> and are fulfilling their dreams <b>right NOW</b>.<br /><b><a href="http://syntaxlinks.com/money/?promotion=blogspot_c9184" rel="nofollow">GET FREE ACCESS INSTANLY</a></b>Bloggerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07287821785570247118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-27376812998169726302013-07-01T21:55:02.066-05:002013-07-01T21:55:02.066-05:00Zina, you are probably long done checking this blo...Zina, you are probably long done checking this blog but your comments were too interesting for me to let pass so I hope you see this reply at some point.<br /><br />You wrote: "i agree that the triangulated retionship between Don, Ted and Peggy was weird, but it was weird on the guys' part as much as hers."<br /><br />Oh totally, the guys were weird; but I think previous seasons we were given reason to believe that she had at least the potential to be better than the guys; to see through their pissing contests and just avoid them--go elsewhere. I do feel she has lost some of that in so visibly occupying the position Don had when we first met him back in season 1. <br /><br />"On the political question, it seems to me that there is a projection going on as far as the show's commitment to expressing sympathy with the counterculture."<br /><br />I'm not sure whose projection you mean. To be clear as to my own thoughts: I am sympathetic to the counterculture and would like for the show to be more sympathetic with it than it has been. This lack of sympathy with the counterculture (though it does not actually surprise me) is a reason why the show has lost its historicity--more on this below. <br /> <br />"The counterculture has consistently been shown in MM as a pose, a fraud, as filthy and druggy (remember Midge, Paul, the pretentious director in S4, the hippies encountered by Betty, not to mention the parasitical,, self righteous and unglamorous Abe)."<br /><br />I think you are right though (IIRC) you actually thought Abe was cute back in S4 when I was complaining that he was a stock character. He grew on me a lot this season because some of the things he had to say did not strike me as self-righteous; struck me as positively interesting (like his attachment to the house). <br /><br />But I think you are absolutely right that the show had no enduring investment whatsoever in taking his "side" of the political question or portraying it as being self-evidently the higher moral ground. <br /><br />But, as I started to say above, the problem with this isn't so much (or isn't only) that MM doesn't have a strong "pro" investment in the counterculture. The problem is that it the writers don't seem to realize how a cynical attitude toward the counterculture in 1968 means something very different than Don's being able to out-talk Midge's beatnik playwright boyfriend in Season 1. The reason has to do with our own placement. MM reawakened cultural awareness of the early 60s. This was prophetic in the 2000s. The show turns out to have very little to say about the later 60s. This is not prophetic. The show thus becomes historical pastiche which, in terms of genre, is a dime a dozen. (That doesn't mean that it's not still a much smarter show that 99.5% of what's on the TV. It's just not aesthetically innovative in the way it once was. And it even ends up being somewhat flat-footed about straightforward historical contexts: for example, the writers did not seem to have any sense of what was at stake in, for example, the Chicago riots (which were judged at the time by a federal agency to have been *police riots*). <br /><br /><br />"I cannot see how Peggy might have lost any idealism that the show has never possessed."<br /><br />Perhaps but I don't think these things need to be connected. Peggy was clearly less cynical than other characters when the the show opened without that relative honesty and openness to difference having anything to do with the counterculture. Even in S1 and S2 there were always characters who were more sympathetic than others. She was one of them. Now much less so.<br /><br />Anyway... we may just disagree which is also fine!<br /><br />Jez: Will we do a Season 7 blog series? I don't know!<br /><br />But this is a good moment for me to say that there will be a few posts on Top of the Lake, The Killing, and Breaking Bad in the next few months. So I hope you will take part in the comments.MPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08984136164543370547noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-32193931542096296692013-06-29T08:40:54.426-05:002013-06-29T08:40:54.426-05:00Thanks Lauren I have checked out Revolution Road a...Thanks Lauren I have checked out Revolution Road and it's already great. Will you and your group do the blog again for the last season?Jez B.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-38261307156544693712013-06-28T12:08:27.818-05:002013-06-28T12:08:27.818-05:00Thanks Anonymous and welcome to Kritik!Thanks Anonymous and welcome to Kritik!MPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08984136164543370547noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-10810421218380001582013-06-28T09:32:04.925-05:002013-06-28T09:32:04.925-05:00Congratulations to the author. This was a truly h...Congratulations to the author. This was a truly helpful take on the episode and in fact the season.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-37779207897810231442013-06-28T07:46:00.534-05:002013-06-28T07:46:00.534-05:00Oh and Jez B. the books. I read An American Trage...Oh and Jez B. the books. I read An American Tragedy a long time ago, but I remember it well. It is long and relentless so I would not suggest it for a summer read. I would definitely go for Revolutionary Road if you've not read it--its's unforgettable--and then start with Sister Carrie for Dreiser. If that goes well, proceed to An American Tragedy and enjoy. As to George Eliot, I wouldn't start with Daniel Deronda, her last novel, much though I love it. I think I would start with Middlemarch is well worth it's length and then come back and tell us more about Sean O'Sullivan's Mad Men and Middlemarch scenarios! MPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08984136164543370547noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-56939666334215295412013-06-27T10:09:27.947-05:002013-06-27T10:09:27.947-05:00Alice Easton, you wrote, "You forgot Don'...Alice Easton, you wrote, "You forgot Don's comment in the bar: (this is not verbatim) "Nixon won. Now everything is the way Jesus wants." And "It looks like Jesus had a bad year." DON is providing the historical context, and we are now in Nixon's first term, in the era when the electorate voted in a guy who opposed radicalism. There's still Stonewall, Woodstock and a lot of rock and roll deaths to come. We'll see what they do with them in Season 7--through the prism of a critique of advertising culture."<br /><br />Yes, I agree with you there but I don't really see Don's remark at the bar as in itself an indication or feat of historical resonance. It's a historical fact and it works well enough as a retort to the minister; historically speaking, depending on how you look at it it may mean the sixties qua sixties (by which I mean the counterrevolutionary 60s) are over as such. (Matt Weiner said something comparable in the NYT - that "in theory" you could say that Nixon's election signaled the end of that. We'll see next season what he means in practice.) <br /><br />But in either case, none of this changes (for me anyway) my basic point which is that history functioned as backdrop in this particular season: not as a structure through which to weave the dilemmas of characters or to give us a sense of living in moving history is part of makes modern life what it is. Don's character was not hanging his hat either on counterrevolution or Nixonian reaction. So it's not as though we can in any way tie his pull toward redemption as having to do with Nixon or, say, the non-success of those who pushed for McCarthy. Similarly with Peggy - she appears to have gotten more conservative in the sense that her world has contracted. But we don't imagine that as the result of her being burnt out from some 60s-era movement she identified with and which disappointed her.<br /><br />Sandy, thanks so much for your kind words. I hope my response to Alice makes sense for you as well. I'm not saying there is no basis on which to imagine connection between the characters arcs and what we saw highlighted in history. I'm only saying that IMO at least that connection was not vital--was decidedly under-developed. Things would have been different perhaps if there was some tighter knitting say between the Tale of Two cities episode (Chicago riots) and the episode that followed (Favors) which turned on Mitchell Rosen's draft. For that to work it would have been helpful too if the antiwar movement had retained more significance from , say, the premiere's "Lend me Your Ears" campaign, through the TOTC episode so that we recognized mounting antiwar sentiment as a factor in various characters' sense of anxiety and demoralization; this would have been more like the lifeworld of earlier seasons.<br /><br />Instead the war doesn't really come up; the assassinations are treated almost as though they were isolated events; in Favors Don says the war is wrong and we know it's plausible for him to believe so esp at a time when something like half the American people believing that and wanted it over asap if not immediately. In the premiere we get a Dow campaign but no later sense of how protests against napalm were actually quite effective in publicizing the horrors of this war against a civilian population; I don't think the season every mentions in any way the Tet offensive (which occurs shortly after the Christmas/New Year premiere) and gave a real sense of American casualities and vulnerability. Does that all make sense?<br /><br />I will come back again for one last reply to Zina's latest and Jeremy. Thanks again everyone for your generous and very thoughtful replies.MPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08984136164543370547noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-77757865586554442542013-06-26T22:58:59.045-05:002013-06-26T22:58:59.045-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.MPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08984136164543370547noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-25532731518576362852013-06-26T22:56:29.795-05:002013-06-26T22:56:29.795-05:00Deanna, I just wanted to get back to you. I had m...Deanna, I just wanted to get back to you. I had meant to reply to it the first time I wrote but somehow lost a sentence: what I'd said was, I really like that idea of Peggy reflecting a split of some kind. With MM one always wonders, how much the obvious economies of scale (not least in terms of time) militate toward a centering on the office. And yet with relatively little ado P was shown to have a real social life with a variety of friends (how she met Abe). She is older now to be sure and has much more professional responsibility and was also settled down with Abe. Yet while it's believable and perhaps also practical, it also feels like a regression. Someone who started out wanting an affair with her boss, and then had Pete, and for a while Duck, now is interested in a married man at the office. Realistic enough but a regression of sorts that I guess you could see in terms of a split.<br /><br />Jez B. I promise to get back to you on the books even if there are no further new comments. Please check back soon.MPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08984136164543370547noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-4914058241682442722013-06-25T18:48:49.068-05:002013-06-25T18:48:49.068-05:00Thanks for your answer Lauren. i agree that the tr...Thanks for your answer Lauren. i agree that the triangulated retionship between Don, Ted and Peggy was weird, but it was weird on the guys' part as much as hers.<br /><br />On the political question, it seems to me that there is a projection going on as far as the show's commitment to expressing sympathy with the counterculture. The counterculture has consistently been shown in MM as a pose, a fraud, as filthy and druggy (remember Midge, Paul, the pretentious director in S4, the hippies encountered by Betty, not to mention the parasitical,, self righteous and unglamorous Abe). I cannot see how Peggy might have lost any idealism that the show has never possessed. Zinanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-22904385749436644702013-06-25T16:47:36.125-05:002013-06-25T16:47:36.125-05:00This was an excellent post Lauren. As always it m...This was an excellent post Lauren. As always it made me want to watch again so I can process it all. I haven't read most of the books you are talking about. (I read Bovary in school and saw the Place in the Sun but the book.) How would you say the other books are for someone who used to reading books more recently? Thanks again for this.Jez B.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-850407764927567192013-06-25T14:40:03.113-05:002013-06-25T14:40:03.113-05:00Thank you so much for these excellent comments whi...Thank you so much for these excellent comments which I very much appreciate. I cannot answer them all right now but I promise to do so later today or tomorrow.<br /><br />So for now. Sean, thanks so much and thanks to you again for your reflection on the mid-season "doldrums" which I will remember. I am looking forward to being able to post the article about the sonnet sequence so please let me know when available. I'm glad you liked the Gwendolen Harleth reference. Mad Men as Middlemarch, wow. Do you mean in terms of the kind of realism (as I did) or more the near historical fiction. (I have thought in classroom terms that MM does give a good sense of how far away the the Reform Bill era might have felt to 1870s readers so I suspect that is at least part of what you mean.<br /><br />Anonymous, please don't apologize: correct my incorrect syntax as often as you wish; I need all the help I can get since this year there was no one to help me to edit (my co-editors are out of town).<br /><br />Zina: I didn't mean the thing about Peggy "losing" in the sense that I think you took me as meaning it. Yes, clearly Peggy is in better shape in various ways as she takes Don's place. But because MM concluded in a less naturalist and more "idealist" mode of realism, Peggy's actions now bear greater scrutiny. To use a very crude analogy Tom and Daisy Buchanan are much better off than Jay Gatsby at the end of the Great Gatsby. But Nick Carraway doesn't like them at all. Without going so far as to suggest that Peggy has reached "rich, careless" people territory, she seems to me (and some other commenters) to be have lost sympathetic qualities that she used to have in abundance. And with Don and the Mad World seemingly taking a turn toward moral possibility, that puts us in a position to scrutinize her actions more severely than we might (and I do think this was intentional throughout the season though that is something I know is a matter of opinion). <br /><br />I would add to that I don't think Don has lost his job as such. I'm more concerned about his DTs at any rate than his viability in advertising. He still is DD. He's a partner and still takes a share of their profits as such--or they have to get him to agree to buy them out. Or so I assume absent MM becoming some kind of drama about litigation (perhaps something we could use to offset all those police procedurals!) <br /><br />It would be nice for all concerned if the new Don agreed to use his dryout period to resume the "love leave" with Megan in So Cal. But I'm not holding my breath ;).<br /><br />More later and thanks again.MPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08984136164543370547noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-61169999528668445092013-06-25T13:00:21.884-05:002013-06-25T13:00:21.884-05:00Wonderful post, Lauren. Your writing is like jazz:...Wonderful post, Lauren. Your writing is like jazz: riffing and return.<br /><br />I, too, was struck by Peggy's role in this season's arc. Throughout she has had whatever idealism she had knocked out of her by rats of one form or another. The image of her in Don's chair, backlit, reduces her to a visual shadow of the character we had hoped she might become. <br /><br />On the minimal impact of history on the characters: It's November after the assassinations of the spring and summer and the following riots. I'd suggest that people of Don's class weren't changed by what they were living through. If they had been, Nixon should have lost. In other words, perhaps we shouldn't feel that the writers were letting us down. Perhaps we should feel a sense of lost opportunity that is analogous to the way that people who'd demonstrated against the war no doubt felt. There's still Stonewall and Altamont to come, as noted.Sandyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06854916064336492187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-62681728541608862462013-06-25T08:34:29.785-05:002013-06-25T08:34:29.785-05:00Breathlessly far-ranging and brilliant post, Laure...Breathlessly far-ranging and brilliant post, Lauren, which weaves together so many threads! You treat Don with the literary and psychic complexity he now deserves. You give Peggy her comeuppance as an historical underachiever. And Roger, in your apt telling, proves both resilient and enduringly relevant.<br /><br />We all wonder how fleeting or fulsome Don's reckoning will be; how deep does the "I'm the son of of a whore, and proud for being me" confessional go? I am reminded, by the final scene, alas, of Gandolfini (RIP) in he Soprano's, whose mawkish communion (for anthony's ostensible sake) with his humble Newark home and roots (similar shots of Victorian decay) proved a contrivance of ersatz homage -- just more fodder for a self-serving rags to (illicit) riches mythology. How will Don manage or deploy his newly embraced storyline? It may not the basis for Hershey ads, but I can't believe it won't somehow be "used" by him, as everyone and thing in his life.<br /><br />Your most resonant line of the entire season is that Don's curse and saving grace is that he "loves too much," and too recklessly. I still can't tell if you are an uncanny student of character or just still in love with the man (as are we all). Jeremy V.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-40532123078524266952013-06-25T07:45:16.201-05:002013-06-25T07:45:16.201-05:00In your "Ted...Don... the latter" senten...In your "Ted...Don... the latter" sentence, you don't mean "the latter." You mean Ted. In that series, "the latter" refers to Don so the sentence doesn't make sense "Don pays Don back." Just FWIW (not judging, but people who want to will, so I don't want you to fall victim to them). Otherwise, good stuff!Anonhttp://nothanks.aol.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-12839948342157492122013-06-25T07:34:45.419-05:002013-06-25T07:34:45.419-05:00NYT:"Yet Season 6 couldn't resist the les...NYT:"Yet Season 6 couldn't resist the less exalted approach of soap opera...." As i was saying. Falling Skies here I come! Beam me up Scottie!<br /> Way to go Hawks!fabnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-47988394012879825772013-06-25T03:37:02.394-05:002013-06-25T03:37:02.394-05:00Peggy is the loser? I am not sure about that. She ...Peggy is the loser? I am not sure about that. She still has a job, contrary to Don. And she is not on the brink of delirium tremens.Zinanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-68294623700986536732013-06-24T18:51:30.197-05:002013-06-24T18:51:30.197-05:00You forgot Don's comment in the bar: (this is ...You forgot Don's comment in the bar: (this is not verbatim) "Nixon won. Now everything is the way Jesus wants." And "It looks like Jesus had a bad year." DON is providing the historical context, and we are now in Nixon's first term, in the era when the electorate voted in a guy who opposed radicalism. There's still Stonewall, Woodstock and a lot of rock and roll deaths to come. We'll see what they do with them in Season 7--through the prism of a critique of advertising culture.Alice Eatonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07493362785170073338noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-47477389843402321092013-06-24T18:29:23.186-05:002013-06-24T18:29:23.186-05:00What a thought-provoking analysis! I also loved t...What a thought-provoking analysis! I also loved the parallel to Gwendolen Harleth, and wonder if perhaps the Gwendolen-function wasn't divided between Don and Peggy in this episode. Don was definitely chastened and ready to atone, but Peggy represented the stubborn narcissistic residue that retorts "How nice to have a decision!" -- something Gwendolen also feels was denied her, both in her marriage and on the boat. Maybe Peggy's historical role is to embody a nightmarish version of cultural feminism just over the horizon? ("I choose my choice!") Great post -- so much to think about!Deanna Kreiselhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11447306469136884805noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-57153574661045430142013-06-24T17:16:29.295-05:002013-06-24T17:16:29.295-05:00If you maintain publishing well prepared posts jus...<br />If you maintain publishing well prepared posts just like this then I will always preserve returning back to your website. Truly great content.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.signsbyvision.com/" rel="nofollow">Custom signs ny</a><br /><a href="http://www.signsbyvision.com/" rel="nofollow">danbury signs</a>Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03606120862771872382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-52921270834887720672013-06-24T17:09:12.363-05:002013-06-24T17:09:12.363-05:00yeah Lauren: having lived through it all 1968 wa...yeah Lauren: having lived through it all 1968 was the most turbulent year in American history between Pearl Harbor and September 11. Where is this reflected in MM? How can long you keep interested in a glorified 1950s soap opera? Next season i might switch over and watch the directly competing Falling Skies. I have always preferred SCIFI to Soaps.Go Hawks! Beat Bruins!fabnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8617857852696675419.post-51502336398540027552013-06-24T16:39:22.885-05:002013-06-24T16:39:22.885-05:00Love the idea of Don as Gwendolen Harleth. Perhap...Love the idea of Don as Gwendolen Harleth. Perhaps your disappointment with <i>Mad Men</i>'s shifting fictional status echoes the disappointments long generated by <i>Daniel Deronda</i>--that it is a narrative in two minds about what it wants to be. (Both sides now.) Of course, I've long thought of <i>Mad Men</i> as our <i>Middlemarch</i>, so I have Eliot on the brain.<br /><br />A splendid finale, Lauren--with a beautifully provocative last paragraph.Seannoreply@blogger.com