Mad Men and Robert Bly
By Brian Lambert
The second-season premier of Mad Men was still rattling around in my mind when I met with Robert Bly Tuesday. I doubt Bly, 81, Minnesota's poet laureate (appointed by Tim Pawlenty with whose politics he shares very little sympathy), has seen Mad Men, AMC's much gushed-over series about early-'60s advertising men. But he has written frequently about the impact impoverished, valueless storytelling has on American culture.
Bly will be speaking in England in September, and the interview revolved around the concept of storytelling for adults. Very basically, his view is that commercial media succeeds only by selling escapist stories that either avoid digging around in any of the fundamental fears of life or presents those fears/anxieties in such a superficial manner, camouflaged with so much outlandish sex and mayhem, that the percentage of the audience likely to have any kind of spiritual catharsis from absorbing it is close to zero. (This obviously is my interpretation of Bly's message. Pick up any of his books for a far more precise explication.)
I still haven't made up my mind about Mad Men. Do I appreciate it for its obsessive (compulsive) attention to period detail? (I'm a sucker for that stuff, and I loved it when movie director David Fincher did it in Zodiac.) Am I reacting to Mad Men's shameless wallow in Ike & JFK-era male piggishness? (The kind of guilty pleasure that is strictly vicarious in HR-heavy twenty-first-century America.) Do I tune in for Mad Men's echoes of Sopranos-style mercenary ruthlessness? (Mad Men's creator, Matthew Weiner, wrote for The Sopranos.) Or, is Mad Men actually working toward something more valuable than the visceral buzz we get off malaprop-spouting, poon-chasing mobsters?
As avidly as I consumed The Sopranos, the high-minded argument that it was holding up a mirror to the modern middle class American family (or the failures of modern psychotherapy) always seemed a bit of a stretch. To my mind, the show delivered high-quality pop-culture candy. Grown men conniving and conspiring and settling scores like psychopathic oafs. Available women. Flashy toys. That's pretty American, I guess. At least it plays to the paradigms Hollywood movies have set for American storytelling and self-image since the 1930s. But my eyes turned to Paulie Walnuts anytime he walked into a scene, and I failed to connect Paulie to anything particularly relevant in broader American culture. Although I did work out a Dick Cheney riff at one time. (Pathological fear of exposure . . .)
The second season of Mad Men opens on Valentine's Day 1962, a year-and-a-half after season one concluded. JFK and Jackie are in the White House, and the country is giddy with the "look" of upscale glamour. You know, "quality people." The best "stock." Elegant role models for the rest of us. What we would ever know about JFK's mob hooker girlfriends and Jackie's Stepford smile would all come much, much later.
As an ensemble drama, Mad Men is developing quite nicely. Peggy, the lead character Donald Draper's "pupil," is obviously setting up to become an icon of corporate feminism. She is rapidly becoming a woman who will compete with the boys at their game and beat most of them . . . because they, lazily, remain boys while she dives into calculating, full-bore adulthood. Draper's wife, played by January Jones, is a half step away from a walk on the wild side, and office manger, Joan Holloway . . . well, she isn't pouring herself into those dresses to get attention for her thoughts on the new dental plan.
But as Bly would say, if he ever tuned in, this is all pretty routine. Better than average routine. Maybe much better than average. But still the staple stuff of escapism. Sex and intrigue. Intrigue and sex. Mix and match.
But Mad Men is closer to something with real resonance in American life than The Sopranos ever was. American storytelling, from its "hero myths," like The Dark Knight, to its most potent dramas, like say, George Clooney's Michael Clayton, hasn't played with or explored the confluence where our fundamental dreams devolved into what is for sale. Bly's basic complaint, as I read it, is that storytelling that encourages an audience to seek paths to personal enlightenment has been overwhelmed by commercial "art" that suggests personal enlightenment can be applied with eyeliner, dispensed by gunfire, and seduced quickly with a lace bustier.
Mad Men is positioned right there at the point where storytelling stopped driving salesmanship and the sales game, with its shrewd exploitation of consumer psychology, began driving storytelling. No network executive in his right mind will be encouraging Matthew Weiner to push an agenda of examining what Madison Avenue has done to Americans' notions of heroism and valor. But as I say, like no other show I can think of, Mad Men is in a place where it can play with that tantalizing, relevant conceit and provoke a cultural discussion.
© 2008 MSP Communications, Inc. All rights reserved
A couple of thoughts about "The Sopranos."
Mafia stories...at their best--have always been twisted takes on the American Dream. Success achieved by other means, but at the core no more or less cruel than it is the legit world. Everybody has blood on their hands one way or another. What David chase did to the genre was bring it into the present tense. We'd always seen the mob frozen in the amber of the mid-twentieth century. In "The Sopranos," Tony's capos still rubbed guys out...but could also argue Beatles albums at poolside, or recall a youthful infatuation with Shelly Hack.
There was also the strength of "The Sopranos" ensemble. Every episode was tour de force...not just Gandolfini, who was never anything less than great, but the whole cast. Anybody who watched Drea de Mateo in her last season knows what I'm talking about.
LAMBERT: So let me get this straight. While appearing to disagree with me you accept the carnival allure of mob oafs, guns-blazing and referencing pop culture and the appeal of their freaked out girlfriends?
Posted by: Frogman of Grant on July 30, 2008 at 10:55 PM
Lucky to have caught Mad Men at the start of last season, and that, with replays during the week, didn't miss an episode.
What first caught my eye was that the show better win top accolades for art direction. The attention to detail you mentioned is unreal and beautiful to watch unfold.
The second was that I had never seen a show set in that time period ... the period between "Happy Days" and "The Wonder Years." This is where the ground was laid for society's late-sixties explosion (implosion?)
But, after watching the first episode of the second series, I'm starting to wonder if the magnetic draw for me is actually Don Draper's walled-in loneliness and longing for an ideal that few other people even consider.
He seems to have mastered the basic tenets of American's condition and is showing everyone else how to manipulate it ... and seems a tad sad doing it. As does Peggy.
LAMBERT: Good points. Through those two, Draper in particular, Weiner the creator (!), seems to appreciate the self-eroding qualities of succeeding at "the game". I expect him to make the point that the perpetually juvenile guys in the office will emerge with shallower scars than Draper when its all over -- from not really ever asking what they are doing.
Posted by: newmediaguy on July 31, 2008 at 8:14 AM
I wasn't agreeing or disagreeing, but merely arguing that "The Sopranos" was in a different league than "Mad Men," a show with a fine gloss but much less depth.
LAMBERT: I see. So you weren't disagreeing, merely arguing that I was wrong suggesting "Mad Men" might display more depth than "The Sopranos"? This is how you roll in Grant?
Posted by: Frogman of Grant on July 31, 2008 at 10:48 AM
Congratulations, Brian. You made it all the way through without a comparison to the management of the Star Trib. Or even a Trib reference. This is a big step in your return to covering "media & culture" and not " print and Par".
People want to know what's in Amy Hockert's garbage, who's dating Jessica Miles, and where The Guy Who Now Sits in Magers Chair gets his teeth done!
Journalism Schmernalism !
LAMBERT: Are you saying you're not interested in a legal dissection of the Strib's new health plan? Or who is polishing Par's clubs today? And yeah ... Pomeranz ... those are Smithsonian-worthy teeth.
Posted by: Jed Leyland on July 31, 2008 at 11:57 AM
That's great, Bri, and I appreciate a nice bouffant and a pair of kitten heels as much as the next guy, but why aren't you on the case of the MSM's avoidance of the Edward's fiasco?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/30/why-wont-the-media-cover_n_115295.html
I mean, this (the MSM media's rather strained effort to "ignore" it) is the media story of the year so far.
C'mon dig in!
Call Gillespie and ask why the Strib hasn't run even an inch of it!
LAMBERT: I'm sure Gillespie would return my call.
Posted by: bertram jr on July 31, 2008 at 12:39 PM
Here's yet another "target rich environment" for your wizzonator (cue Leinfleder)
http://www.slate.com/id/2196341/
Posted by: bertram jr on July 31, 2008 at 1:17 PM
Touche! And well done sir. The meaning of your post was so well-camoflauged that I am now hopelessly in a box. We agree? OMG. I have gone off the rails.
Could we get back to the momentous question of whatever became of Jeff Dubay? Has he been traded for Brett Favre?
LAMBERT: If I were a speculating sort, I'd look closely at relations between The Fan's all Vikings all the time morning AM team.
Posted by: Frogman of Grant on July 31, 2008 at 3:39 PM
I'll have to watch it, sounds like I might like it. I'll have to wait till hit hits DVD, we only do the $16 cable package. I watched the Sopranos on DVD, really enjoyed it.
Centennial came out on DVD this week after 30 years. I had preordered that, one of my favorities as a youth. I was 10 when it aired. Seems there was a great deal of anticipation for that DVD release.
LAMBERT: I'm setting aside a week somewhere to watch every episode of "The Wire".
Posted by: 108 on August 1, 2008 at 12:02 PM
Thanks, Bert! Following your latter link turned up this useful tip at the end of the article:
Sponsored Links
I "Hate" my Yellow Teeth
The Secrets Dentists don’t want you to know about Teeth Whitening!
http://www.best-teeth-whitening.com
LAMBERT: I believe there are couple psoriasis links in there, too.
Posted by: Dick Parker on August 1, 2008 at 11:54 PM
Seriously, I graduated from high school in 1960 in suburban Chicago, and the prettiest girl in our class starred in a full-page 7-Up ad that ran in the June 1960 issues of Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post (double-truck centerspread) and Reader's Digest. JFK was a shining light, especially for Catholics, and it looked like he had a good chance of being elected president. I had a scholarship at the College of St. Thomas, and the world seemed great. So the appeal of "Mad Men" for me initially lay mainly in the authentic recreation of the look and culture of that period. As you put it so well, Brian, the Kennedys were "Elegant role models for the rest of us. What we would ever know about JFK's mob hooker girlfriends and Jackie's Stepford smile would all come much, much later."
By 1962 I was into a combined major in journalism and business administration; during the early 1960s I read books such as "The Hidden Persuaders," "Madison Avenue USA," Ogilvy's "Confessions of an Advertising Man" and expected to go into advertising. My mentor, Rev. James Whalen, had graduated from the U of M and worked in advertising until he decided to enter the priesthood at age 35.
Well, I wound up working in the Tribune and Star Tribune newsroom for 37.5 years, increasingly glad I hadn't gone into advertising. I believed that we journalists had a higher calling, with all due respect to the folks who raised the dough to pay us.
"Mad Men" also fascinates me because of the dark undercurrent conveyed in the character of Don Draper, as others have pointed out here. We know how the '60s played out.
Since our 40th reunion, my class has maintained a website and Yahoo discussion groups that make it obvious that we're all over the map politically. One detail resonates with me, though, in the same way "Mad Men" does. At a reunion dinner a few years ago I reconnected with the girl in the 7-Up ad, who had symbolized for me the bright outlook of 1960. She said that was the only modeling job she ever had; her father lost his job as a Standard Oil executive because his MS symptoms were perceived as signs of excessive drinking, and her mother had severe emotional problems as a result and had thrown away her copies of the ad and all her high school memorabilia. The 7-Up girl is now a gray-haired grandmother in suburban Chicago, with a master's degree and retired from a 38-year teaching career. I wish we could sit down and watch "Mad Men" together.
LAMBERT: Now THAT is a good story. It might even survive the Strib copy desk.
Posted by: Dick Parker on August 2, 2008 at 12:50 AM