Good Greif
In a predictable piece of contrarianism, n+1 manboy Mark Greif completely misses the point of Mad Men. Calling the famed television show “an unpleasant little entry in the genre of Now We Know Better,” Greif dismisses the idea that television should depict unpleasant human realities such as sexism, racism, and other assorted human weaknesses. Greif has neither the balls nor the acumen to understand that Don Draper likewise possesses a throwback masculinity that is the key to his apparent success and his command at the ad agency. Jon Hamm plays his character with a certain insecurity because the show is about, among other things, the loss of confidence and individualism in American society, and the overlooked qualities which sustained this. While it is true that one can appreciate Mad Men from the more civilized comforts of the present age — parsing it as a depiction of uncivilized human behavior run amuck — the show’s more intriguing thematic involves how Draper’s masculinity is the key to how he, and American society, operates.
Greif appears more enamored with Mad Men‘s handsome production design and is more interested in quibbling over needless details than he is with the show’s more interesting depiction of human behavior, and this says more about Greif’s inability to comprehend a television show that goes out of its way to depict uncomfortable truths. Decades ago, women were stifled (and still remain so to a lesser degree today). Men were expected to keep the household together with steely fortitude. But despite these atavistic realities, this is, nevertheless, what made America such an innovative nation. Mad Men works, because it does not present us with a dichotomy. It gives us the troublingly cohesive whole. If you were a smart and successful woman during that time, you had few options and were inclined to give into this patriarchal bullshit. But the patriarchal bullshit, as abject as it was, did galvanize people to make active decisions. This is a daring and much needed representation in our age of schlumpy protagonists in Judd Apatow films and Worst Week. Mad Men doesn’t just ask us to revisit this human quality. It asks us to consider the good things that we may have lost with the ugliness.
Mad Men is indeed a “smart” show. But then you have to have an interest in people in order to fully appreciate it.
Crave
The economic downturn is shaking up the rabble just south of Times Square. I was walking along Eighth Avenue, and a man leaped at me some fifteen feet from the edge of the sidewalk, grabbing my forearm. There had been a guy who almost tore the lapel off my wool coat last winter. But somehow the man today was more desperate. More determined to seize another’s attention. More compelled to invade personal space. Wanting to survive, needing to matter, bowling alone.
I chatted with a thin woman bundled in a dark pockmarked coat just outside Penn Station who said she needed $12 to get home. She was situated under one of those ramshackle walkways intended to steer pedestrian traffic away from the main sidewalk while some construction rattles on, but that almost always serves as an impromptu shelter in the winter. She told me that I was the only one who talked with her in two hours. Whether her story was true or not, she was pretty hard to miss. Her large cardboard sign had the word STRANDED! in big blocky letters, a kind of Bic-imbued pointillism. The details in her story didn’t add up, but I gave her a dollar that I didn’t really have. There was the man I saw begging for a cigarette just outside a diner. A woman stood with a smile on her face, smoking three cigarettes in a row. The man wouldn’t go away. He was persistent. She didn’t budge. He dived for one of the butts she had dropped on the sidewalk and then asked her for a light. She refused. I had no cigarettes or matches on me. It would have made some difference.
Someone told me yesterday that she had been given $40 and a box to collect her possessions upon submitting her resignation notice. No pay for the last two weeks. The White Castle on Eighth Avenue announces that it’s hiring. Benefits are the big selling point. And it can’t be an accident that a bundle of comfort burgers over there is called a Crave.
Everyone craves a little security these days. More than a White Castle burger, which you have twenty minutes to sit around and eat until they kick you out. If you’re not let go just because, then you’re certainly craven, hoping to keep whatever job you have. Whether it has become necessary to sacrifice a little liberty and empathy to pay the rent is a question I can’t possibly answer. But you can feel the bristling fear in the streets.
Jesus in America #1
Roundup
- As widely reported, Tony Hillerman has died.
- Newspaper circulation is down, down, down! And the cuts at the Star-Ledger, the Los Angeles Times, and numerous other places will ensure that newspapers will woo back these subscribers, yes? The failure of editors to take on fresh talent or freelancers who haven’t yet abdicated their passion or journalistic commitment will almost certainly ensure that subscribers will remain on board, yes? The continued employment of senile geezers like Rex Reed, who cannot be bothered to note details correctly or unmix his metaphors, will almost certainly keep people buying newspapers, yes? Who reads newspapers anymore? Who even cares about the news?
- It’s easy for Dave Eggers to say that the community needs you when, in fact, he has never really had to scramble to pay the rent since the Might days. It’s easy for Eggers to say this, because he’s an opportunistic coward who has never answered one critical question in his career. Charging $300 (!) to tell other people how to set up a tutoring center doesn’t strike me as philanthropic, particularly when the information is available for free. I presume this $300 buys you into the 826 franchise, where you can then legally begin serving 826 Happy Meals to the kids you’re tutoring. Of course, if Eggers were to initiate the 826 Fisting Festival, with volunteers raising their asses into goatse positions for only $300 a pop, I’d be happy to change my tune. (via Galleycat)
- Okay, some good news. It is quite legal to make claims about Donald Trump without revealing your sources. I hereby announce that Mr. Trump’s hairpiece is worth somewhere between $23 and $78, and not in the purported thousands. (via Moby Lives)
- Joanne asks, “Where Are the Renaissance Women?”
- Levi on John Stuart Mill and taxation.
- Assigning Hitch to write about Sarah Palin is a bit like asking a man with a chainsaw to fight a cripple. Sure, it’s a dutiful takedown, but I miss the Hitch who pissed everybody off, instead of going after the predictable targets.
- It has become fashionable once again for liberals and conservatives alike to clap like seals. I have been telling Obama supporters to prepare themselves for a letdown. Look at politics like this: You might stumble across a letter that your spouse wrote to a secret lover, but at least you can talk this out with your spouse and have some input into resolving the situation. But politics is worse than this. Because you’ll stumble across the letter, but you’ll still be locked into a faithless marriage in which you can’t petition your spouse, who’s not going to listen anyway and who’s still going to commit adultery. So what’s the point of being in the marriage in the first place? That’s the trouble. On paper, it all looks so seductive. And your spouse still looks good, even pious from certain angles.