a belated UnREAL post for Valentine's Day
UnREAL: quite possibly the best new show of 2015. All of the praise that it's gotten has been well-earned. The one thing sticking point I have is the repeated claim that Rachel Goldberg is “the female Walter White.”
Now, I have nothing against the idea of a female Walter White character. Walt's comedic doppelganger was a woman; some day soon he'll ( Read more... )
Now, I have nothing against the idea of a female Walter White character. Walt's comedic doppelganger was a woman; some day soon he'll ( Read more... )
This lifestyle is more ideological than Don realizes. The American Way(TM) of the early '60s was in no small part a pervasive and intimate repudiation of communism. And Don Draper could only have happened to the world under that particular implementation of capitalism, where he can collect wealth without being restricted by his class background. But he's unusual in his success - indeed, to stop being working-class and get on the road to riches, he had to give up his own name and take on someone else's. Sterling Cooper - or, more accurately, the clients they work so hard to enrich - will lead to the exploitative and unsustainable economic situation of the twenty-first century. Rachel, born into an “upper-middle-class” family of similar social standing as Betty and her children, is broke. While the vast majority of millenials don't come from a comparable social background, her experience of growing up with the belief that education and work will lead to prosperity and then being dumped into a world where it won't even lead to security is a generational hallmark. Rachel scrambles a career out of her understanding of gender roles in the same way as Don works capitalism, to her individual benefit but against the long-term interests of most people like her.
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