a non-Mad Men post to come later, hopefully, but for now...
I warn the world, this is pretty long. :P I have finished season four of Mad Men and may just possibly be in the mood to geek.
I love Peggy so much! And I particularly love the development with what’s-his-face making her happy, because 1. yay, Peggy having a guy who does at least seem to make her happy, even if he’s not perfect, and 2. they’ve used that as a really interesting way of discussing the intersection of social justice issues. They’re both right and both wrong simultaneously: he’s wrong to laugh off the idea of a female social justice movement, but Peggy is wrong to imply that her not being able to join a club means that the struggle of women is the same or faces the same difficulties as the struggle against racism. I love that this is a relationship that is expanding Peggy’s horizons politically, and they’re making it very clear she does have horizons that need expanding (oh my goodness the bit where she’s all “well a black copywriter could work their way up like I could!” - er, hi, Peggy, have you even seen a black secretary? also, ow, painful realism) while not demonising her for that.
And there’s hints that Peggy’s going to have to deal with the issues that come once you get a little success. Peggy didn’t realise until Don told her that she could fire people (an AWESOME moment, omg: I wanted her to kick his ASS) and now she’s talking about hiring people. People who might, potentially, be better than she is, or at the very least make her a little less unusual and special in her working world. I love that she’s not immune to those worries, and Elizabeth Moss does an amazing job of communicating the complexity of all that.
(Like the bit after she’s fired Joey where she’s practically radiating the desire to yay at Joan about how she got to kick the sexist asswipe to the curb, and then Joan’s right back at her with “Thanks for nothing, now everybody thinks I’m a pathetic secretary and you’re Queen Bitch”. The look on her face is perfect: Peggy was not expecting anything other than complete agreement, and even though she’s right, it’s also clear that she’s suddenly struck by the fact that Joan doesn’t have the power Peggy now does. And, even more, that Joan has a point too. Joan’s just wrong that you can deal with people like Joey without making a fuss one way or another.)
Oh, Betty.
I can kind of see why people find her less sympathetic this season; she got less time spent on the nicer sides of her character, and she really was awful to, well, most of the people she interacted with. But then, again I think that’s the point: Betty has lived an incredibly distorted life, right from being a very small child (her casual comments about her childhood are horrifying), and what do you get if you distort someone like that? A really fucked up person, that’s what. And that’s exactly what Betty is. We’re just finally seeing how that expresses itself when she’s not in Wife Barbie mode.
I mean… when exactly is Betty supposed to have learned how to express and deal with her anger and frustration and upset and jealousy in a productive, non-ugly way? The closest we get to that is the scene with the child psychologist, and Betty does in fact respond well to that, because the coping mechanisms Betty has are the coping mechanisms of a child. She’s never had anything else; no-one ever taught her anything about how to understand and deal with her own problems. That stuff is difficult enough when you do have a loving and supportive family and educational providers who’ll deal well with you. Betty didn’t have any of that. What Betty got is, I suspect, exactly what she’s been dealing out to Sally, and I think that’s why she’s worse about Sally than she is with Bobby.
I also love, love, love this post about how actually, sometimes even righteous anger by someone who’s been ‘legitimately’ oppressed doesn’t look pretty and shiny and acceptable: sometimes it just looks like fucking anger. Betty, I think, is gradually realising that her new marriage isn’t making everything magically better in the way she really wanted and needed it to, but is going along because at least so far, it’s better than being lied to and cheated on. But it doesn’t mean she isn’t severely fucking pissed off about the whole thing: I think that from her perspective, she’s been told that the right husband will make her life perfect, she thinks she’s finally ticked the boxes she thought she was ticking with Don, and she is OWED.
Of course that kind of entitled stroppiness isn’t charming or nice, of course it’s not, but again, that’s what you get if you tell people from a young age that of course X is the right way and if you do that you’ll be happy. Of course Betty believed it. And of course she still believes it: she hasn’t had anything else come along she could believe in, and she has deliberately been brought up in a way that makes it the most difficult to break that bond herself.
Betty didn’t choose to stay emotionally a child, she didn’t choose to be miserable: that was all out of her hands, and now she is miserable, she’s trying to blame someone because she didn’t sign up for this. She thought it was going to be great, and now she’s being told she can’t start over again, by the very person who was promising her that. Damn right she’s angry. Damn right it’s ugly: this is, metaphorically, the pus from wounds that the world’s been inflicting on Betty for a long, long time, coming out. It’s nasty. Firing Carla, for instance, is just fucking horrible and absolutely unforgivable. But it didn't come out of nothing: it's what the world's made her/
Seriously, Betty breaks my heart.
I still don’t quite know what I reckon to Don. I liked that they’ve had him fall from his pedestal and then at least sort-of realise how utterly FUBARed his life was getting…but I’m not quite sure what we’re supposed to get from the finale on this one. I’m not surprised they didn’t have things work perfectly with Faye, but she was awesome and the very fact he tried things with her at all seemed surprisingly positive. Maybe that’s why they went drastically the other way at such short notice, but I don’t feel like I really get it. Anyone?
What I think I’m getting out of it is that this is supposed to parallel Betty and Henry. I.e. the marriage breaks down, his life comes crashing down with it, and because he’s always lived in a world where the people who keep the world turning for men like him are wives, he thinks that what’s going to fix him is replacing Betty. He’s wrong - hence Faye, who he’s actually talked to and done rather better with than any of the other women - but that’s one way the patriarchy is screwing him over. He can’t recognise that it’s the same pattern: that Betty probably didn’t freak out over spilt milkshake either, until the relentlessness of the Wife Barbie role got too much.
And that makes sense to me, but I don’t quite get where the “she wants to be a copywriter like Peggy” bit comes in, then. That seemed a little too different to fit that mold - she seemed genuinely sincere in her admiration of Peggy as a woman who has done well for herself at something other than marriage. That sounded like actual ambition, not well-until-I’m-married-anyway ambition, in a way very different from Betty. Betty probably would have had the ambition, had she been able to articulate it or see in it a future for herself. Megan is younger, she has had people like Peggy as role models. And the combination of that and Joan and Peggy actually having a talk seemed… well, it seemed fresh, and hopeful, and modern. And I don’t quite get how that squares with the Don-is-falling-right-back-into-the-same-old-patterns stuff.
Maybe it was just about the ways people can be stuck in the past even if they try to see how things are changing and act differently: in his work life Don is brilliant and pulled out an ad for SCDP that changed things probably more than he has any idea of right now, but in his personal life he’s stuck? I think I’d like that, actually - sort of tied in to ‘the personal is political’, the way that while the big battles, jobs and voting and maternity leave etc, were important, they didn’t also magically make the private stuff, the difficulties in relationships and in self-analysis, go away. But hmm.
The biggest shock for me though was Joan. JOAN WHAT WHAT WHAT.
I entirely buy that she’d have the baby: she’s said before she wants one, and it might be her only chance and Joan can totally convince Dr Rapey it’s his if she needs to. What I am not at all sure I buy is her getting all the way to the doctor’s office and then changing her mind. That can happen, but I know enough about abortion provision to know it’s incredibly, incredibly rare. People who are at all doubtful usually don’t get to the clinic at all, and Joan is nothing if not decisive.
I’ve seen some commentary that people think telling Roger was about testing him, seeing how he’d react - that otherwise she’d just have gone and either had the kid without telling him, or sorted the abortion herself. But in that case, what did she get from telling him she’d have the abortion and then not? Saying “I do want a kid but if you’re going to be like that then I’ll bring it up and tell Greg it’s his” would make more sense, surely? There’s also the option that she’s actually lying to Greg, and she did have the abortion but is telling him she’s having a baby for some other reason. I don’t know: I suspect the actual answer will depend on whether or not Christina Hendricks gets pregnant in real life now she’s married, but I want to know! We don’t even know what she’s told Roger, actually, now I think about it… could be she told him and we just didn’t see that scene. There’s plenty of scope for all sorts of plottage in all kinds of directions.
And I think it's really interesting how they've been doing stuff with Joan re. self-perception vs other people's perception. Joan is more and more being seen in-show as old, past it, a faded cartoon of a 50s sexpot. But that's not how she comes across to us watching it today; to us, her clothes are gorgeous and more current than basically anyone else in the cast. Roger's surprised that when she's by herself she wears pyjamas like anyone else might. And what I'm wondering is whether that ties to the death of Ida Blankenship - it wouldn't take much to see that as Joan looking at that and seeing her own future. Is that going to be what gets her to make some big changes? Is that partly what the baby thing is about?
(And then again: Blankenship was a joke character, pitied by the other characters, but there's every indication she actually had other stuff going on in her life. She didn't, as far as we can tell, see herself as the sad relic in the way almost everyone else did. Bert Cooper describing her as an astronaut had every sign of being entirely serious, and actually made me heart. I love how complex this show is! I could theorise for houuurs. :D )
Roger is getting more and more pathetic, though. He’s got nothing: he’s lost the only account he had, and the contacts he had are now all dead or irrelevant. He doesn’t love his wife, who’s buying expensive things I’m guessing he can’t afford any more. He’s finally decided he does actually love Joan (which I think he does, as much as he’s capable of loving anybody) now they’re both married and she won’t have him. He’s popping heart medication and hiding in hotel rooms because he can’t deal with the reality of his life, which is that he’s got zilch.
Seriously, I am more than half thinking Roger isn't going to last much longer. There's been lots of hints about suicide, specifically, and the original person who was going to jump off the roof was going to be Harry. And, well, Harry's not in the show any more...
I love that Pete and Trudy are such a team. Pete is still quite wrong on many levels, but he's the only person we see treat their spouse as a member of a partnership, as someone who gets a say. And I weirdly love Trudy herself - she's good at being a partner, and stands up for the partnership in ways Pete is a bit rubbish at. When she says that Pete shouldn't give the baby money to the company and could get a better job elsewhere, she's totally right! I love that.
I will probably think of other things too as soon as I've posted this, but yeah, I kind of love this show.
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/43264.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I love Peggy so much! And I particularly love the development with what’s-his-face making her happy, because 1. yay, Peggy having a guy who does at least seem to make her happy, even if he’s not perfect, and 2. they’ve used that as a really interesting way of discussing the intersection of social justice issues. They’re both right and both wrong simultaneously: he’s wrong to laugh off the idea of a female social justice movement, but Peggy is wrong to imply that her not being able to join a club means that the struggle of women is the same or faces the same difficulties as the struggle against racism. I love that this is a relationship that is expanding Peggy’s horizons politically, and they’re making it very clear she does have horizons that need expanding (oh my goodness the bit where she’s all “well a black copywriter could work their way up like I could!” - er, hi, Peggy, have you even seen a black secretary? also, ow, painful realism) while not demonising her for that.
And there’s hints that Peggy’s going to have to deal with the issues that come once you get a little success. Peggy didn’t realise until Don told her that she could fire people (an AWESOME moment, omg: I wanted her to kick his ASS) and now she’s talking about hiring people. People who might, potentially, be better than she is, or at the very least make her a little less unusual and special in her working world. I love that she’s not immune to those worries, and Elizabeth Moss does an amazing job of communicating the complexity of all that.
(Like the bit after she’s fired Joey where she’s practically radiating the desire to yay at Joan about how she got to kick the sexist asswipe to the curb, and then Joan’s right back at her with “Thanks for nothing, now everybody thinks I’m a pathetic secretary and you’re Queen Bitch”. The look on her face is perfect: Peggy was not expecting anything other than complete agreement, and even though she’s right, it’s also clear that she’s suddenly struck by the fact that Joan doesn’t have the power Peggy now does. And, even more, that Joan has a point too. Joan’s just wrong that you can deal with people like Joey without making a fuss one way or another.)
Oh, Betty.
I can kind of see why people find her less sympathetic this season; she got less time spent on the nicer sides of her character, and she really was awful to, well, most of the people she interacted with. But then, again I think that’s the point: Betty has lived an incredibly distorted life, right from being a very small child (her casual comments about her childhood are horrifying), and what do you get if you distort someone like that? A really fucked up person, that’s what. And that’s exactly what Betty is. We’re just finally seeing how that expresses itself when she’s not in Wife Barbie mode.
I mean… when exactly is Betty supposed to have learned how to express and deal with her anger and frustration and upset and jealousy in a productive, non-ugly way? The closest we get to that is the scene with the child psychologist, and Betty does in fact respond well to that, because the coping mechanisms Betty has are the coping mechanisms of a child. She’s never had anything else; no-one ever taught her anything about how to understand and deal with her own problems. That stuff is difficult enough when you do have a loving and supportive family and educational providers who’ll deal well with you. Betty didn’t have any of that. What Betty got is, I suspect, exactly what she’s been dealing out to Sally, and I think that’s why she’s worse about Sally than she is with Bobby.
I also love, love, love this post about how actually, sometimes even righteous anger by someone who’s been ‘legitimately’ oppressed doesn’t look pretty and shiny and acceptable: sometimes it just looks like fucking anger. Betty, I think, is gradually realising that her new marriage isn’t making everything magically better in the way she really wanted and needed it to, but is going along because at least so far, it’s better than being lied to and cheated on. But it doesn’t mean she isn’t severely fucking pissed off about the whole thing: I think that from her perspective, she’s been told that the right husband will make her life perfect, she thinks she’s finally ticked the boxes she thought she was ticking with Don, and she is OWED.
Of course that kind of entitled stroppiness isn’t charming or nice, of course it’s not, but again, that’s what you get if you tell people from a young age that of course X is the right way and if you do that you’ll be happy. Of course Betty believed it. And of course she still believes it: she hasn’t had anything else come along she could believe in, and she has deliberately been brought up in a way that makes it the most difficult to break that bond herself.
Betty didn’t choose to stay emotionally a child, she didn’t choose to be miserable: that was all out of her hands, and now she is miserable, she’s trying to blame someone because she didn’t sign up for this. She thought it was going to be great, and now she’s being told she can’t start over again, by the very person who was promising her that. Damn right she’s angry. Damn right it’s ugly: this is, metaphorically, the pus from wounds that the world’s been inflicting on Betty for a long, long time, coming out. It’s nasty. Firing Carla, for instance, is just fucking horrible and absolutely unforgivable. But it didn't come out of nothing: it's what the world's made her/
Seriously, Betty breaks my heart.
I still don’t quite know what I reckon to Don. I liked that they’ve had him fall from his pedestal and then at least sort-of realise how utterly FUBARed his life was getting…but I’m not quite sure what we’re supposed to get from the finale on this one. I’m not surprised they didn’t have things work perfectly with Faye, but she was awesome and the very fact he tried things with her at all seemed surprisingly positive. Maybe that’s why they went drastically the other way at such short notice, but I don’t feel like I really get it. Anyone?
What I think I’m getting out of it is that this is supposed to parallel Betty and Henry. I.e. the marriage breaks down, his life comes crashing down with it, and because he’s always lived in a world where the people who keep the world turning for men like him are wives, he thinks that what’s going to fix him is replacing Betty. He’s wrong - hence Faye, who he’s actually talked to and done rather better with than any of the other women - but that’s one way the patriarchy is screwing him over. He can’t recognise that it’s the same pattern: that Betty probably didn’t freak out over spilt milkshake either, until the relentlessness of the Wife Barbie role got too much.
And that makes sense to me, but I don’t quite get where the “she wants to be a copywriter like Peggy” bit comes in, then. That seemed a little too different to fit that mold - she seemed genuinely sincere in her admiration of Peggy as a woman who has done well for herself at something other than marriage. That sounded like actual ambition, not well-until-I’m-married-anyway ambition, in a way very different from Betty. Betty probably would have had the ambition, had she been able to articulate it or see in it a future for herself. Megan is younger, she has had people like Peggy as role models. And the combination of that and Joan and Peggy actually having a talk seemed… well, it seemed fresh, and hopeful, and modern. And I don’t quite get how that squares with the Don-is-falling-right-back-into-the-same-old-patterns stuff.
Maybe it was just about the ways people can be stuck in the past even if they try to see how things are changing and act differently: in his work life Don is brilliant and pulled out an ad for SCDP that changed things probably more than he has any idea of right now, but in his personal life he’s stuck? I think I’d like that, actually - sort of tied in to ‘the personal is political’, the way that while the big battles, jobs and voting and maternity leave etc, were important, they didn’t also magically make the private stuff, the difficulties in relationships and in self-analysis, go away. But hmm.
The biggest shock for me though was Joan. JOAN WHAT WHAT WHAT.
I entirely buy that she’d have the baby: she’s said before she wants one, and it might be her only chance and Joan can totally convince Dr Rapey it’s his if she needs to. What I am not at all sure I buy is her getting all the way to the doctor’s office and then changing her mind. That can happen, but I know enough about abortion provision to know it’s incredibly, incredibly rare. People who are at all doubtful usually don’t get to the clinic at all, and Joan is nothing if not decisive.
I’ve seen some commentary that people think telling Roger was about testing him, seeing how he’d react - that otherwise she’d just have gone and either had the kid without telling him, or sorted the abortion herself. But in that case, what did she get from telling him she’d have the abortion and then not? Saying “I do want a kid but if you’re going to be like that then I’ll bring it up and tell Greg it’s his” would make more sense, surely? There’s also the option that she’s actually lying to Greg, and she did have the abortion but is telling him she’s having a baby for some other reason. I don’t know: I suspect the actual answer will depend on whether or not Christina Hendricks gets pregnant in real life now she’s married, but I want to know! We don’t even know what she’s told Roger, actually, now I think about it… could be she told him and we just didn’t see that scene. There’s plenty of scope for all sorts of plottage in all kinds of directions.
And I think it's really interesting how they've been doing stuff with Joan re. self-perception vs other people's perception. Joan is more and more being seen in-show as old, past it, a faded cartoon of a 50s sexpot. But that's not how she comes across to us watching it today; to us, her clothes are gorgeous and more current than basically anyone else in the cast. Roger's surprised that when she's by herself she wears pyjamas like anyone else might. And what I'm wondering is whether that ties to the death of Ida Blankenship - it wouldn't take much to see that as Joan looking at that and seeing her own future. Is that going to be what gets her to make some big changes? Is that partly what the baby thing is about?
(And then again: Blankenship was a joke character, pitied by the other characters, but there's every indication she actually had other stuff going on in her life. She didn't, as far as we can tell, see herself as the sad relic in the way almost everyone else did. Bert Cooper describing her as an astronaut had every sign of being entirely serious, and actually made me heart. I love how complex this show is! I could theorise for houuurs. :D )
Roger is getting more and more pathetic, though. He’s got nothing: he’s lost the only account he had, and the contacts he had are now all dead or irrelevant. He doesn’t love his wife, who’s buying expensive things I’m guessing he can’t afford any more. He’s finally decided he does actually love Joan (which I think he does, as much as he’s capable of loving anybody) now they’re both married and she won’t have him. He’s popping heart medication and hiding in hotel rooms because he can’t deal with the reality of his life, which is that he’s got zilch.
Seriously, I am more than half thinking Roger isn't going to last much longer. There's been lots of hints about suicide, specifically, and the original person who was going to jump off the roof was going to be Harry. And, well, Harry's not in the show any more...
I love that Pete and Trudy are such a team. Pete is still quite wrong on many levels, but he's the only person we see treat their spouse as a member of a partnership, as someone who gets a say. And I weirdly love Trudy herself - she's good at being a partner, and stands up for the partnership in ways Pete is a bit rubbish at. When she says that Pete shouldn't give the baby money to the company and could get a better job elsewhere, she's totally right! I love that.
I will probably think of other things too as soon as I've posted this, but yeah, I kind of love this show.
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/43264.html. Please comment there using OpenID.