many many many mad men thoughs
THE GOOD NEWS: MY CAPSLOCK KEY IS APPARENTLY MADE OF TITANIUM. SPOILERS BELOW.
Tomorrowland
IF I HEAR ONE MORE EXCUSE FOR THE ABORTION FAKE-OUT I AM GOING TO POP. "But it makes sense in coooooooonnnnnnnnnnteeeeeeeeeeext!" THAT IS WHY IT ANNOYS ME. Pregnancy story lines are nearly universally constructed in such a way as for the continuation of the pregnancy to be the thing that logically makes sense in the story. PEOPLE HAVE OOPSIES. WRITERS DO NOT. The context is played the hell out! How are women in fiction, EVEN JOAN, so fucking OBLIVIOUS that they walk into an abortion clinic NO MATTER WHAT THEY HAVE TO GO THROUGH TO GET THERE and then go OH MY GOD! IF I DO THIS, I'M NOT GOING TO BE PREGNANT ANY MORE! I MUST CHANGE MY COURSE OF ACTION IMMEDIATELY.
There are implications of the arc of Joan's pregnancy that are...tangled, and I'm not entirely sure they were thought through. I feel kind of robbed of the impact of Joan and her doctor's matter-of-fact talk about her previous abortions, to be honest. Mentions of past abortions in characters that are somewhat sympathetic (SatC, for the most notorious example) feel like huge leaps, because they can show that the woman who had the abortion isn't Ruined Forever, but honestly, that's gratitude for scraps. I expect more. (And really, where did having two abortions get her? Not pregnant, which was probably great, but now she's in a dead-end low-pay zero-prestige job where everyone fears and avoids her instead of liking or respecting her, and married to Dr. Rapist. I admire Joan for owning her choices, but this isn't a story of things being okay for a sexual woman. Her life sucks. She's as miserable as Betty but she takes it out on her co-workers instead of her kids. So far.) I resent the idea that while we are emotionally invested in a woman, she cannot terminate a pregnancy, because pregnancy must be the most important part of her current life and therefore storyline. It's not even about whether or not it makes sense for Joan (and I am ATM of the opinion that it very much does not), but about seeing the commonplace, overdone, socially and politically easy storyline YET AGAIN.
There are only two ultimate outcomes to a story where Joan comes to term. One is that Dr. Asshole dies, which I know this makes me terrible but I have to admit I wouldn't be too broken up about, except it leaves Joan with the prospect of being a single mother in her mid-thirties. That's not going to be any Lorelai Gilmore shit in Joan's era. The other is that he does the math and figures out that he was gone when she was conceived. He's an evil shithead, but he is a doctor. What, she's going to go somewhere that will induce her weeks early and not tell anyone about it? Maybe she'll lie about the kid's birthday if he's still overseas when she gives birth? Those aren't tenable solutions. The guy raped her as a show of dominance and revenge precipitated by Joan's getting along with her boss. This is potentially - no, nearly assuredly catastrophic.
Moreover, I'm worried about the implications specifically of Joan having a child that isn't her husband's biological kid. That's exactly the rationale used for controlling female sexuality - it is of the utmost importance to spare a man the UTTER HUMILIATION of unknowingly acting as a father to someone else's biological child. Purity for marriage; too much shame to ever wonder about one's own sexual attractions, needs, and preferences; it's almost word-for-word the excuse used by proponents of FGM/FGC. The specific targets of heightened shaming and policing are often heavily feminized women like Joan. However this goes down, it's going to be major pain for her her for the crime of being a sexual human being with an apparently irrepressible set of ovaries.
And WHAT. Apparently the "don't presume things we don't see" storyline now requires LAPAROSCOPIC CHECK-INS WITH PEOPLE'S CERVICES, JUST TO BE SURE? WE DON'T NEED A CAMERA IN DICK'S TOILET TO ASSUME HE SOMETIMES TAKES A SHIT. (I know he goes by Don. I PREFER DICK.)
Speaking of Don! How excited am I that so many more people are on board the Draper Hate Train? I personally got sucked into the show as a whole because halfway through the pilot I was sure someone someday was going to try to take a whack at him with his stupid phallic little easel and WHAT CAN I SAY I ENJOY SLAPSTICK.
Fortunately everyone else is pretty fantastic. Love, love the Peggy-Joan scene at the end. I watched it half a dozen times. Raise your hand if you haven't had basically that exact conversation, ladies. I really feel for Peggy here, given her identification with Faye. She's spent the season trying to convince herself that she can be successful and also personally happy, because look at Faye! but in the end Faye gets ditched for a secretary that's even younger than Peggy. I think that's what smarts, and then the fact that she can't even get recognized for her career when she's put it ahead of her opportunity for marriage is humiliation and invalidation along with professional snubbing, all at once.
The engagement itself, meh. I don't think I have anything new to contribute here. Buys into his own press, chooses the simple over the challenging (relationship, not people, obviously), looks for yet another cipher on which to project his own made up identity, whatever. I do love that she's actually his secretary though; LOOK AT HOW UN-ORIGINAL THIS DUDE IS. It does kind of crack me up that Megan is held up as this wonderful mother figure for not getting worked up on a spill over vacation, and being nice to the kids for a few hours at a time. I bet Betty liked kids too, until they became her only company besides Housewife Cutthroat Bitch.
Pete for sure had the best single line of the episode, though. "You don't say 'congratulations' to the bride. You say 'best wishes.'" I'm sure that was a norm of etiquette back then, but that they had him spell it out instead of just saying "best wishes," HAHAHAHA. Allow me to translate: "Oh you poor dear, congratulations are so not in order. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT, THOUGH." I haven't seen this level of mastery of the higher-ground backhand since I gave up on Project Runway. (Roger's line was funny because obviously he's the last person you want to approve of your life choices, but he's totally unaware of how priceless it is. Pete, though; I think that Trudy girl is a good influence on him.)
OR: Betty Francis May Be An Immature Shit, But So Is Everyone Around Her and Also It Makes Sense
I actually haven't seen most of S3 so this is just kind of a general rant and definitely not the definitive Betty character analysis/apologia, but really. I'm really starting to take some umbrage with the "Betty's a child" thing, both in the show itself and in a surprising number of the reviews I read. (I have made up for it with many links to people who seem to mostly agree with me, though, so clearly they are experts and geniuses.) It's not about the issue of whether Betty has this particular trait, but the sheer emphasis on and MASSIVE level of missing-the-point about it.
Betty Francis is an adult who is for the most part responding appropriately to her environment. Her penchants towards pettiness and selfishness, and her deep need to lock down her emotions without examining them, does not mean that she is not responsible for the things she does, or that she is one-dimensional, or that she is not a person with several decades of life experience behind her. It means that she is an impressionable person who is fulfilling her proscribed role in life. That is the whole point of Betty and her story.
Cold War era suburban housewifery was deliberately socially constructed to stunt women's moral and intellectual development by pathologizing any and all independence, growth, and individuality. Betty's pettiness, her fierce defense of her emotional entitlement to keep something of herself to herself, her projection and lashing-out, that's a small but solid refusal to lose herself entirely in a life that she was clearly never cut out for. I don't admire the way she carries it out, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a little admiration for the sense of self it takes to hang onto that after all these years.
Oh, she's hung up on appearances? Appearances are her stock in trade. This is especially true for her as Don's wife, and then as the wife of a political operative, but true in general for housewives of the era. Her job - the thing she thinks about, has built a lifetime of experience in, was trained to do from a young age, and the only means by which she can retain some measure of financial security - is to support her husband. (I haven't lately seen anyone rag on Pete for his unnatural fixation on numbers. WHAT'S UP WITH THAT GUY, HUH?)
The fact that this stunts and eats away at personal growth is not some aberration on Betty's part. It is the result of having one's own will subsumed while emotionally and laboriously catering to another. By the same token, of course she hangs onto the house! Financially speaking, she doesn't have anything else. Yeah, it's also comfort and security, and there's a dark and disappointing and stunting side to hanging onto the past in such a way, but again, her past is hers and so is her house and she's not ready to give up that safety net for the future.
And what is with all the sympathy for this Francis douchebag? "No one's ever on your side, Betty"? Why exactly does he think she is so messed up? SHE KNOWS THAT. SHE HAS ALWAYS KNOWN THAT. She's asking him to be on her side. She's saying, I gave up my old life for you, can't you just try to empathize when I am taking the huge emotional risk of being honest with you?
Oh, he's just finding out who his wife is? HE KNEW EXACTLY WHO SHE WAS. SHE IS EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTED. He wanted someone who was completely dependent on him. He makes a point of discouraging Betty from pursuing the settlement to which she is legally and morally entitled (oh, you heard me, ENTITLED) because "[I] don't want you to owe him anything." Of course, Don owes Betty upon divorce for years of foregone income, child care, cooking, and hostessing duties; Francis just doesn't want her to have it, because that's a measure of independence, and will give her the idea that what she does and who she is is valuable, and THAT JUST WON'T DO AT ALL. He WANTED someone who was practiced at choking down all of her feelings. He WANTED someone who had any outward expressions of sexual desire shamed out of her; someone who is a lovely symbol of status without being quite young enough to attract an indecorous (and fidelity-threatening) amount of sexual attention. He wanted her to be groomed to bend to the will of whoever the male authority figure in the room is. He wanted a housebroken show dog, is what he wanted. He can get a rabid ball-hungry pit bull, for all I care.
I actually think the Betty-is-childish primary lens of her character got its start off from the ONE OF THE MOST UNRELIABLE NARRATORS ON THIS SHOW, AND SWEET MOTHER OF FRIEDAN IS THAT SAYING A LOT, and that is the psychiatrist Don sends her to in S1. The psychiatrist who, let us be clear, has such a low opinion of his female patients' autonomy and personhood that he has BUILT A PRACTICE based on an openly acknowledged willingness to violate the confidentiality to which they are entitled. If she'd started seeing him after she started turning her misery outward, she'd be psychotic. But since at this point she's still turning it inward, she's a child. See how that works? If she's anything besides the happy facade she puts on 99% of the time - if she'd never grown past the picture in that fur ad - she's completely unreliable somehow.
So it just feels mean-spirited to me for the show to then, four seasons (and some impressive character development both positive and negative) later to then validate that initial lying, lazy, abuse-enabling POS psychiatrist's oppressive Freudian bullshit by actually having her see a child psychiatrist. Just a little recognition that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy would be nice! Treat someone like a child, take away everything that gives them personal agency and self-respect and purpose, and you can't expect them not to regress. And honestly, if we're going to strip people who have difficulty admitting that they have and need help with mental health problems of their entire life story by dismissing them as children, we're going to have to start with Dick and work our way down and BASICALLY RACHEL MENKEN IS THE ONLY ADULT WE HAVE EVER SEEN ON SCREEN.
That's compounded by the fact that she knows of her first psychiatrist's violation of her privacy. She's just supposed to hop to it and bail on someone she does trust a little for a stranger who she has every reason to assume will be just as bad within the space of a two-minute scene? Or it's evidence that she is presumptively not an adult? Would we decide Joan and Roger were children if they tried to avoid the street where they got MUGGED? Nope! We'd say "it's not a great neighborhood, and now they know that better than just about anyone, and also it was probably really scary and they don't want to remind themselves of a time when their agency was completely stripped from them!" But it's different for Betty because what, she didn't cope with it by having Terrible Mistake sex? This is using her (fairly reasonable and completely harmless to anyone but herself) reaction to having been victimized by people with power over her as an indictment of her. I HATE EVERYONE WHO WAS ON BOARD WITH THIS. THIS IS NOT OKAY. I like MM for its honest - therefore inherently critical - portrayal of gender norms and roles of the era. If I want to see them validated, I will just watch an actual Disney movie, thanks!
Ultimately I think my issue is with the implied equation of financial independence and social ability to graciously eat whatever shit sandwich life hands over with a grateful smile with maturity in women, to the extent that it seemingly goes without saying that any time Betty does something nasty it's a simplistic expression of her inherent childishness. It gets tautological. Betty is childish, therefore it's the primary or only motivation when she does things we don't like, which proves she's childish. I'm not saying that she's, you know, a paragon of strength and wisdom or anything, but it's just such lazy treatment and analysis of the character. There is more there.
I don't know, is it an unwillingness to keep her from being fully responsible for the abuser she's become? If she's an adult choosing to lash out at the few people she has power over while also being a Monstrous Ex-Wife (TM), then all the complex work they've done with her is a waste because she's just evil. If she's sympathetic in a way we can respect, then Don looks even more like the dirtbag he is. Making her a rotten person who just doesn't know any better is a cop-out, both of the social and historical implications of her role in life and of the narrative.
This isn't a story about an adult who's a child inside. That is way oversimplified. This is a story about a dogwood tree planted inside a highball glass that's stunted and tangled in on itself, which will eventually break its strictures and die. WHATEVER IT'S KIND OF A METAPHOR GO WITH IT. I wouldn't trade places with Sally Draper for the world, I don't even particularly want to know Betty, I do not approve of or excuse her being an elitist racist patriarchy-enforcing abusive parent or deny that she is those things, but simultaneously stripping her of what little agency she has, while turning the forces which have shaped her into who she is into some intrinsic failure on her part and letting that define her character sits very, very poorly with me.