| August 31, 2009 | Some of the Best "Mad Men" Are Women |
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A few days ago my friend Allyson updated her Facebook status to say that she has been disappointed in "Mad Men" so far this season. And she is not the only one. In some ways I understand where the sentiment is coming from, but I don't agree. While the episodes have been slightly slower paced this season (less Don Draper affairs and binge drinking, for sure), the character development -- particularly the female characters -- has been the best on television. Plus, this season the show is building toward an event that will have a monstrous impact on everyone -- president JFK's assassination on November 22, 1963. (Did you catch the date on Roger Sterling's daughter's wedding invitations? They showed it in close-up. It's Nov, 23, 1963 -- the day after JFK was assassinated -- so it's very unlikely the wedding is going to happen.) The character development in Season 3 has been fascinating, particularly the main female characters: Peggy Olson, Joan Holloway, and Betty Draper as well as closeted gay adman Salvatore Romano who did finally have a tryst with a guy. (Read New York mag's Aug 17 interview with Brian Batt who plays Sal for some insights on Sal's love life.) People keep commenting that Peggy is slowly becoming the female version of Don Draper with everything that entails. But what does it mean for a woman to be Don Draper? In an interview posted today in the Canadian National Post, Elizabeth Moss who plays Peggy said of "Mad Men" Season Three:
Though she is ambitious and also has a dark secret and "gets" what it means to sell a great creative idea, there's no question that Peggy is different than Don. She's more awkward -- certainly painful to watch in some scenes like the one when she sang into the mirror doing that Ann Margaret "Bye Bye Birdie" routine. But what makes her fascinating is that, despite her awkwardness and perhaps naivete, she still exudes confidence in her career and even a strange confidence in her strange sexual dalliances with Pete Campbell and the random guy she picked up at the bar this season. In this Times Online piece "Mad Men: The real Mad women," Mary Wells Lawrence (one of the 1960s adwomen who provided real-life inspiration for the character of Peggy Olson) -- now in her eighties -- says "Mad Men" is not an accurate representation about what things were really like in the ad agencies of the 1960s. I particularly love the quote where she says: "We weren't lusting after each other. We were lusting after ourselves. We were all crazy about ourselves. Crazy about the talent that we all felt we had. When you are that self-centered, you don't have room for romance with anyone else." (Reminds me of Vassar College. But for some reason, also makes me want to read Wells Lawrence's autobiography "A Big Life in Advertising".) It's surprising that a show called "Mad Men," has some of the best written and complex female characters on television, but it shouldn't be when you realize that the majority of the show's writers are women. This Wall Street Journal article "The Women Behind 'Mad Men'" says that seven of the nine members of the "Mad Men" writing team are women and women directed five of the 13 episodes in the third season. This is pretty amazing, especially if you consider the fact that "of the roughly 13,400 members of Directors Guild of America, only about 1,000 (7%) are listed as female directors." With its slick '60s style and constant cocktail consumption, it seems like it would be easy for me and probably most people to feel a little nostalgic for the days of "Mad Men," but despite the fab outfits, I'm not nostalgic for the sad options available, particularly for the women of 1963, but also for everyone. I'm very curious to see how the women's movement and the civil rights movement will affect these characters. "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner said something I liked that about Season 3 in his June 2009 Rolling Stone interview:
Labels: allyson, americanculture, madmen, nostalgia, tv, women posted by Jess Barron @ 2:44 PM 
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| October 1, 2006 | I'm Very Knowledgeable About Purses and Janet Jackson's Breasts... |
People have been asking for a link to see the ABC News Yahoo! Top 5 video segment that Heather, LJ, and I appear on each week.  OK, you can have a peak, but only if you promise not to make fun of me for blushing when I talk about Chanel handbags and Janet Jackson getting all naked on magazine covers. Check out the video. Is this what you all expected when I majored in American Culture at Vassar? That I'd build a career of knowing where to find knock-off Gucci bags online and what the story is behind Janet Jackson's "invisible daughter..." Yeah, I thought so, too. Labels: abcnews, americanculture, gucci, handbag, purse, vassar, video, yahoo, yahootop5 posted by Jess Barron @ 4:37 PM
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| September 28, 2005 | I'm in "The Economist" (sorry Allyson, it's no "Star" magazine...) |
In yesterday's Yahoo! Broadband portals' team meeting, my boss Jim walked in and announced -- "I was just reading the latest issue of 'The Economist,' and there's a picture of Jess in there from Burning Man!" "Please tell me that I have my clothes on in the photo," I joked. (I already had some advance warning about this possible "media appearance" because I had spoken with writer/journalist Kurt Opprecht on the playa while I was inside my art project -- the Playa Psychiatric Help Booth -- and he had mentioned he was writing a piece about the economy of Burning Man for (who else?) The Economist. He talked to me for a while and asked if he could take a photo of the booth.) You can find Kurt's piece (and this photo) on page 41 of The Economist for September 24th-30th, 2005. The article is also available online as premium content, if you have a subscription to The Economist. You can view a snapshot of it here on flickr. Anyway, back to the Yahoo! Broadband portals team meeting where this was all mentioned before I had seen the photo or the piece (before I knew what I was wearing or how it was all presented)... At this point, Allyson looks across the table and says, "Jess, I'm aware that The Economist is a well-respected publication, but I'd honestly be more impressed if you had your photo in "Us Weekly" or "Star" magazine." (Allyson's comment certainly sheds some light on the state of American Culture in 2005, and as a scholar in this department I promise you I will get to the bottom of it...) Labels: americanculture, art, burningman, economist, media posted by Jess Barron @ 11:46 AM
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| November 27, 2004 | Pegacorns and Eggzilla |
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Pegacorns are an American invention," he said as he finished his room service pancakes.
Labels: americanculture, pegacorns, quotes posted by Jess Barron @ 11:09 AM
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| June 14, 1999 | Book Review of "The Beach" |
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My work friend Allyson just read "The Beach" last week, and she let me borrow her copy. I started it yesterday and finished it this evening. This book is completely and immediately engrossing. The story's about Richard, a young twentysomething British backpacker who acquires a map through very odd circumstances that leads him to a well-hidden Gen X enclave on a tropical island off the coast of Thailand. I won't say more because I don't want to give too much of the plot away. Though "The Beach" is compared to "Lord of the Flies" in the review blurb written by "High Fidelity" author Nick Hornby on the book's back jacket, the considerable pop cultural references to Nintendo's Game Boy, "The A Team," and Tetris made me think of Douglas Coupland's writing. Like Coupland, Garland understands the importance of pop culture to his generation of readers. I found it interestingly ironic that even though the main characters' shared goal is to live indefinitely sequestered away on an island paradise without contact with the outside world -- they still place high importance on obtaining batteries for their Walkmans and Game Boys, and almost all of their ideas of adventure and how to solve the problems they encounter come from popular American movies and TV shows -- notably "Platoon," "The A Team," and "Tour of Duty." One of my favorite parts in the book is when Richard talks about the game Street Fighter Two (a personal favorite) and the various ways people he knows react just as their Street Fighter characters' energy bars are going to be emptied. He calls this "the split second before Game Over" and he speculates that "Game Over" is one of the most widely understood phrases in the whole world. He also posits that the moment before Game Over "provides a rare insight into the way people react just before they do really die." Just as it would likely be true of myself and my friends, everything these characters know about survival they've gleaned from a lifetime watching video games and TV. One of the saddest themes in the book is about how you can't stop paradise from being spoiled - something's always going to come along and ruin Eden -- be it an onslaught of tourists, or even just progress. Labels: allyson, americanculture, book, popculture posted by Jess Barron @ 7:51 PM
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