| 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: Peggy starts becoming more of Don's protege and moves up in that world. She goes down paths that are wrong for her, but she is just trying to figure out what it means to be in her position in that man's world. I don't honestly know if she is going to figure it out. Does she have to be like Don, or can she be her own person? 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: I'm interested in how our successes turn out to be failures and our failures turn out to be successes. And the next season to me is about change. They're all about change in a vague way, but the change I'm talking about is how people respond to a changing world -- there's an energy of chaos. We're living through this right now. The past and future are existing at the same time. Labels: allyson, americanculture, madmen, nostalgia, tv, women posted by Jess Barron @ 2:44 PM 
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| June 2, 2009 | Opening Party David Lynch's Photo Exhibit |
Michael Kohn Gallery threw an opening party on May 29 for David Lynch's photo exhibit "Dark Night of the Soul." The line went way down Beverly Blvd. I heard more than one  person in line (and walking by) comment, "When was the last time you saw such a long line at an art opening!?" But it was worth the wait. (We have all witnessed how gaga I get for David Lynch.)Many of Lynch's photos on display in the Kohn Gallery (through July 11) elicit for me the same moods and feelings evoked in my favorite of his films. A weird disturbed nostalgia and the creepiness of dreams. That's how I felt about this shadowy BBQ by a too-perfect to be true Pacific Ocean. And this photo of woman giving the finger from the backseat of car reminded me of the teens who cause the fatal car accident in "Mulholland Drive." This hazy couple on the street at night reminded me of the cast of characters Laura Dern encounters on Hollywood Blvd in "Inland Empire." The photo which most perfectly fits the theme "Dark Night of the Soul" is this photo of a dingy lamp and bedside table with a corner filled with an overflowing pile of prescription pill bottles. That to me, truly communicates the modern American's long, lonely, troubled, sleepless night -- trying to medicate to escape from the pain of old and new terrors. It all reminds me of the quote from the final episode of Mad Men's first season "The Wheel," when Don Draper (in a mid-day meeting preceding his own "dark night of the soul") pitches his advertising colleagues and the client on a concept to sell Polaroid's "wheel" slide projector: Nostalgia - it's delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, "nostalgia" literally means "the pain from an old wound." It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn't a spaceship, it's a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards... it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It's not called the wheel, it's called the carousel. It let's us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved. I used to write a column for my college newspaper called "Nostalgia for the Present," and this quote has really stuck with me, and I think it also reminds me of what I like about David Lynch's movies, photos, and art. Labels: art, davidlynch, la, madmen, nostalgia, photos, quotes posted by Jess Barron @ 11:26 AM
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| August 6, 2001 | Nostalgia for the Present |
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It's been a while since I've been here (and I suppose "right here, right now" used to exist over there over a year ago). I was going to create yet another new place to put immediate stray thoughts, but then I realized that I already had a container for immediate stray thoughts that had been abandoned almost a year-and-a-half ago. And the container wasn't too shabby either. And it's name is ever-appropriate for me. "Nostalgia for the Present" was what I called the weekly pop culture column I wrote for my college newspaper. Since I'm already doing some kind of electronic recycling by revitalizing this section on my site, I decided to dig a bit deeper and unearth some (fairly dated and embarassing) pieces I wrote for Vassar's Miscellany News back in 1995 and 1996 which no one has ever seen before (because I have purposely kept them off of my website). Pieces like Countdown to the Void, Thirteen Things to Do When You're Wired at Vassar, and then my oddball exit from the column when I became Editor-in-chief of the paper. There are letters to the editor like this one inspired by this column of mine and this odd one inspired by my presence (or lack thereof). It freaks me out that that stuff is still out there floating around. Labels: journalism, nostalgia, vassar, writing posted by Jess Barron @ 12:22 PM
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