the MADMEN: From Dean Moriarty to Cowboy Neal

Over the last several months i've been trying to figure out what it is i personally don't like about the rave-reviewed TV drama Mad Men. In one comment i wrote:

I am sensing that my disconnect from the show is ingrained in the notion that this “artistic work” plays much more to those who grew up 20 years after this period, than it does for those of us for whom it was our daily lives (certainly the ratings demographics show this to be true--but that is more an anomaly of the basic cable programming schedule i think). I knew a number of young women who were forced (by law and circumstance) to “go off” to those special schools where they would proceed with their pregnancies and give up the babies, to return to “normal” lives. It would be fair to say that a more than a small minority of them were forced to do so because of coerced sex and date rape; though in the early 60s neither was considered outside the norm (sadly and grievously so), nor called anything other than “sex.”

Many of those, that are part of the discipline of cultural studies (across the departments) in the academe and the professoriate in the US, seem to have begun examining the TV series as a powerful and evocative work of fiction. They (collectively) regularly discourse on various underlying plot elements as providing some degree of representational critiques of the core moral dilemmas of both the 20th and 21st centuries (sexism, cognitive and physical disability bias, genderism, victimless and victim perpetuated crimes, ethics, etc.). There appears a fascination with the particulars of these issues (even proposing a hermeneutical scaffold upon which to align plot elements as coherent and consistent within some sort of consensual critical base), and deeper analysis of character than with other such television series. It seems that the they, to which i refer (an interesting amalgam of well-learned, knowledgeable, intellectual curious folk), fit within a demographic construct that is both well known and respected, the 25-50 population of graduate students and professors. Thus it is not easy to ignore, nor disrespect, their humbly given opinions and insights into Mad Men.

Be that as it may, my spider senses have been jangling and tingling for a couple of years now about this popular and honored tv series. It doesn't feel right, it smells bad, it seems to only present a tiny glimpse of the national picture of the period. The producers, either by conscious choice or by staggering ignorance, choose to present only a very tiny and select view of what was happening in the US in 1963. If, as it seems, that some in the academe are promoting the program as a form of cultural apologetic that is representative of the mainstream of the US in that period (as evidenced that the cast of advertising executives and clerks, are part and parcel that is the relationship between corporations and the population), then i think they are sadly mistaken (or at least on par with the critiques presented by Thomas Frank in the issues of the Baffler and his first opus THE CONQUEST OF COOL). As an older adolescent/young adult during this period, living in the Los Angeles region, i can attest that much of what i see on Mad Men is not at all what i was observing in the world around me.

One might ask why my observations might have any relevance to the discourse, given that nearly 9 million US teenagers were experiencing the world in relatively the same way as me (the 1946-1947 baby boomers). I was inordinately blessed with being born into a well-established and well-connected social and cultural network that included the glitterati, literatti, and all other 'rattis' one can imagine. For example, from birth to well into high school i attended weekly services at All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills, CA (being an altar boy in love or lust with the granddaughter of Gloria Swanson, and her many girlfriends, whose names i remember to this day--Brooke, Torrey, Roxanne, Sandra) on Sundays sitting next to actors and actresses, CEOs and Executive Directors of the most powerful LA corporations and foundations, politicians, and so forth. I started school at the age of three, attending a private academy for gifted and wealthy kids, later to be thrust into a public school filled, for the most part, with the scion of parents (nation's best and brightest) brought together by NASA and the Department of Defense (with elements of Hollywood, the auto industry, and professionals included). I was forced (really coerced) to attend cotillion with many of the same folks as well as others from the gated burbclaves of the economic aristocracy (again, i still remember those beautiful young women especially Alice and Noreen), being an escort for a big time Beverly Hilton Hotel debutante ball evening.

I also grew up at the beach, was a swimmer which led to surfing and to surf culture. I knew that surfers were cool but that greasers' ruled; especially when i was thrown out of my old high school (as a student body officer for being too high on drugs and alcohol during a special student function on December 7, 1964), and had to attend the mid-west valley high school where all the real greasers ruled. Immersion in car culture, at the very peak of the emerging muscle car era, coupled with being a nationally acknowledged athlete (swimming), afforded me the access to fully observing two of the dominant early 60s cultures of US history. The fact that neither is recognized, nor acknowledged, in Mad Men speaks volumes about the disconnect i feel from the show.

~time out~
here are some of my most favorite of my top 50 songs in 1963 in the US markets (including Billboard, American Bandstand, and Wallach's Music City):

Surfin' U.S.A., Beach Boys; Sugar Shack, Jimmy Gilmer and The Fireballs; Rhythm Of The Rain, Cascades ; Hey Paula, Paul and Paula; Blue Velvet, Bobby Vinton; He's So Fine, Chiffons; So Much In Love, Tymes; Can't Get Used To Losing You, Andy Williams; My Boyfriend's Back, Angels; Sukiyaki, Kyu Sakamoto; Puff (The Magic Dragon), Peter, Paul and Mary; Blowin' In The Wind, Peter, Paul and Mary; Wipe Out, The Surfaris; I'm Leaving It Up To You, Dale and Grace; Walk Like A Man, Four Seasons; Mockingbird, Inez Foxx; I Will Follow Him, Little Peggy March; Pipeline, Chantays; Surf City, Jan and Dean; Heat Wave, Martha and The Vandellas; Walk Right In, Rooftop Singers; Surfer Girl, Beach Boys

Really! All those surf and drug songs, that were being constantly played across the US. Where are they in the soundtrack of Mad Men? Where is Dylan, Baez, New Christy Minstrels, Everly Bros, early Motown, et al? You must remember that this was the last great American music gasp before the English invasion; and the list also doesn't include the flood of movie and musical soundtracks (OLIVER!) of the period. Will the next season (post JFK country-wide wake) bring a full Beatles, Kinks, Stones, and Dave Clark Five soundtrack?
Here is a short list of movies with soundtracks that ruled the airwaves:

Cleopatra; The Longest Day; Irma La Douce; Lawrence of Arabia; How the West Was Won; Mutiny on the Bounty; Son of Flubber; To Kill a Mockingbird; Bye Bye Birdie; Come Blow Your Horn; 8 1/2; Contempt; Tom Jones; The Birds; Hud; The Great Escape; Shock Corridor; The Servant; This Sporting Life; Billy Liar; The Haunting; From Russia with Love; The Pink Panther; America, America; The Nutty Professor; Dr. No; Charade; Jason and the Argonauts

~time in~

As i was walking home the other night, under the first early morning rise of the Pleiades, i was pondering all that made Mad Men so discomforting to me, why i just feel that i don't like it when i watch it. Certainly the acting, directing and writing are superb; the show is a major artistic success, and has garnered a weekly dose of academic blogging following each episode. Yet the show just feels like sandpaper on my conscious mind, like my brain being shaken almost stirred, as if my bowels were force-fed wood chips instead of rice. What is it that so bothers me??? Then it hit me; wham bam oh gawd man. The characters and the entire construct are part and parcel of all the things i truly hate about America. They are all that is, at their core, bad, for the planet and the human consciousness. We had words for them in the 60s: square, establishment, bummers, head trippers, the man, authority figures, the generation gap, the credibility gap, screwheads, numbnuts, et al, and so far forth. These people, the characters and the corporations that are presented, were, and still very much are, the enemy of the Earth, the planet, the species, the well being.

Wow, i didn't think i felt that strongly at first, but as it sank in i realized it was true. I abhor all that is being presented by Mad Men. It seems to me more of an apologetic and hope-filled rant about how we, as a nation, can do better, than for what it really is; an indictment of a time in this nation when assholes once again stuck it to the people. i don't need that. I know that. And those watching it aren't getting that in a lot of ways. Even after Kennedy died we had some hope; LSD was still available, new frontiers in space and in consciousness, led by scientists, yogis and pranksters, we still felt optimistic. What happened in 1963 pales in comparison with what happened in 1968. Those people on Madison Avenue were evil and still are. I would rather ride the bus and stay on the street (and tracks) than donate $$ to Hilton and Mad Ave.

The Mad Men represented all that we hippies knew was categorically malevolent and evil in our culture. We hated the establishment, and cursed them for laying heavy head trips on us with their manipulation of public perception and their propaganda for the "man" (the government including the administrations of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon). While it took years (apparently) for the "mainstream" to figure out, we knew that the Kennedy's were crooks, liars, and philanderers of the highest order. After Rachel Carson came forward in 1962, we became aware of the disaster that modern consumer culture had perpetrated on the earth. We knew the Doublemint Twins and Breck girls were icons of all that was crappy about America. The response of the media to the Civil Rights demonstrations of the early 60s bespoke volumes for the inherent racism of the establishment mainstream. Where were the blacks in the minds of these advertising ministers, other than being wage slaves to the man???

update (11/01/2009): After watching tonight's penultimate episode of the season, featuring the Kennedy assassination and the struggle to comprehend how "it all changed," i was reminded by a couple of other things from that fateful day. The announcement came to my high school during my class of concert and marching band. We were rehearsing for our upcoming studio album recording; we were one of the top music programs in the State of California, and widely honored. At the moment of the first click of the activation of the school sound system, we were playing a dirge by Holst; i was, at that very moment, playing the Concert Bb-flat double bass clarinet for that piece--the lowest hertz woodwind instrument{good thing i was a swimmer} and was also played the bass clarinet, baritone sax, and bassoon.

We sat quietly, listened intently, and then did the only reasonable thing; we played the entire dirge straight through. Since lunch break was the next period, the administration closed school and we all went home. I ended up at the beach in Malibu, sitting on the sand watching the pelicans do their spacial dances less than six inches above the crests of waves. I think everybody on the beach that afternoon was staggered by the reality. People driving up PCH, heading home from offices or such from LA and Santa Monica, would pull over and get out to walk on the beach. No radios, no sounds other than muffled cries and sound of all the sea birds. The waves and the birds didn't change, they remained immutable in their ongoing lives, teaching us that (as the Jefferson Airplane sang a few years later) the human name doesn't mean shit to a tree. That incredible historical moment really didn't mean anything at all to the Earth and the universe; it was a blip on the shoulder shrug of planetary spin. As we have seen in the last 46 years, in the long run none of those politics seemed to really matter near as much as the Earth.