“Because that’s what people do.”
Roberta heard the line “There’s work, and there’s life,” and heard a theme. Good catch. But tonight, I was thinking that Flight 1 had a different theme:
“Go home and be with your family.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what people do.”
Isn’t that a theme of the episode? People doing what people do—what happens when that’s what they value, what happens when they opt out? Isn’t Pete just trying to figure out what people do? Isn’t Don, stifling himself inside a marriage he hates? Don married a woman I believe he loves, but that marriage is all about what people do, and there’s no love in going through these sad, angry motions.
Peggy is trying not to do what people do. But she’s also trying desperately hard: To do what a 22 year old girl does, even though she’s a mother and not just a girl anymore. Paul is trying to do what people other than him do, and that’s why Joan’s anger is so pivotal in this episode; because she catches the act, and everything in this episode is exactly about that act.
Don and Duck have two different versions of what people do. Pete has to choose. It sure seems like he’s chosen wrong.
August 9th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Roberta heard the line “There’s work, and there’s life,” and heard a theme. Good catch. But tonight, I was thinking that Flight 1 had a different theme:
Not so much ‘different’ as ‘additional’.
One of my most elusive projects is to someday go, episode by episode, and track the themes; by title (which you did) to ad campaigns. It’s elusive because it’s subjective and potentially limitless; but it is this dream I have.
Ladies Room–the title leads to much (as you covered), What do women want, Privacy… there’s so much.
August 9th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Hmmm, I’m not sure I would call Peggy a mother. Yes, she gave birth to a baby but it seems as though someone else is raising him. I know we learned the state took the baby away from Peggy but she wasn’t even planning on seeing him until it was suggested to her to go see him before she left her mother’s house. Maybe we are to think it’s too painful for her to see him since she is not allowed to raise him but she didn’t look too thrilled to be holding him at church, either. I think Peggy is working hard at being a young, single, working girl who has gotten a break in a career that is ran by men. You just never know with Mad Men, the way they like to tease us with what we think we know is going on and then down the road, we find we were wrong about our original thought. I could be totally wrong but at this point, I don’t see motherhood when I see Peggy.
August 9th, 2008 at 11:57 am
That’s kind of what I was trying to say, Jan. You give birth to a baby, you raise the baby, “that’s what people do.” But Peggy is trying to avoid that. Nevertheless, she’s trying very hard to do what 22 year old single women do, to the extent of denying motherhood.
August 9th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
OK, gotcha. Sorry, I didn’t catch that when I first read it. I understand what you were saying now.
August 9th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
“Because that’s what people do” is to me the other side of “The lives they might have had.”
I’m reading Doris Lessing’s new book “Alfred and Emily” and it completely resonates with this topic.
August 9th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Speaking of Peggy, Joan, and the Pill, there’s as an interesting article in the London newspaper The Independent about this the dynamic of what happens to fertility rates when women have choices.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/population-paradox-europes-time-bomb-888030.html
August 9th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
That “the state didn’t think so; the doctor’s didn’t think so” line has been on my mind.
It rang of a false explanation. At the end of Wheel, we see Peggy turn away from her baby - seemingly a conscious choice to reject her child. While we can infer ppd and other types of psychological issues, let’s stay with what we know and say it was a conscious, straightforward decision on Peggy’s part not to participate in motherhood in any way.
So when her sister brings up the doctors and the state of New York, it creates a monstrous gap of information - what happened between the time immediately after Peggy gives birth, and the decision to give the baby to her mother/sister?
At the very least, we know that Peggy did not sit down with her family and calmly discuss providing for the child. Was it a cop-out? Did she remain silent until the decision was made for her? Did she fake some psychological disorder to be rendered unfit?
I think the evidence thus far suggests that Peggy’s still in deep denial over what happened and is far away from facing it in any way. How this unfolds throughout the decade, naturally, will be one of the major plot and character arcs.
August 9th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
I believe that the doctor who told her she was in labored asked the nurse to get someone from psych. They’d at least want to talk to her about her utter denial of her condition, and then her complete rejection of her child.
I don’t know. Today we would understand about PPD or that some women take a while to warm up to their babies, but I think back then people would have a hard time understanding a lack of maternal instinct or bonding — that would probably seem extremely unnatural.
All the stereotypes about women that the females of the time had to face, and I imagine a natural protective instinct and a fierce love of children would be high on the list, and anything short of that would seem, well, crazy.
August 9th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Ms. D., yes, they sent for psych right away.
Coop, I don’t think we’re talking about post-partum depression. I know it seems the logical choice, but I doubt it.
PPD is just like a serious clinical depression, except it’s brought on by the changes in body chemistry caused by giving birth. Peggy isn’t necessarily depressed, she just had a baby she didn’t want. She dealt with the pregnancy by denying it, and she wants to keep denying it.
If there’s something wrong with Peggy in a diagnosable way, it started during, not post, pregnancy.
But if there’s nothing wrong with her except denial and not wanting a child, the medical establishment of the time might well diagnose this as abnormal. Even if she snapped out of her denial long enough to refuse, rationally, to want the child, the psychiatrists might well have decided she wasn’t in her right mind, and assigned power of attorney (or whatever) to the next of kin. Which would be her mother.
So the mother and the sister get handed this news and decide the sister will raise the baby. Whatever Peggy wants gets shut out.
August 10th, 2008 at 1:44 am
I thought “the state didn’t think so; the doctor’s didn’t think so” meant just what Deborah is saying…not that Peggy was not considered fit to keep the child, but that she was not considered in the right state of mind to be allowed the decision to give up the baby.
August 10th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
“Don and Duck have two different versions of what people do. Pete has to choose. It sure seems like he’s chosen wrong.”
I think we have to give Pete a little credit for almost doing the right thing. He wanted to not use his father’s death. If he were the opportunist creep we think him, he would not even of hesitated. I mean he was willing to ruin another’s man’s life so he could get a promotion! He rejected the “American Airline” ideal at first, and was even going to talk it over with Don. He wanted to do the right thing. But Don’s sudden rejection of him turned him to Duck. He was almost like a little boy who lost his dad, went to seek comfort with the man he respected the most, only to be cast away, so he went to Duck instead. He chose the only avenue to a dad he could find at the time. And Duck played it sooo smooth!
Also, anyone finding yourself thinking Donald Duck when they put them in a scene together?
August 11th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Also, anyone finding yourself thinking Donald Duck when they put them in a scene together?
Oh dear Gods, now that’s ALL I’ll think.