I’m always gonna love Minnie Mouse.
There was a bit of discussion about why Sally and Bobby were dressed in these costumes, when earlier in the episode they had talked about being Minnie Mouse and an astronaut.
The reason that the kids’ first-choice costumes were nixed, and this was also discussed, was that neither Betty nor Don wanted the kids in store bought costumes.
I remember having the same struggle when I was a kid. I can remember the Halloween of 1970 (or possibly ’69) being mesmerized by the costumes in the stores. And my Nana bought me a Cinderella mask, which I thought was just magical (but wicked uncomfortable). My mother insisted on homemade costumes, and as I got a little older I started to appreciate the creativity. Are you kidding? My mom helped me last year when I needed a costume for a Halloween wedding I was singing in–I was in fact, Minnie Mouse.
The Drapers have money. Lots of it. So this was an ethical decision, one that Don and Betty both shared. Betty is the one who’s gotta sew ‘em, for crying out loud. But no, we don’t do that. We will not indulge our children in that manner.
The hobo and the gypsy hearken an older world feel, one that seems to echo that ethic. Basketcases have also remarked that both the hobo and the gypsy represent freer, simpler times. Dick Whitman. People’s real selves. Unencumbered.
But isn’t it true that the images of both hobos and gypsies are associated with deception?
Well, yeah. You might even say there is a flavor of hidden identity.
And waaait-a-second. What do Minnie Mouse and the astronaut represent?
The astronaut represents exploration and the unknown. Minnie Mouse represents commercialism.
They both represent the future. And you know what else they represent?
Don’s work.
So I just want to say that while the Gypsy and the Hobo was one of the most emotional episodes of television I’ve ever watched, and the final scene was oh-so touching, I just don’t know. I don’t know if the Drapers finding themselves a family of gypsies and hobos is quite as deep-sigh-of-relief as it might appear.
60 Responses to “Gypsies, tramps and thieves”
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@53
Right. So I guessed at what I'm supposed to get from the character. But sadly, I don't.
I'd like to correct my typo. Suzanne's married surname was Vaillancourt at the time Cohen wrote the song.
I've been rethinking Suzanne in the last couple weeks, trying to see her how Dick Whitman sees her, what she evokes in him. Your clue that Suzanne Farrell was the inspiration for Suzanne and confirmation that Matt has that song in mind encourages me. She first appears in Love Among the Ruins, and while Don reaching down to touch the grass is very much a D. H. Lawrence erotic symbol, I was also struck with Don trying to ground himself, and the reference to the Robert Browning poem is so expressive of the yearning to reach down below the hustle and bustle of the struggle for filthy lucre back to a deeper, lost or forgotten existence. I’ve got a lot from the hobo discussions elsewhere on this site, but I don’t think we’ve gotten anywhere near the gypsy motif yet.
I ordered the book “Gypsies and the British Imagination, 1807-1930†by Deborah Epstein Nord from Amazon tonight after reading “Gypsies were both idealized and reviled by Victorian and early-twentieth-century Britons. Associated with primitive desires, lawlessness, cunning, and sexual excess, Gypsies were also objects of antiquarian, literary, and anthropological interest. As Nord demonstrates, British writers and artists drew on Gypsy characters and plots to redefine and reconstruct cultural and racial difference, national and personal identity, and the individual's relationship to social and sexual orthodoxies. Gypsies were long associated with pastoral conventions and, in the nineteenth century, came to stand in for the ancient British past. Using myths of switched babies, Gypsy kidnappings, and the Gypsies' murky origins, authors projected onto Gypsies their own desires to escape convention and their anxieties about the ambiguities of identity.†She develops how the gypsy became for poet Matthew Arnold “a focus for modern nostalgia, a pre-industrial figure untainted by the strange disease of modern life.â€
I too was born in 50.
Songs I’m thinking of listening to while I’m invoking the archtype:
Goodbye and Hello by Tim Buckley
Spanish Harlem Incident by Bob Dylan
http://www.dreamsleep.net/meaning-of-gypsy-dream….
Gypsy Dream Meaning
Psychological Meaning: The gypsies are a mysterious people surrounded by legends and occult stories and may therefore represent your shadow- the undiscovered part of yourself. Alternatively, the dream may be suggesting that you look to the future. What will your circumstances be like in years to come if you continue as you are?
@55
Ah, yes, and Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.
"… And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns, Who among them would try to impress you?"
Also, wouldn't these people have read D.H. Lawrence's, "The Virgin and the Gypsy?" (One of my favorites, and the movie as well — but that did not come out until 1970).
Many women in Don's life are boheiman gypsy types on the edge of society.
Anna is a "foutune teller". She offers to give don a reading with her tarot cards.
Midge is a beat nick.
There was the tryst wuth the rich girl in California.
Suzanne is a free spirit.
This is a minor thing, and maybe someone else has already noted it elsewhere, but concerning the costumes…I just re-watched the episode. Sally says the costume she wants is at Woolworth's, Don talks about store-bought costumes being crap. When it's time for them to leave, he picks up Sally to give her a hug, and sort of whispers in her ear "and they have a Woolworth's in Philly, too." So it sounds like he was giving in on the store-bought costumes, but they ended up with homemade after all.