Look at your hands, they’re as soft as a woman’s. What do you do? What do you make? You grow bullshit!
Archie Whitman, Seven Twenty Three
Because I’m sick of being batted around like a ping pong ball. Who the hell is in charge, a bunch of accountants trying to make a dollar into a dollar ten? I want to work. I want to build something of my own. How do you not understand that? You did it yourself forty years ago.
Don Draper, Shut the Door. Have a Seat
This wasn’t an accident. This was a trajectory.
Maybe that’s all I need to say. We know that Matt Weiner wrote this season from the finale backwards; that he saw where Don was going and wrote his way towards it. What it took was Don to see himself and his life in a particular way. What it took was Don seeing that he grew bullshit.
More than that, he hallucinated Archie in the very episode in which a nasty bit of business nicknamed him “Cadillac.” How shocking that must be to the man who is still deeply in touch with pissing in the trunks of the cars of “fancy people.” He befriended Connie while connecting to the Dick Whitman side of himself, and a mere three months later he’s “Cadillac,” and he’s the target for the rage, violence, and robbery of someone who sees himself as an outsider. Himself, and not Don; Don is inside, Don’s an ad-man, Don grows bullshit.
I sense this is an old argument between Archie and Dick. I wonder, did Dick begin writing when he was young? Show signs of creativity, which Archie would equate with soft hands? Whatever it was, Dick set himself apart from Archie and defined himself as having different values, but ultimately, the values are shared, aren’t they? We don’t escape from our childhoods that much. So Archie’s criticism, even in hallucination, even over a quarter century after Archie is dead, still means more to Don than perhaps any other judgment.
Don needs a father, we know that. Needs Archie, needs Connie, needs YodaBert. And he desperately needs for YodaBert to make something with him, to grow something other than bullshit.
22 Responses to “You grow bullshit”
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Nothing deeper to add than more love for Joseph Culp as Archie. Best TV ghost evar.
My fave TV daddy ghost/vote for best daddy ghost is Richard Jenkins as Nathaniel Fisher on “Six Feet Under.” But I agree that Joseph Culp is tops as Depression bad dad.
Not sure if Deborah’s is saying Archie equates creativity with BS. Or specifically ad man grows BS.
I don't that Deb is saying that Archie equates creativity with BS, but with softness. The bs is perhaps, his attack mode.
It's also not so different from what Pete's father said to him in S1–I don't have time to pull the quote right now.
And look, I worked in advertising, and am in a sister field now. My old agency they would say to us, We don't make anything. What we sell is ideas. So for production-minded folks, maybe it's true. Archie thinks Dick/Don may as well be selling snake oil.
Archie Whitman isn't what you'd consider to be a sympathetic character, but it's important to take into account how someone living in a rural area in the 1930s might view advertising.
It's not hard to imagine that just about any type of sales pitch would be greeted with skeptisism and suspucsion. This attitude would also carry over to Dick/Don's profession.
Growing up, I can remember my Dad, a first generation American who was born in the early 1920s, saying more than once, "They're just trying to sell you something." And while we lived in the suburbs of a major city, he came from "country folk" stock, and his was a fairly common attitude.
Here, from a few years ago, is George Carlin's "city folk" take on advertising … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvhsJyecpLc
Ack!
Looks like I'm in the market for a Spell Checker!
Make that: "skepticism and suspicion".
Don't we all feel that advertisers often take advantage of us, selling us things that are useless, dangerous, over-priced or even lethal? Salesmen in general are not trusted, and ad men are the ultimate salesmen.
I feel as though Don's slow fade to Dick, this season — his internal collapse, that sense of things falling apart, when really (from my perspective) they were falling together — was deeply connected to Betty's rejection of him.
It's not just a father thing, you see? It's mother, it's wife. And in "Shut the Door. Have a Seat," Don finally gets to see her base reason for rejecting him. It all comes clear: it's because his hands were never soft enough.
To be good enough for Bets, Don would have to have been born so well that it wouldn't have mattered where he worked, what he did. Betty wanted a figurehead, a Henry. She wanted the precise opposite of what his father wanted from him.
Don could never have stayed in that marriage. Can we leave our dead parents behind? Can we change who we are by birth? I doubt it. And Bets doesn't strike me as the type who'd settle for second.
Not twice, anyway.
Another thought about advertising and rural Americans …
It is said that for many rural folks in the first third of the 20th century, the Bible and the Sears-Roebuck catalog were often the only books to be found around the house.
Sears mail order advertising brought many useful household items to them. You could even purchase a kit that could be build into a home.
One sales approach that Sears used back then, offered a means to "Try-On-Approval," so the customer could evaluate an item before making a payment on it.
And, in the “little house" out back, the catalog served as reading material – as well as a rudimentary "Charmin" that wasn't what you'd call "squeezably soft"!
http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/sears/s…
"I sense this is an old argument between Archie and Dick. I wonder, did Dick begin writing when he was young? Show signs of creativity, which Archie would equate with soft hands?"
I'm not sure it's so much that Dick was creative or arty, but that he was restless and singularly unproductive, even as a little boy. It's the first thing his stepmother says to him in "The Hobo Code": "Dick Whitman, stop diggin' holes! Build a fire under the cauldron." In other words, stop doing worthless nonsense, and start "building" something that actually matters.
It's worth remembering, too, that over in Korea, Don Draper is born digging holes. Technically, he's digging fortification positions, but it's probably not a coincidence that in the flashback immediately prior, Real Don complains that "I'm supposed to be building swimming pools, not latrines." And while he's in his hole under attack, Dick pisses himself. There's definitely this symbolic sense, at least, that they're digging privies. They're growing bullshit, as it were.
And that's really what our Don Draper is about for a huge part of his life. He's never built anything. He just digs holes in which to excrete all his pain and loneliness — whether it's creatively, by spinning stories about how "whatever you're doing is okay. You are okay," or almost literally, by pissing his resentment into the trunks of rich folk while they live it up obliviously in their country club. (The latter of which casts an interesting light on Real Dick's complaint in the previous paragraph; if car trunks can serve as urinals, perhaps swimming pools are not as far removed from latrines as he imagines!)
But as season 3 begins, Don has finally started to move on from digging holes. One of the most mysteriously potent images of the season premiere is that shot of the milk boiling over on the stove — he's finally built that fire under the cauldron, just like Abigail demanded so many years before. He's finally working to create a real life for himself, where what he does actually matters, instead of a fantasy life where all he does is throw shit in a hole to hide it.
Er, in that second-to-last paragraph, "Rick Dick" should be "Real Don," obviously. :p
I thought the death of Archie in the final episode was more than just a literal recollection on Don's part — I trust it was a symbolic death of his ghost haunting Don.
We can only hope that's the case for Don in Season Four. Him building something new, without Archie's sense of disapproval hovering over him.
I think that is all in Don's mind that Betty had rejected him because of his background . . . an excuse to run from his own lies to and mistreatment of Betty over the years. And if Matt Weiner is trying to sell to us that Betty simply rejected Don for being the son of a prostitute – then he didn't do a very good job in writing the end of the Draper marriage. Especially since Betty has been aware of his poverty-stricken background since the beginning of their marriage . . . and aware that he had been raised on a farm since Roger had outed him three years earlier.
Which episode verified that Henry Francis came from a privileged? And does anyone know what was said that confirmed this?
Especially since Betty has been aware of his poverty-stricken background since the beginning of their marriage . . . and aware that he had been raised on a farm since Roger had outed him three years earlier.
DRush76, sorry, but nope. At the beginning of S1, Betty didn’t even know if Don had a nanny as a child. And I think that Roger having outed him three years earlier goes perfectly with everything else.
We entered this marriage in March of 1960, and what we watched was the beginnings of the end of that marriage. It started with Betty’s numb hands, which ultimately was her inability to allow herself to think the bad thoughts–my husband cheats and I don’t know much about him. The relationship has had its ups and downs in the 3 1/2 years from then until the end of S3, but that’s plenty of time for a marriage to unravel. I don’t think that Don’s lack of breeding is the main reason Betty is rejecting him, but I think it’s valid as a component.
And no, Henry Francis used to move furniture. He is not so uptown as people seem to think.
I do agree that Matt had us (the viewers) bridge a few more gaps than we were able to. To him it was clear that this marriage was over, but with all the time spent this season on the marriage, I would have liked more information in between the tenderness at the end of the Gypsy and the Hobo and her declaration in the Grownups. I don’t know if I buy that Kennedy’s assassination rattled Betty loose.
I don’t think that Don’s lack of breeding is the main reason Betty is rejecting him, but I think it’s valid as a component.
And no, Henry Francis used to move furniture. He is not so uptown as people seem to think.
If Don's lack of breeding was a component of the breakup of the Draper marriage, why did Betty scream about her feeling that she wasn't enough for him in their last quarrel? Why turn to a man that she knows doesn't have much breeding, himself? Also, did Weiner confirm in any of the episodes that Don's parentage led to her decision to divorce him? I know that she had bitterly complained to Henry that Don had been lying to her throughout their marriage. But I've never seen anything from Betty's POV that Don's parentage was a component to the breakup of their marriage. Have you? If so, in which scene?
I think DRush76 @12 makes a good point re: that scene, about what might be in Don's mind.
Betty confirms Don's accusation, " . . .and now I'm not good enough for some spoiled mainline brat?" They aren't her words, they're his. I always saw this whole showdown as classic psych projection on Don's part. He's exhausted and drunk and completely unanchored in both his personal and professional life at this particular point. He's spitting out all his own insecurities and the doubts about himself at Betty.
"Because you're good, and everyone else in the world is bad. You're so hurt, so brave with your little white nose in the air…"
The "little white nose" might seem only about Betty but earlier in the day, Bert tells him he didn't think Don had the stomach to do what was needed in order to build his own shop. In essense, Bert is saying that Don has always put himself above the sausage making in the ad biz, presented his great creative ideas but let someone less wonderful like Pete or Roger hammer out the ugly details of making the money. Don has feared this to be true, that he wasn't good enough or worthy of all the success because of the guilt he carried about the secrets he kept.
". . . All along you've been building a life raft."
This from the guy with the drawer full of concealed cash who has fled every time before when cornered.
". . .and now I'm not good enough for some spoiled mainline brat?"
All projection of his self-loathing and personal doubt.
And Betty agrees because that's the way those brutal battles between spouses usually play out. If one side is showing a weak spot, hit him as hard as you can there. It doesn't matter if it's fair or completely accurate, you're both past that point. You're hurt and you want to inflict some hurt back; just seize on those words and stick him right back in the ribs with them.
Those fights at that point hardly ever involve honesty and fairness.
Betty couldn't trust Don anymore. The curtain was pulled back and the sham was revealed. She wasn't as repulsed by the actual man she saw back there as she was repulsed by complete thorough nature of the deception. The poverty issue was Don's weak self-excuse and Betty just opportunistically knifed him with it.
…
I think less of me is totally onto something here, and it also goes to Roberta's comment. During the discussion of the Grownups, I noted that Betty didn't leave Don until she realized that their life was not that much different post-revelation than before. I really think Betty at the end of the Gypsy and the Hobo was more than willing to continue with Don, but she mistakenly though their marital problems would be resolved now that Don was no longer lying.
Then Kennedy is killed and Don is still treating her as a child and not a partner. He dismisses her concerns, sends her to her room for a nap and refuses to engage with her past his paternalistic "everything will be OK." The problems with their marriage began with Don hiding his past, but they are far more complex than just his deception. He can't hear that, so she uses whatever she can to demonstrate to him that she is done with the marriage.
I find it interesting that Betty, who has been treated as a doll by Don, as a possession to be taken out and showed off when it's helpful, refuses to simply accept Henry's statements that "he'll take care of her" and her children. Every time he makes a comment like that, she reminds him it's not that simple and signals, to me, that she has gained some insight and is growing up. I still wonder whether she'll really marry Henry.
"I think less of me is totally onto something here, and it also goes to Roberta’s comment. During the discussion of the Grownups, I noted that Betty didn’t leave Don until she realized that their life was not that much different post-revelation than before."
I think exactly the opposite is true. Betty only really breaks with Don once Oswald is assassinated — "What is going on!" she exclaims, not with recognition that things are back the way they were but with horrified confusion at how far out of whack they remain. In this moment, she realizes that her life is never going to go back to normal, no matter how sweetly Don reassures her that they eventually will.
"Then Kennedy is killed and Don is still treating her as a child and not a partner. He dismisses her concerns, sends her to her room for a nap and refuses to engage with her past his paternalistic 'everything will be OK.'"
I don't think it's paternalistic; I think it's true. This is one of the rare moments when I find Don's "move forward" attitude absolutely appropriate. It's worth noting that Don doesn't set himself above poor little Betty when he tells her to take a pill and go to sleep — later in the episode, he himself does exactly the same thing.
"I find it interesting that Betty, who has been treated as a doll by Don, as a possession to be taken out and showed off when it’s helpful, refuses to simply accept Henry’s statements that 'he’ll take care of her' and her children.
But ultimately she accepts Henry's assurances, agreeing with him that she doesn't need to fight Don for every penny, and sitting by while he tells the divorce lawyer, "We want this over as quickly as possible." To me that says that Betty isn't chafing under Don's paternalistic yoke, but eager for another husband who can take control of things in a way Don has shown himself incapable of.
"I do agree that Matt had us (the viewers) bridge a few more gaps than we were able to. To him it was clear that this marriage was over, but with all the time spent this season on the marriage, I would have liked more information in between the tenderness at the end of the Gypsy and the Hobo and her declaration in the Grownups. I don’t know if I buy that Kennedy’s assassination rattled Betty loose."
Like I said, I buy the way it drove home her uncertainties — "If he's wrong about the country getting back to normal, how can I trust his lying ass when he says that our marriage can go back to the way it was as well?" But I do agree that there's something odd about the way the marriage/divorce arc was set up this season. On original viewing, it seemed to be a story about Betty trying to make her marriage work, but in retrospect it's actually a story about Betty finding the strength to break up her marriage. Maybe if I watch the season over again it'll all cohere around the second outcome, but looking back, it just seems like a story that wasted a lot of time going in one direction if it was ultimately going to end up taking the exact opposite path.
CPT_Doom– Thanks for tying that all together in, I guess I can say, a nice holiday bow! I agreed with parts of what both DRush and Roberta were each workin’ there but I couldn’t step back to see what parts worked together, I think you did.
The paternalism, evidenced in the Don Draper role he re-assumed so reflexively, was still Don’s default persona for interacting with Betty, even after all, or most, of the secret revelations. And that had to be confusing and unnerving to her.
They went three weeks from the shoebox of horror to JFK and I agree, I think she thought he would interact with her differently and I think he was trying but the JFK crisis appeared to make Don lurch back into some protective shell, (Hey– Ruth, Don’s a turtle!!) the role of the strong, silent, (may I say) Gary Cooper type of tough alpha husband when Betty really wanted and expected something entirely different after what they had been thru. Something more like an integrated adult partner rather than the part of all-knowing protective hubby. I think that convinced her she couldn’t rely on the truthfulness of the impression of Don that she would be able to see from then on.
Does that make sense? I’m pecking feverishly away on break in here.
Someone clean that up for me if you can. thx.
I agree with Dev M that Don’s suggestion Betty take a chill pill was not totally out of line. My own family–Irish Catholic Democrats in Texas–was very, very sad when JFK was murdered. And upset when Oswald was shot. But my mother did not scream & rave. Perhaps because she was “lucky” enough to have been widowed 10 years previously; she had her responsibilities & a sense of proportion.
I think Henry’s offer to marry Betty had more to do with her decision to ditch Don than any angst about a natrional tragedy. Will she use him as a stepping stone to independence–or just bow her neck to his paternalistic yoke? One of the questions for next season. But, to me, far from the most interesting one.
I'm with DRush76 – that was the chip on Don;s shoulder talking during that fight.
Less, I agree with you. Betty loved Don. She married him in spite of her father's disapproval. She knew or suspected that Don was not her social equal. Don felt that he was not good enough for Betty all along. Just as he never thought he would work in a building like Sterling Cooper's, he also never thought he would have a classy, mainline girl for a wife. When he gained both things, he did not ever feel equal to them and in many ways he felt confined or bound by them. Hence, his remarks about not wanting to sign a contract because they would then "own" him and what Hobo wants to be owned by anyone or anything? The wedding ring was also a sign of his being owned by a superior woman and he could not relax in that situation.
Betty confirms Don’s accusation, “ . . .and now I’m not good enough for some spoiled mainline brat?†They aren’t her words, they’re his.
Yes. He could have said, "You're a maneating bitch from hell!" and she would have said, "That's right!" I think she was upset by the evidence that he hasn't been honest with her about having committed a felony, or why he wasn't speaking to his family, on top of his being incredibly patronizing towards her on pretty much a constant basis, on top of all the cheating…but I think it would have bothered her just as much if he was an upper-class identity thief who had been paying hush money to the theftee's widow on a monthly basis for longer than he's known his own wife. All she had to read were the words "Anna Draper," and she was talking to a lawyer. This was before she knew about him being a "whore child."
It was S2 before we heard Don mention growing up on a farm to Sally, but Betty didn't look too surprised to hear it, so I tend to think she at least knew that much. But "farm" doesn't necessarily translate to "impoverished," hence the "nanny" question. When she said, "I knew you were poor" in G&H, "poor" to her probably just meant considerably less financially advantaged than herself, not necessarily living on bread and gravy kind of "poor." I think she knew that Don was a "self-made man," but she just had no idea how far he had to hoist himself up, or whose bootstraps he'd had to pilfer in order to do so.
But yeah, Oswald getting shot…last straw. She doesn't know what to believe anymore, about anything.