Basket of Kisses

Paul Levinson may have the best headline for a Mad Men recap: Welcome to the Hotel California. He asks a question I think is worth chewing on:

But back to Dylan - Peggy says she’s heard him on the radio. In 1962, Dylan did have his first album out. Nothing from it was played on WABC or WMCA or any of the rock ‘n’ roll AM stations in New York. There was no FM as we now know it until 1966. Bob Fass and Radio Unnameable didn’t get to WBAI until 1963 … So where did Peggy hear Dylan on the radio? I can’t think of any radio station, but I haven’t had a chance to do any research, so I’m all ears…

Often, when we think we’ve spotted an anachronism, we’re wrong. This show is very well-researched. But this is an intriguing question and I think Levinson might be right.

Where were you when the brains were handed out?
~Johnny Ketchum to someone in Son of a Gunfighter

Now one thing I am bad at is westerns. Guy movies in general. I can’t focus or care enough to figure out who’s who. Ya should’ve seen the pain I was in during Hunt for Red October. Which one is the good guy? Plus it was all dark and stuff… anyway, that’s why I can’t even tell you who he said it to. But I think it was Fenton.

Point is, that line jumped out at me. This is a 1965 film. I would have sworn that was a much more contemporary expression. If Weiner had put that line into an episode, I would’ve been all over questioning how anachronistic the usage was.

I have so much to learn.

• I picked up the August 4 edition of People while getting a pedicure and found a good review of Mad Men (4 out of 5 stars), by Michelle Tauber, which included the following:

  I confess: During its much-acclaimed first season, I was a Mad Men resister. The show struck me, a gen Xer with no fuzzy ’60s nostalgia, as a little dull, a lot male and way too small—I mean, really, who cares about a few Brylcreem-haired madison Avenue advertising guys when the fate of all mankind is at stake over on Battlestar Galactica?

  Okay, I know that ProgGrrl’s real name isn’t Michelle, but now I’m suspicious.

• Heather Mallick of CBC News Canada writes an entertaining anti-nostalgia piece. I can’t tell if she likes the show or not, but she enjoys the dark light it paints on 50s nostalgia, a darkness she shares.
• Mo Ryan follows up on the picture quality issue, discusses The Benefactor and Colin Hanks’s upcoming guest spot.

(more…)

This is in the realm of anachronism. Joan at Paul’s: A red bag with a green dress? In 1962? I don’t think so. At work three days later, a green knit set with contrasting red shoes, and the same red bag? In 1962?

I think NOT.

In Ladies Room, Sally plays with a dry cleaner bag and Betty scolds her, not for unsafe play, but for (presumably) dumping Mommy’s dry cleaning on the floor. Ho ho, funny! We’re so safe with our kids nowadays and back then they weren’t. It kinda stuck in my craw, then, because I remember that, only five years later, my mother was warning me that dry cleaner bags were unsafe.

Stuck in my craw but then I forgot it, until Roberta brought it up in conversation. So I looked it up (emphasis added).

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has duly noted that a reminder of this type [about the danger of dry cleaning bags] is in order since two or three new generations of American parents have appeared since the late 1950s when dry cleaner bag suffocation deaths first became a “cause celebre.” The danger of misuse of ultra-thin dry cleaner bags has probably become as much a part of American child safety folklore as the proverbial warning to children not to touch a hot stove. Even so, it is best to take nothing for granted where the safety of our children is concerned so let’s make sure those warnings are on all dry cleaner bags – education is still the answer here!

In the late 1950s The Society of the Plastics Industry, Inc. (SPI) sponsored an intensive nation-wide educational program to inform the public that ultra-thin plastic bags, particularly the type used for packaging by dry cleaners, were made for one-time use only and should not be reused in ways that might present a hazard to children. This program, which employed mass media facilities, the distribution of pamphlets and, most importantly, labeling of dry cleaner bags, was prepared and conducted in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now the Department of Health and Human Services); the American Academy of Pediatrics; the American Academy of General Practice; the National Safety Council; and the National Institute of Dry Cleaning.

You know, it’s very rare to find a full-blown, hardcore anachronism on Mad Men, so I’m kinda proud of myself.

Way back at the beginning of this blog, I quoted George Packer bitching about the IBM anachronism; the show uses the IBM Selectric introduced in 1961. Now, I have always thought it was minor, because let’s face it, “Anachronisms” is our least-used category. On the other hand, Matt Weiner is always saying what a persnickity “fetishist” he is, so it’s worth questioning.

Well, Weiner answers it on the commentary for Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. For those of you who don’t have the DVDs (and why is that, anyway?), here’s what he says.

The error is, more or less, on purpose. They could get the 1960 typewriters, but not enough of them. And they didn’t work. And they had manual carriage returns. So faking that they work, and doing the sound editing to make them sound as if they worked, was all too much. The coordination of sound editing with physical carriage returning (and he didn’t say so but I know for a fact that non-working manual returns are at high risk of flying across the frickin room).

So he was able to get enough 1961 Selectrics, and they were less than 12 months out of date, and if they didn’t work you couldn’t see they didn’t work, and life was SO. MUCH. BETTER.

Matt, I forgive you.

Roberta and I found 3 phrases we thought were anachronisms. Commenter latenac did the research and none of them are, in fact, anachronistic for 1960. This isn’t the first time we’ve discovered this sort of thing.

Here’s an interesting question: Why did they sound as if they were?

I think it’s because people in the movies and TV of 1960 didn’t talk much like the real people of 1960; certainly not to the extent that realistic dialogue exists (or attempts to exist, depending upon the skill of the writer) today.

This is one of Weiner’s themes, of course, that the people in Mad Men aren’t people in movies; they’re people who watch people in movies. 1960, I am so over you.

Roberta and I have been keeping a folder of potential anachronisms. It’s a very well-written show, of course, and therefore a very small folder. Here’s what we’ve got:

In 5G, Midge says to Don:

It must be so intense above 14th Street.

That strikes me as something we didn’t start saying until the 1980s. Calling things “intense” sounds kinda druggy/trippy; maybe mid-70s but I don’t believe earlier. I’m interested in any memories of the usage of this word in that way. Anyone?

In Red in the Face, there are two military phrases. First Betty says to Francine,

You’re my friend, are you here to do recon?

Later, after Roger throws up, Bert Cooper says to the Nixon guys,

Let’s let Roger regroup.

“Regroup” in particular sounds a little off for 1960, not something you’d say about one person. I’m guessing here, I’m not a linguist and I wasn’t alive at the time.

Thoughts?

In Long Weekend, Joan posts a memo on the bulletin board that the office will be closed on Labor Day.

Which means that’s not routine? That people didn’t know whether or not the office would be closed?

It’s sort of baffling. Does Sterling Cooper have no stated holiday policy? Do employees simply not know what their days off will be? And is Labor Day actually optional?

I checked up on this. Labor Day has been a holiday for a very long time. Business have been closed on Labor Day for over a hundred years, and workers in an office such as Sterling Cooper would certainly expect and know well in advance that Labor Day was a long weekend (hence the title).

This hovers on the edge of goof. It’s more one of those cheap TV tricks to remind the viewers of what’s going on, and put Joan in the right place at the right time. It’s the kind of “goof” that you wouldn’t notice on a lesser show, but because Mad Men rarely relies on stupid trickery, it stands out.

Or I’m too obsessed. Either way.

Everyone (including, let’s be truthful, me) made fun of Bush for calling himself ” The Decider.” Typical Bushism—guy can’t speak, right?

In Long Weekend, there’s a Kennedy commercial on TV that Don and Pete watch. In it, Kennedy mocks Nixon for saying that as Eisenhower’s veep, Nixon made a lot of decisions and was a part of policy in the White House (sort of how Obama has mocked Clinton).

Anyway, in the commercial, a journalist refers to President Eisenhower as “the decider.” Which is sort of the opposite of an anachronism; it was treated as a coinage when Bush said it, but turns out, not so much.