Basket of Kisses

Donielle Artese shoots the breeze with hullaballoo - Part I

Okay, I know I’ve been promising this for days and weeks and more, but life is kicking my butt right now. Here is the first part of my conversation with Donielle Artese, who plays Sheila White, the ex-girlfriend of Paul Kinsey. There’s still a lot (A LOT) more to come, but I thought I’d whet your whistles with a teensy bit of our very long, but interesting conversation.

Donielle Artese (Sheila White) flirts with fans at the Mad Men Revue

hullaballoo I’m with the lovely Donielle Artese. She plays Sheila White on Mad Men. She just kicked Paul to the curb and…

Donielle Nooooo! (Laughs)

hullaballoo Heh, heh. So, to start off, I’d like you to tell us a little about who you are as an actress, then a little about your experience on the show. I checked your IMDB page. It’s got some stuff, not a lot, so give me some background on who you are. Where you grew up, where’d you go to school, did you always want to be an actor, that sort of thing. (more…)

This blog article linked to us, and subsequently we learned that the author is a Basketcase, but I wanted to make sure everyone sees it. Aulelia is a black woman based in London, offering a unique and personal perspective on the portrayal of black characters, especially Sheila.

Sheila’s physical beauty means she is contradicting the view that beauty is wholly Eurocentric or only Eurocentric.

I love this observation! Black women of 1963 were generally only regarded as beautiful if they had European features; thin lips, pointed nose, lighter skin, etc. Sheila is none of these things. She is a great beauty with obviously African features.

Many Basketcases (myself included) were unhappy with how the Sheila storyline played out. But Aulelia sees it differently:

Sheila as a character hinted to the fact that black women in society is an ambigious position from the point of view of non-blacks during that time.

I hope we continue to see interesting black actors, and actors of other races, behave as more than background in Mad Men.

Look, it’s JFK, and you’re not Jackie; you’re definitely his type. I’ve met him.

—Jimmy Barrett, The Benefactor

So much in that line! Setting us up for Maidenform, with the Jackie/Marilyn compare. Also the casual reference to JFK’s cheating ways, in the company of regular married folk.

Personally, I see Betty as a Jackie, just blonde, but that night she wore her Marilyn pink dress.

I must’ve been around five or so and sleeping at a friend’s house when we snuck out of our beds and turned on the TV and there it was — the scene in Hitchcock’s The Birds in which the farmer lies on the floor with his eyes pecked out. It remains one of the most quietly terrifying moments I’ve seen on film.

Of course, like everything old Hitch did, there was humor in the exploration of fear. Bird is British slang for “chick” or a young woman. The Birds, in short, was Hitchcock’s exploration of female rage.

Now, given the strong Hitchcockian influence on Mad Men, in this blog’s previous incarnation we hashed out the significance of Don calling Betty Birdie in Season 1, the same season in which she shoots her neighbor’s pigeons when the latter scares the wits out of Sally. Significantly, Don stopped calling Betty Birdie in Season 2. This was the season in which Betty stopped being just a pretty young thing and began to grow into a real woman, one who is willing to take control over her life. And the transformative vehicle for it all was her rage.

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We’ve had some discussion recently about the S2 opener, For Those Who Think Young, in the light of the completed season. I had written, originally, that I thought it fell a little flat. Immediately following the viewing of the season finale, Matt Weiner said to me that I should go re-watch it now; that it’s all in there.

I had no doubt. It’s what I’d said initially, that the episode felt like so much was being set up, and that we had a rich and interesting season to look forward to.

I still don’t think it was a completely successful stand-alone episode, but also, I don’t know if it was a successful vehicle to engage new viewers. And I think that’s one of the charges of creating a season opener, especially a season opener of a show like Mad Men; much celebrated and little watched.

There certainly was a lot that was interesting on its own; the scenes with Peggy and Lois, with Betty and the mechanic, with Joan and Roger, with Don and Peggy, to name a few. I think there were many moments with the potential to make a newbie want more. But as an hour of viewing (or 48 minutes), I don’t know if the whole piece grabbed you by the grab-ables. It will never be my favorite.

But I admit, it gets better each time I watch it. Like any Mad Men episode.

All of that said, I’m going to list some moments that are quite the ‘ah-ha’ in retrospect. A lot of these have already been brought up here by Basketcases, and I’m home sick today and too lazy tired to go through all the comments to give credit where credit may be due, so… sorry. Regardless, it will be fun to have them all in one place, and any I neglect to mention, I’m sure you’ll be right there to add on. (more…)

Can I just admit that I’m a bit starved for attention?

Maybe it’s the coming of the Winter Blues (Seasonal Affective Disorder - October thru July, when MM is on hiatus), or maybe I’m jealous of all the great posts I’m seeing from everyone else.  But recently Deb or Roberta (can’t remember which one - can I just call you “Deberta”?) made a point of inviting everyone to stick around between seasons, and cleverly mentioned that now is when we get to the really good stuff.

So I’m thinking that with 26 eps in the can(on), why not recognize the best 38%, otherwise known as …

THE TOP 10 MAD MEN EPISODES OF ALL TIME

#10 - New Amsterdam

Our introduction to the confused, frustrated world of Peter Dyckman Campbell.  He’s considered privileged by those on the outside, but looked at as inferior within his family.  So much happens in NA, it’s hard to keep up when you watch it.  We see bitter office politics (Bethlehem Steel, Pete gets canned), family drama, generational topics are addressed for the first time.  Also, we get our first glimpse of what’s turned into a prominent theme of the show … prostitution.  NA could have served as a Pilot under the right circumstances.

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Sorry this took so long.

I’ve been reading the Tarot for almost thirty years, and I’ve been teaching it for maybe twenty, so when my favorite show incorporated a Tarot reading in the episode The Mountain King, I was fascinated.

I have tried to make this completely accessible, even if you know nothing about Tarot at all. There’s illustration and everything.

As we discovered in our interview with Matt Weiner, this is a reading that Matt received. Nonetheless, for the purposes of this analysis, I’m reading it as if it is a reading that Anna Draper gave Dick Whitman in 1963, otherwise it has no purpose. The reading given to Matt by his reader is private to their relationship. A reading combines objective and subjective; cards have meanings, but how those meanings are interpreted is up to the reader. Matt’s subjective reading is not the same as Dick/Don’s subjective reading, it’s a jumping off point.

Earlier I’d said there were no reversals in the reading, but I was wrong. Both the Sun and the Three of Cups are reversed. Neither Roberta nor I noticed the Sun was reversed when we re-watched the scene together, I think because Anna looks with such delight at the Sun, the reversal didn’t register. Use of reversals makes sense; no-reversals is a more modern, New Age sort of thing, in keeping with avoiding negativity. Earlier occultists didn’t avoid negativity.

I looked up which version of the Celtic Cross reading Anna used. It’s not from Eden Gray, whose 1960 book The Tarot Revealed was hugely popular. Gray was the author I first studied; her simple yet rich explanations make the Tarot accessible; her later Mastering the Tarot is still the book I recommend people start with.

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Meditations in an Emergency

Like in life, I’m a slow learner here. First viewing, I was pretty disappointed with this as a finale. It felt more like an episode that could have run at any point in the season. I just didn’t feel the urgency of what was happening for some reason. I’m all, “Where’s the Kodak pitch?”

But upon a couple more viewings, I’m coming around to it more and more. The writing is superb (duh). The parallel crises. The performances - so crisp. It definitely gets under your skin. So here we go … the final, erratic Season 2 installment of my foray into not-so-live blogging.

DOCTOR’S OFFICE

Bambi. What’s this? Someone’s born? Someone dies? They haven’t spoken a word and already I’m confused …

Opening scene in FTWTY – Don at a doctor. Opening scene in Meditations – Betty at a doctor. I remember Mr. Weiner saying that the only doctor to treat any patient with compassion was Peggy’s ER doctor in The Wheel. This one’s not overtly a jerk, but pretty paternalistic nonetheless.  No, strike that.  He’s a putz.

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There’s something disturbing about the fact that Sally’s knock-knock joke is about a girl being drowned by her mother.

Just saying.

Just for the record, I’m at the bottom of page seven of my transcription and I’m not at the halfway point yet. And I have a day job. So here it is, middle of the freakin’ night, and I’m just done.

You’re getting excerpts to tease and excite and enthrall you. More to come soon. Really.

About Basketcases:
Matt Weiner: I was saying, I was talking to Linda afterwards [after our finale party] and I was saying, everyone’s so smart. It’s literally like your fantasy of an audience, it really is. I love it.
Roberta Lipp: Well good. It’s been an honor to be the people to pull that together.
Deborah Lipp: You’ve created a literary audience.
MW: That makes me very happy.

About music on the show:
MW: I have a great composer and I get to pick good songs. For 26 episodes I have not exhausted my iPod yet, I’m very happy.
RL: Nice. Great.
MW: I’ve been collecting music for a long time, and I know the period, and I know the period before it. I like to be able to go all over the place.
RL: Yeah, I love a lot that you’re not married to the year that it’s set in. I hate that on TV.
MW: I do too! And I always hear people, “Why was The Decemberists in there?” And I’m like, it’s not on the radio, why shouldn’t I be able to use it? It, it’s such a kickass song and it’s exactly about what’s going on there.
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