Basket of Kisses

The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home,
‘Tis summer, the darkies are gay;
The corn-top’s ripe and the meadow’s in the bloom,
While the birds make music all the day.^*

Matt Weiner has been criticized often enough for not quite getting there about race. We have, on this site, discussed “Magical Negroes” in Mad Men, and the Sheila storyline ended up fizzling in an unsatisfying way.

So now that he’s decided to address it, it’s not just a scene or an incident, no, it’s Matt, so it’s a holistic embrace of everything privilege; the privilege of race, of gender, of age, of money, of social class, and of how all of those things intersect.

Surely the most privileged person on the show is Roger Sterling; even more so than YodaBert, because Roger was born with his silver spoon. Roger is so incredibly privileged that he can parade an embarrassingly young wife and make a lot of powerful people treat her politely, and do it, nauseatingly, in blackface to boot. Blackface! (And don’t even try to say “sign of the times;” privileged people still do this). Roger can make people swallow any kind of bad behavior, because he’s got the money, class privilege, and power.

The entire episode is a sorting hat of who has more power than whom. Some people go to parties wearing enormous summer hats, some people spend the weekend at the office. Don and Betty go to the party, old people, children, and black servants stay home. Carla has every reason to tell Gene he hasn’t accused her “yet;” she knows all about who’s at the bottom of the pecking order. Knowing she could lose her job over this is a moment-by-moment correspondence with Roger’s blackface; Gene may be a demented white man who doesn’t know what year it is, but he’s a white man, and her blackface doesn’t wash off.

Don and Connie reminisce about impoverished childhoods in the bar. Don used to piss in car trunks; isn’t that what this episode is about? Who’s at the bar, and who’s pissing in trunks?

Paul & Jeff went to Princeton, but Jeff has more power because Paul was there on scholarship; Paul is still angry about it, and still trying to compensate. Peggy went to secretarial school, but she has an office with a door, and a secretary. If you can close a door you can get high behind the door, and if you have to sit outside you can disapprove—from outside.

Who has money and who doesn’t? Medical residents don’t, and children don’t. Sally experiments with stealing a little social privilege, but there’s a cost involved. Don knows the cost. Joan doesn’t, but she’s learning. Surgical chiefs sit at the head of the table even in someone else’s home; Emily Post and being socially correct conveys a kind of power, but not enough to counteract the pecking order of hospital politics.

And finally, Don and Betty. We know that Matt loves the movie A Place in the Sun; he referenced it in S1 and S2; it’s the story of a hard-working underprivileged, handsome man (Montgomery Clift) who falls in love with a beautiful privileged debutante (Elizabeth Taylor), first seen as a vision in white. He visits Taylor at their summer place in Long Island. Clift also has an affair with a factory girl (Shelly Winters) whom he gets pregnant; we are left wondering if he drowned her, or if her death was really accidental.

All of this is echoed in the episode; the beautiful people, the wealthy Long Island location, Betty in white and pregnant, both women at once. And there’s Don in the Monty Clift role, realizing that he definitely, absolutely, does not want to be Roger. There’s Betty, his vision in white, and what Don wants, I think, is not to be the fool that Roger is, nor abuse his power, but to do right, at last, by his wife.

^*My Old Kentucky Home, by Stephen Foster. The official Kentucky State Song, the lyrics were changed in 1986 when Representative Carl Hines, the only black member of the Kentucky General Assembly, objected to the singing of the word “darkies.”

I sit down and watch the pilot from time to time, most times showing it to a friend because I am always actively recruiting And what I noticed this last time is that it’s right there, from the very first—Marge is one of the switchboard operators, and Peggy’s roommate is Marjory. Come to think of it, in Ladies Room we first hear about Margaret Sterling.

You’ve got Bobby, Don’s son, and Bobbie Barrett.

Pete’s wife Trudy, Bud’s wife Judy, Betty’s sister-in-law Judy (thanks, Deb).

Juanita Carson (Betty’s old roommate/current party girl), Sarah Beth Carson.

(On a separate note, AMC refers to Sara Beth Carson, but the credits on the show itself spell it with an h.)

And similarly but on a somewhat different note, there are the variations. The most played with is Betty/Betsy/Birdie/Elizabeth. But there is also Carla/Carly.

We’ve never asked Matt about it, but my feeling is that it is a deliberate touch of realism. Like having the set wardrobes for the characters, pieces or outfits that you see the characters wear more than once.

On most television shows, names are carefully assigned–no repeats. In fact there’s a whole formula to it. Many shows, particularly the soaps, choose character names that are just unique enough that they don’t remind you of anyone, but not so weird that they are implausible. (And often those names wind up setting name trends–Party of Five gave us a lot of Julias.)

The world is not so orderly. Names overlap. And that’s what I think Matt was up to with this. Distinguishing his show from the others by not distinguishing it from life.

Lionsgate, this is dedicated to you:
(more…)

Part 1–The section from the recent Fresh Air interview where MW discusses the opening credits

(In response to Terry Gross saying it reminds her of September 11th)

I did the opening credits almost two and a half years years ago. And I had this image of this man falling out the window because if the show was on the air in 1960, they’d be talking about the stock market crash. When businessmen jump out of the window, it means something is wrong. I did not want it to be part of September 11th, other than the way that is part of our consciousness that something’s wrong, and that this man is metaphorically in freefall, and that canyon of buildings which are covered with images from his life in advertising–that’s the world that he’s falling through.

And then you just see him; that this is going on in his mind in the end, and that he’s sitting there in the pose of perfect confidence. And that’s what I was interested in, was a psychological state. It’s funny that no matter how much you abstract that image… it’s so powerful, and he’s a modern man he’s got a suit on and it’s computer animation and there’s a lot about it that should technically distance you from it, but it doesn’t. And the music is falling also… so for me I wanted to introduce people to this character and I only was allowed thirty seconds; the Sopranos opening titles are a minute and a half, and you can tell a whole story . So I had to go to the graphic punch of that.  And AMC is in New York, I lived in New York; I understand what this image means to people. This is part of the message of the show; it’s unpleasant and it reminds you of something.

Part 2–Betty falling through a canyon of buildings

A Night to Remember… Betty’s storyline in this episode, though it would have proven frustrating for the viewers, would have made for a perfectly respectable season closer. I know it wasn’t planned this way, but I’m glad it wound up that there was breathing room afterwards, via a week off to watch the Emmys.

First, she rides. Hard. Trying to shake it off; all the horrid feelings. And hugs that horse, gives it love for helping her, and being willing to connect with her the way no one else is willing. She turns to the horse the way she turned to Glen.

Then she starts in on Don. Not nearly as sweet as when she gave him her ‘honeydo’ list in Marriage of Figaro.

Later she uhh… beats on that poor, innocent chair.

For the dinner party, she is poised perfection. Her smile never breaks, even as she and Carla are cleaning up. And the second that she is alone with Don, she goes to the ledge. (more…)