On Children
Kahlil GibranYour children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
A friend of mine wrote this to me (each paragraph was a separate facebook comment), and I had to share it:
I love Sally. Usually the eldest daughter is “the good one” with some errant boy who is reactive. At first I thought they were going to go the traditional route-but then Sally went a bit south and I was impressed.
I think it is very common. If you have a depressed mother who is repressing her rage- why wouldn’t the daughter be “reactive” to have a chance at being “happy”?
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. (more…)
We can talk again in a few minutes about Don and Betty, Pete and Gundrun, Betty and Sally, even Peggy and Duck. We can talk about the value of any item that passes between any two people.
But first, some words about giving and taking.
If you are visiting me, and I want you to remember your visit with pleasure – perhaps even visit again! – I may give you something. What the thing is matters less than my giving it to you. My nephew gave my niece one of his Beanie Babies; I gave my sister a pendant; a young man in an elevator gave my mother a rose, at the end of her visit to my city. These are souvenirs: from the French, “to remember, to come to mind”, meaning “token of remembrance, memento”.
If your visit is unwelcome, if you are here as a representative of some force I dislike or reject – or even don’t much trust – I am unlikely to offer you anything. There may be something about you that threatens me, or I may just be having a bad day. Whatever my reasons for not wanting to entertain your visit, I need you to recognize that the timing is wrong. This will be critical to how we proceed. If you don’t respect my reluctance, all I might want you to do is leave.
If you do not leave, and instead either force something on me or take something from me, that is a trophy: also from the French (by way of the Greek), “a spoil or prize of war”.
The original Greek meaning of trophy refers to the words tropaios, “of defeat”; also trope, “a rout”, originally the enemy’s act of turning to flee (“a turning”).
Some examples of giving and taking in S3:
Duck gives Peggy a scarf. Peggy feels uncomfortable with what taking the scarf would mean. Duck suggests that she accept something far more personal from him. She does. This – no matter how some Basketcases feel about their pairing – is a modern definition of excellent gift giving.
“Baby Gene” (Betty) gives Sally a Barbie. Sally doesn’t buy it, not for a second, and not because she’s a big girl who believes more in death than in fairies. She throws that Barbie in the bushes – and then gets scared when it finds its spindly way back into her bedroom. Boo!
Pete gives Gundrun a dress, to replace the one she ruined. (“Aren’t you a lucky girl.”) She thanks him for it, but this is not enough. “Let’s celebrate,” he suggests (“I want you thank me on my terms,” is what he means), but she turns away from him and closes the door. Pete takes some time, drinks it over, then returns to Gundrun’s front door to take another opportunity. This time, she cannot refuse.
Don gives Betty a charm for her bracelet. The tiny gold copy of the Coliseum is a true memento of a city Don and Betty visited together: the city in which he worked and they played. But Betty reacts to Don’s gift in much the same way that Sally accepted her gift from “Baby Gene” - reluctantly at best.
I don’t know why Betty’s response to Don’s gift of the souvenir charm is so chilly. I don’t know whether she hates her “town”, her “friends” … or also, in that moment, her husband. Perhaps, as her daughter did a few weeks before, she sees the gift and senses a lie: either in the gift or the giver.
What I do know is that a souvenir is something that is offered by one who is free to do so, in a context that has to do with choice and compensation and the generosity of comfort. It is not something seized, whether it’s a rock from a town square or a centuries-old painting from a family home, by those who were never invited in and now feel at home taking what is not theirs.
Those are trophies. A word to the wise: don’t take what’s not yours. That shit comes around.
There was a total solar eclipse on July 20, 1963.
Don looks right into it. So does Betty. Miss Farrell tries to stop Don from looking into the sun. criticizes Don for not looking into the sun since it rarely happens. Henry Francis stops Betty from looking into the sun, but then she feels faint.
Obviously, the parallel here is intentional. Obviously, looking into the sun has meaning. It seems tied to the notion of daring and risking, doing exactly what you’re not supposed to do, and in this case, couples and coupling. Illicit connections are full of dangerous sun-gazing that can (we all know) burn out your eyes. Although Carlton isn’t at all sure that’s true (Carlton, who craved Helen Bishop in S1 and was caught cheating, and then lusted after the babysitter in S2).
We’ve been seeing a lot this season that Roger is out of it. Not on the org chart. A relic from past times. “Foolish.” Where does he stand on the sun-gazing issue?
Roger Sterling: I watched the sunrise today. Couldn’t sleep.
Don Draper: How was it?
Roger: Average.
Roger no longer lives a life of risk, of sunshine. The sunrise means nothing to him and the eclipse isn’t even on his radar. He’s no longer vital. Later, he will violate Don’s sense of propriety so much that he will be pushed aside.
There’s one more sun-gazing event. Don tells Carlton that Sally “has a crush on” Miss Farrell. Sally, previously (and controversially) referred to as a “little lesbian,” has a crush on her teacher. Obviously, Don is not thinking gay thoughts, but the audience has certainly been given these two statements. Sally’s crush is innocent, and her relationship with her teacher is fulfilling. We saw in The Fog that the teacher really relates to, really gets Sally.
So then, after a weird and uncomfortable conversation with Don, all about sex and desire and about saying no and about being inappropriate, after that, Miss Farrell gets under the box with Sally and they watch the eclipse together. Sally and her crush, doing it the way she’s supposed to do it (in the box), cuddling with someone.
In episode 1.10, Long Weekend, Rachel say to Don: “Is this, like, some solar eclipse? The end of the world? Just do whatever you want?”
So that’s part of it, too; the notion that an eclipse is something like the end of the world, all bets are off. Betty, at least, seems to be taking that to heart; her flight into the sun with Henry Francis is that kind of leap, and the only other time she cheated on Don it was also a reasonable facsimile of end of the world.
The sun also represents a higher being, a spiritual force, or God. Flying to close to the sun is hubris and destroys Icarus. We can revisit all this sun-gazing in the context of God’s blessings or God’s knowledge of our sins: Don believes he is innocent of what Miss Farrell accuses, and gazes at the sun unafraid; Betty, attracted to Henry, is made dizzy; she can’t take the direct gaze of the sun on her. Sally, gazing in the way she’s supposed to, is free of sin and happy. Finally Roger can no longer even feel the connection to spirit represented by the sun; it’s all the same, “average.”
Finally, the Sun is the 19th tarot trump, which is used as the logo for Matt Weiner’s production. When we interviewed Matt after the S2 finale, we asked him about Anna Draper’s tarot reading, and that got into a discussion of what the logo meant, and to Matt, it’s joy and hopefulness. (Click here to go directly to the Sun portion of the interview.)
image of the sun tarot card added later by Roberta without first being discussed with Deborah
Michael will not be happy I wrote this, but it’s just too good.
So yesterday was this really fun radio show about Mad Men which featured an interview by Colin McEnroe with Michael Gladis (and a six-plus minute call-in by yours truly). Check it out here.
First of all, Michael uses real tobacco in his pipe. There’s no way around it–apparently the herbal fauxbacco (yes I just made that up) burns all up in a pipe.
But more fun is that is that during the pilot, despite Matt’s numerous warnings to not smoke real cigarettes, real cigarettes were sometimes smoked–specifically in the strip club. Gladis was a pack-a-day smoker at the time. He ratted no one else out, but it sounded like he wasn’t alone.
Next we’ll hear that Sally’s cigarette last season was real too. I kid!
It’s the 1960’s. Not much happens to you, if you’re a kid: it’s not your world.
But in the space of a single day, you lose the person who saw you – saw right through to who you were: what you did wrong and what you could do well. The one who listened to you, took your side, gave you a role, and occasionally treated you as a partner in crime died today, and it is as if that place he made for you in the world was never there.
You are angry. You don’t understand that you feel this way because no one is coming to help you get ready for bed. You miss your grandfather, whose presence used to be part of your bedtime ritual. To you, he was never an obstacle; he actually made things better for you. So now, what you feel is not your own pain – but outrage. (more…)
A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty.
- Rudyard Kipling
When Betty accuses Don of cheating, he denies it. When he denies it, she looks for evidence by ripping the house apart. She finds none. Her response? It doesn’t matter – he’s still guilty.
Think about how much of a reversal this is since S1. That season started with her blind ignorance of Don’s infidelity, transitioning into her passive acceptance and communicating through her psychiatrist.
By the middle of S2 she has shed all illusions of Don’s honesty, ignores the lack of evidence and, listening only to her gut and Jimmy Barrett, is putting all her chips on the table behind her conviction.
Waaaaaay back in August of last year, I made an observation about the fat motif that seemed to be emerging as a theme for Season 2. At that time, both Deborah and Roberta thought it was brill, and suggested I turn it into a post. In fact, Deborah suggested I just “CTRL-C = copy, CTRL-V in a Write window, Save, and that’s a wrap.”
So, without much further adieu, here’s my CTRL-C, CTRL-V:
***** (more…)
On Roberta’s insistence, I finally sat down and re-watched For Those Who Think Young last night. It still doesn’t work as a single episode. Overall, “I’m uninvolved.” But to review it in light of the entire season is definitely interesting.
From the AMC scrapbook
I think one of the most important symbols for this season, one we haven’t discussed much here, is Sally’s Valentine for her father. I know it reappears; twice I think—in A Night to Remember,* when Betty goes through Don’s things, and in either The Mountain King or Meditations in an Emergency, when Don is reviewing his life (help me out here, Basketcases!). As an object, it maintains a kind of season-long consistency for our characters. As a symbol, it speaks to Don in his best and worst moments.
Day 1: Don is “uninvolved” with the Mohawk presentation, but is interested in a barely-visible little girl in the illustration. That night, he receives the Valentine. Day 2: Peggy comes up with “What did you bring me, Daddy?” as a tag line. Perhaps not the finest tag line ever written, but a powerful connection, and a strong pointer to the importance of Sally’s gift.
In FTWTY the Valentine appears twice. Once, it is almost a critique of Betty’s attitude towards Sally and towards love—Sally has it while she is being criticized for eating and for being dirty, and Betty says that getting Valentines from everyone “defeats the purpose.” Later, Betty hands it to Don in the hotel room; the sincere and unconditional love of his daughter a contrast to his marriage.
Don carries Sally’s gift, her unconditional love, with him throughout the season. It is devastating to him in Maidenform, when he cannot bear to have her look at him, and it brings him home in Meditations in an Emergency.
I am pretty sure I am missing both some of the symbolism and some of the occurrences of it. What do you see?
*Checked, yes, it’s in ANtR in the desk drawer.
