The Spoils of War

http://www.guba.com/all/search?query=mad+men&set=5 previews

http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/photo_gallery/?version=1

 http://pop.youtube.com/watch?v=WcRr-Fb5xQo&feature=related

  Created by the Soprano’s writer. Yeah I KNOW . Don’t say you never have watched an episode of Soprano’s , however you came about it. They’re there. There’s no way to avoid it. I get that. Let’s proceed..

A very non-PC show, everyone relevant  is White, women still wear skirts and are not anorexic, people smoke, there’s black elevator operators,  they said the word  ‘jew’ in the context ‘are there jews here?’   OMG !  great  examples of what would now be deemed sexual harrassment in work scenes, all kinds of millenially unacceptable repartee and situations.    

Apparently, this series is not new, but I watch so little TV  that I  only now have become aware of it. Sure looks like it was good to be a White man then (late50’s  early 60’s?), and it wasn’t even so horrible to be a White woman either, despite the protests and bra burnings that would follow . It was great but at the same time almost made me want to cry for what we have lost, and how repressed we have become, and I don’t mean that in the  predictable sexual sense,  but  more  the freedom people had to say what was on their mind, the sense of belonging, confidence-the sense we could freely be without the invisible restraints- the shackles of ‘PC’  -you could express your ‘ISM’  and no one would call you names like ‘___IST’  ,hater  or worse,  you could  live, work, love around people you wanted to be around, the world was not offensive to you, wherever you went, things were nice, the decor tasteful, music to your liking -perhaps people either did or didn’t follow all social graces, but they were still rather ‘dealwithable’ , unlike drive-by shootings, home invasions, and illegal aliens.  People knew their place and  people were not constantly walking around with a chip on their shoulder or being  terminally offended. One could make a light joke, like that Farr guy did about the White House and Obama  and it wasn’t the end of the frigging world.

Now of course, there is the obligatory paying homage to the Chosen, in either the character development, storyline, who seems smart and sexy versus who seems doofy type crud, but try to  separate the wheat from the chaff, use it as a thinking tool, a reflecting pond- enjoy what you can- this series also reminds me of another  film I saw so many years ago about the same time period, –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch7TXRMRaqM

Movies from the old days illustrate how much freer and happier in general people were than they are now – That in a republic where people know their place,  one knows what to expect and what is expected from them and in general, things tend to make more sense; hence less confusion, more simplicity and clarity, hence more happiness.  We don’t have that now, everything is wishy-washy, ‘correctness’  but not sincerity,  ‘egalitarians’ but not gentlemen-  equivocating even in its indirectness- neither fish nor fowl.  Celebration of  inanity, inanity that mocks depth, people doing the minimum or less .  I hate that, it makes me feel ill. These days, when someone isn’t a fake or a flake , I want to hand them a medal-and it shouldn’t be that way.

A disturbing thought about this series is that it may not be only giving us a glimpse  into something that is prima facie retro , over,  past, but that their point might be:

 ‘and all this is over, aren’t you so glad we don’t have to live like that now?’

No. As per usual, I end up liking the movie versions of dystopia and identifing with anti-heroes better than the real  equality-utopia fiction we actually live..