The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Mad Men S4:5 (Commentary)
So much conflicting information. ~ Pete
What are we to others but what we appear to be?
And yet our own appearance eludes us – we can see ourselves only in a mirror and always in reverse. “O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us/To see oursels as others see us!” the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote in the 18th century, and in 200+ years, we’ve made little progress. Like most humans, the characters on Mad Men resist seeing themselves accurately, even as they’re intensely concerned about how they are seen by others.
All advertising is based on manipulating people into believing that a product will make them appear to be whatever it is they want -- sexy, beautiful, happy, affluent, powerful – if they simply buy and use it. The appearance of efficacy is used to sell an efficacy of appearance. But the irony is that appearances are in fact every bit as powerful as advertising suggests they are: They determine the course of our lives as individuals and affect the fates of entire nations. Perception is all, both to ourselves and to others: what we see is what is real to us, and we act according to what we perceive. And we are no more and no less to others than what they can see about us.
On Mad Men, no one knows the power of appearance better than Don Draper, and his “genius” (as ex-employee Smitty calls it) in the realm of manipulative illusion is on full display in "The Chrysanthemum and The Sword," an episode named after an influential but controversial post-World War II study of the seemingly contradictory Japanese culture and character that (despite being developed at a distance and from questionable sources) not only largely formed the Western view of the nation but even affected the Japanese themselves. We become what people tell us we are. Never more so than as children (as this episode heartbreakingly hints) but also long into adulthood, perhaps until death (at which point, as Pete will tell you, chrysanthemums are appropriate in Japan).
The sword also dangles over many in this episode, but especially over SCDP. Nipping at their heels is another small agency, Cutler Gleason and Chaough (CGC), whose smarmy partner, Ted Chaough, insists on competing head-to-head with Don Draper, who he claims is fearfully watching CGC in his rear view mirror (which would make them the reverse of SCDP). Having ceded Clearasil to CGC as well as having lost jai alai, Don is asked by a New York Times advertising columnist how he’s reacting, and Don gives the appearance of nonchalance by claiming to not even know who Chaough is, only to be greatly irritated when the man himself (who Don obviously recognizes) shows up at the Benihana restaurant he’s taken Bethany to, disguising research (on potential client Honda motorcycle) as an expensive date. She too is more concerned about appearances (as well as the fried food smell getting into her hair), and frustrated at the lack of intimacy in the setting, which she implies is due to the fact that she’s been refusing to have sex with Don.
“I thought I was clever, but it looks like you had the same idea,” Chaough smirks, blowing the lid off Don’s fact-finding mission, before making the kind of boast that every TV viewer knows precedes a downfall, no matter what show it appears in: “The bad news is the best man’s going to win.” Actually Ted is doubly right – the best ad man is going to win this competition, and he only thinks he’s clever, proving himself one more person with faulty self-perception. Fixated on that view of himself in Don’s rear view mirror, Ted doesn’t realize that he’s so stuck behind, he needs a Secor’s laxative.
Irritated at Don’s irritation at Chaough, Bethany is treated to the explanation that CGC has only done half of what SCDP has done, but by declaring themselves the competition, they have become equals -- a theme that will be revisited when those old (and future) competitors the Japanese appear to challenge American business. Becoming something by simply claiming to be it is a move that Don takes as being akin to copyright infringement when someone else tries it, and we can all but hear him mentally vowing to whip Chaough’s ass.
While chopper and chopstick wars play out, babysitting back at Don’s Edward Hopperesque apartment is nurse Phoebe, who brings her doctor kit to intrigue the kids, but fails to win over Sally, who makes it clear she hates her father’s dating, and in frustration re-makes her own appearance by playing doctor on her hair with some scissors in the bathroom. Phoebe’s aghast, worried about how angry Don will be at her (sensing correctly where Don’s anger will land) even as she's sympathetic to Sally’s explanation that she just wanted to look pretty like Phoebe, whose short hair she thinks her daddy likes, in order to draw his attention and favor. Phoebe herself performs a little cosmetic surgery on this motivation, telling Don that Sally probably just wanted to look like juvenile movie star Hayley Mills (of the original Parent Trap, who did captivate many young girls' fantasies at that time), thus making the motivation more child-like as well as protecting Don’s feelings. But unaware of this, Don blames Phoebe, firing her from sitter duty and harshly claiming that putting her in charge of his kids was the same as leaving them alone -- a stinging charge that Betty throws at him in turn when he returns the kids and she discovers Sally’s new ‘do. “It’s like leaving them with nobody,” she fumes, a charge that we guess is intended to cut Mr. Nobody (not Dick, not Don, not part of a family) to the core.
Continuing her descent into terrible motherhood, Betty takes out her smoldering anger at Don by slapping Sally even after she apologizes. Don is appropriately horrified and asks if that act was “really necessary,” but Betty is unrepentant, complaining that it doesn’t do any good anyway (since in her view Sally continues to be bad), adding the fascinating tidbit that her own mother actually threatened to cut her hair when she was bad (one in a series of comments Betty’s made that suggest the old adage about “the apple not falling far from the tree” applies to her in terms of mothering style). In his low-key FM disc jockey fashion, Henry tries to both enlighten and soothe Betty, telling her not to take out her anger at Don on Sally and that after all little girls do these kinds of things even in the best of homes.
“Henry, I don’t want to hear it. I just want him dead,” Betty seethes in a naked display of her intense fury at Don and the engine behind her nasty behavior towards her children. Henry reassures her that Don’s behavior angers and baffles him, too, since his post-divorce weekends with his own daughter, Ellie, were “sacrosanct” and he couldn’t do enough for her. But punishment will only make things worse, he advises. While Betty agrees to apologize, Henry presses her to restore the slumber party privilege she’d taken away and promise to take Sally to the beauty parlor to fix her hair. “Reward her?” Betty goggles, before melting and agreeing. “You’re soft, you know that?” she smiles, a moment that recalls how her father Gene coddled her as his princess, making clearer than ever that Betty has traded an immature husband for a paternal one, deceiving herself into thinking it’s her children who need “a real father” rather than recognizing her own emotional desire.
Avoid criticizing them or giving advice. ~ Pete
Sally, meanwhile, is starting to have desires of her own, spurred by that mid-60’s object of many a girl’s fantasy, Ilya Kuryakin (as played by the boyishly cute David McCallum), a lead character in the TV spy drama, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Caught doing, well, decency forbids that we actually see it, but apparently touching herself, Sally is busted by her friend’s mother, who is so horrified that she hauls Sally back home that same night, interrupting Henry and Betty’s coitus. Betty declares herself “mortified,” not because she thinks what Sally is doing is morally wrong, but because she’s embarrassed Betty socially. Tellingly, she informs Sally that, “You don’t do those things. You don’t do them in private and you especially don’t do them in public” -- a hedging that makes it clear that the real rule is that you just don’t let other people know you do them. This admission is echoed in her reply to the other mother that “I’m very sorry for this behavior and so is Sally. I would have done the same thing.” (As she more or less was doing, when the doorbell rang.) But this doesn’t stop Betty from threatening Sally with the terrifying “I’ll cut your fingers off,” ostensibly for lying -- but wouldn’t the just punishment for that be cutting her tongue out?
Upon hearing about Sally’s self-exploration, Henry seems unfazed but suggests a child psychiatrist to alleviate Betty’s distress, a suggestion that Betty resists, arguing that she saw a psychiatrist herself once and knows it doesn’t help (news Henry greets with surprise and a curiosity that Betty dismisses with the lie that she went because “she was bored”). Giving in later, she calls Don to tell him the news, leading to yet another argument in which Betty blames what she sees as Sally’s incipient promiscuity on the revolving door of single women she imagines Sally witnesses at Don’s bachelor pad. Don retorts that Betty’s the one who’s been seen with a new man in her bed, but Betty as always reverts to the sanctity of tradition and institution – that’s fine, because she’s married. We know that the actual sex that Sally is aware of and disturbed by (aided by Glen’s helpful, “You know they’re doing it”) is between Henry and Betty, while Don isn’t even letting his kids meet his dates. But in Betty’s mind, nothing could possibly be disturbing to her kids about a new man shtupping their mommy, nor could Don possibly be showing the good judgment of keeping his social life discreet.
In an intake session supposedly all about Sally, the child psychiatrist, Dr. Keener, sees what Betty cannot about herself, and deftly elicits the information that there’s been a lot of upheaval in the Draper home (Betty becoming tearful in recalling her father’s death and its effect on Sally) as well as the fact that Betty thinks Sally is acting out to punish her. (It's all about her, of course.) After Betty allows that she knows kids touch themselves, the psychiatrist smoothly asks, “What about you?” which draws the embarrassed response, “I was private and mostly outgrew it.” All of Betty’s feelings and desires are indeed private, except when they come boiling out in rage and frustration that someone hasn’t met them, but it’s another act of self-deception to claim she’s outgrown childish things. Her smiling at the dollhouse in the therapist's office is enigmatic but suggestive of her desire for a storybook existence that real adult relationships can't supply.
The child herself dutifully shows up for her therapy, escorted by Carla, and made to read that same "Highlights for Children" magazine that tormented me as a child in doctors’ offices. “Why don’t you come inside?” Dr. Edna invites Sally, thereby immediately raising both the question and imperative of keeping it all inside, including those budding sexual feelings. But keeping it all inside is just what Sally’s generation is not going to do, no matter how much all the Bettys of the world try to make them.
From what I can tell, they have their own way of doing business. ~ Pete
Don’s newfound interest in Japanese cuisine has its origins in a piece of prospective business that Pete has dangled in front of the partners: Honda, which has 50% of the motorcycle market, is supposedly shopping for a new ad agency, as well as thinking about going into the car business. Everyone’s eager to jump on this but Roger, who’s incensed that they’d even think about doing business with those wonderful folks who brought you Pearl Harbor (to quote the title of Jerry Della Femina's famous book on advertising that drew its title from a slogan he jokingly suggested for Panasonic in the 60's). Spewing racist invective, as well as insulting Pete as a “boy” who can’t understand (an insulting term that is at the heart of a subtext of the episode, the civil rights movement and the recent Selma marches, glimpsed in news stories), Roger insists that SCDP will not pursue the account, adding that Lucky Strike is good enough (because apparently killing people indiscriminately is OK as long as you do it with cigarettes and not guns or bombs). Pete argues that Bernbach does business with Volkswagen (the company the Nazis started) and Bert intones, “The war is over, Roger,” but he won’t be moved. Determined not to go down with the Blankenship (that symbol of out-of-touch obsolesence posing as Don’s hilariously inept and foghorn secretary), the other partners overrule him behind his back, with Bert promising to brief Pete on Japanese culture (only failing to teach him the “open the gift later” rule).
Not very subtle, are they? ~ Joan
But despite Pete’s gift of a cantaloupe, their efforts to woo the Japanese don’t have a chance of bearing fruit after Roger (having learned of the meeting) bursts in and insults them in every way possible, reeling off a series of bad puns about the Japanese loving surprises and not knowing something’s over until you “drop the big one – twice.” The horrified partners try to cover for him (Pete risking further insult with a “his voice very sick” explanation and Bert ordering him to stop since they are guests) but Roger will not be deterred.
“I know exactly who these men are. You think you can come in here and we’ll fawn all over you. We beat you and we’ll beat you again and we don’t want any of your Jap crap. So, sayonara.” Oh, if only the threat of the Japanese to American business could have been held off so easily. Roger sees the contest as one of honor, without realizing that it’s ultimately to be one of survival. I grew up in the era when “Made in Japan” meant something shoddily constructed, but the post-war manufacturing of cheap toys and other items for export soon gave way to the culture of quality design that Don enthusiastically picks up on. He lectures Roger after the meeting not just for losing business they desperately need, but even more for not seeing that quality and wanting to be part of it. Roger argues that Don acted the same way with Jantzen, but to Don, the two situations couldn’t be more different – Jantzen was old school and boring, while Honda with their sleek and sexy design excites him.
But before Don can make any headway, Pete bursts in and lectures Roger in a way that shows precisely how far he’s come from the nervous junior exec we met in Season 1. “Christ on a cracker, where do you get off?” he yells, before launching into the generational argument lurking at the core of the series, and about to split the country: “It’s been almost 20 years. And whether you like it or not the world has moved on. These aren’t the same people.”
Roger rejects that argument with the apparently logical, “How can that be? I’m the same people.”-- which of course is true, since he's staunchly refused to change thus far. He then accuses Pete of being a nowhere man like Don, “You weren’t there. You weren’t anywhere.” But as the Beatles will be singing later this same year, a “nowhere man” is one who “just sees what he wants to see” and doesn’t know what he’s missing. A description that was applied to the entire older generation in the 60's, but which is also suitable for many Mad Men characters, if not for most humans anywhere, any time.
Joan uses this very argument to make Roger see the light, encouraging him to buy into the illusion that all is well:
Joan: Roger, I know it was awful and it will never seem that long ago but you fought to make the world a safer place and you won and now it is.
Roger: You think so? Really?
Joan: I have to.
In the end, it’s left to that master of illusion and deception to beat the Japanese at their own game while also besting CGC. Just as World War II began for the U.S. with a deception – the Japanese seeming to negotiate with the U.S. government even as the attack on Pearl Harbor moved forward to execution – Don plans a sneak attack on the competition. Having been stymied by Lane’s refusal to add more money to the pot than the $3,000 budget the Honda executives have given every agency in the competition, Don has to let go of his initial plan to break the rules and film a spec commercial that will wow the client. Reasoning once again that appearances are everything, he realizes that all they need to do is get CGC to think that they’re making an ad in order to goad the rival agency into spending money they’ll desperately need later to woo other clients (just as Lane points out SCDP will). Effectively bankrupting the budget of the competition, Don bets that losing Honda may win him the war (of the small scrappy new agencies at least).
A man is shamed by being openly ridiculed and rejected. It requires an audience. ~ Don
Like the toy bird that the office workers marvel at, which keeps mysteriously dipping into a glass of water placed before it, compelled by some unseen mechanism, so too do humans seem compelled to do things that are often inexplicable, and taking advantage of this trait is Don’s forte. On the premise that a big lie is better than a small one, Don deploys Joan’s impeccable presentation skills to convince a director they know CGC is using that SCDP will be filming an outrageously complicated commercial requiring use of the Staten Island ferry as well as closing down all of Fifth Avenue. Having gotten the “confidential” information as expected, Chaough calls in Smitty to find out whether Don ever breaks the rules during “a bake-off” between firms. Smitty confirms that “he definitely doesn’t think the rules apply to him” before unintentionally adding the gasoline that will cause Chaough’s competitive fire to flare to a 5-alarm level: “He’s always thinking on the edges of where you are. I don’t know. He’s a genius.”
Chaough’s own idea, to film a daring motorcycle rider in the NYC subway system who at the end reveals himself to be a her, a “California blonde” at that, further plays on the idea of identity and deception, and also reminds the viewer of that California blonde, Anna Draper, who is Don’s closest ally, and someone he’s trying to reach by phone in this episode. Having been warned by Anna not to jump off the cliffs in Acapulco, Don as usual disobeys orders, telling his team that he’s “going to make a left turn, right off a cliff” -- a bit of an overstatement for a strategy that is actually about doing very little while appearing to do a lot.
This is what we call the creative lounge.
We can’t tell you how it happens, but it happens here. ~ Pete
The final bit of deception involves Don himself, who arrives for his pitch only to be mocked by Chaough, who says he’ll never be able to match the film they’ve just unveiled. Chaough’s in such deep denial that even when Don reveals the bluff, saying they didn’t make a film because it was too expensive, he doesn’t realize the trap he’s been caught in but instead boasts that Don’s lost before stalking off in triumph. Once in the meeting, Don acts as his own Trojan horse, impersonating an honorable man who is shocked, shocked to find that his competitors have broken the rules and saying he must as a result resign SCDP from the process rather than soiling the firm by being part of such a dishonorable competition. Falling for it hook, line and Honda, the Japanese send word later that they haven’t chosen a new firm at all, but want to give SCDP first crack at their upcoming automobile line. It’s not much, Lane and Pete admit when bringing Don the good news, “a motorcycle with doors," but we all know what can come from such humble beginnings. Having built himself up into far more than he began as, Don knows that there’s no limit on how you can sell either a person or a product.
Earlier, he has shared a sake and a moment of truth with Dr. Faye in the coffee room, finding out that she too is living a deception, masquerading as a married woman to avoid “distracting conversations” in the many offices she visits in her work. Wanting to be seen as a professional rather than as a beautiful woman, she’s hidden behind a rock to avoid a hard place. But after a long day of interviewing people about luggage, she leaves her own baggage behind and confesses the truth to Don, who seems surprised but pleased by her trust in him, which he answers with some truth of his own about the difficulty of being a divorced father: “I don’t see them enough and when I do, I don’t know what to do. And when I drop them off, I feel relieved, and then I miss them.” Faye reassures him with a theory I’ve heard before, that a woman will be emotionally healthy if (and only if) she felt her father loved her: “Well, I can’t say there’s any evidence to support this, but I’m pretty sure that if you love her and she knows that, she’ll be fine.” (That doesn’t explain how Betty turned out, though!)
Fittingly, an episode that started with the image of a crossword puzzle in progress ends with that of a closed door. The puzzle of who we are and why we do the things we do is never completely revealed, being hidden behind doors that we construct to protect our secret truths, even from ourselves.
I don’t know how else to do this. ~ Blankenship
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This week’s Mad Men is about the power of shame and the difficulty of understanding others, whether those others be business partners or your own child. As always, Don ties all the various strands together and positions the episode’s ideas within the evolving social transformations that Don creates and reflects.
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword is a 1946 anthropological study of Japanese culture, a kind of guidebook for Americans to understand the puzzlingly contradictory manners of the enemy they were then occupying. The book was influential in contrasting a Western “guilt” culture to Japanese “shame” culture. The difference lies in how individuals of a culture react psychologically in situations where their guilt over a misdeed is ambiguous. In a guilt culture such as ours, a person is taught to feel bad about about an action if they really did it. Thus, if I did something wrong but nobody knew it, I would still feel guilty. Whereas if everyone thought I was guilty but had done nothing wrong, I wouldn’t feel shame but would protest my innocence. It is my belief about what I’ve done that matters. In a shame culture, it is other people’s beliefs that determine whether or not I feel bad. Thus presumably for the Japanese, they would not feel bad if they had done something wrong but nobody knew it, and conversely they would feel guilty if they were publicly dishonored for something, even if they had done nothing wrong.
It is this insight which allows Don to so deftly manipulate the Japanese into choosing his firm. Rather than demonstrating shame over Roger’s behavior as was expected, Don forces them to feel guilty by acting as the aggrieved party.
This interaction between Don’s agency and Honda has deeper significance when we consider that what is being negotiated here is more than a business contract: reconciliation as well as power is being sought between peoples who committed terrible atrocities on one another, as Roger so brashly reminds everyone. Would the Japanese have felt shame and become compliant had they not been subdued so at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Do the Americans feel guilt for the brutality of dropping the atomic bomb?
These questions are nicely swept under the rug by those who are in the business of making money, but for Roger, these questions are charged with emotion and to be made public. For him, the Japanese should feel all the shame and Americans none of the guilt. When the Japanese announce a set of guidelines for pursuing their business, Roger angrily accuses them of trying to “dictate the rules”. Clearly, Roger has not separated business and personal feelings and views his dealings with the Japanese as an extended postwar negotiation, a negotiation in which the key point is for one side to force the other side to feel shame and thus bend more readily to its dominance.
But the Japanese quite reasonably insist on the right to create conditions given their payment - for their part, skillful negotiation means mitigating their shame and increasing their power by reformulating their relationship with America in terms of business. When Roger acts rudely, the power shifts because the Japanese now can shame them. As Roger interprets: “They want us to go in there, bow down, and beg them to chop our heads off because we disgraced ourselves.” Pete angrily upbraids Roger, true to his newly found maturity, saying that “The rest of us are trying to build something here”, echoing Don’s assertion at the end of last season that he wants to “build something, how could you not understand that?”. Indeed, Roger’s inability to separate the past from the future here blocks the progress of conciliation and the building of a new society.
The rest of the partners want such games of shaming (“don’t criticize or advise”) over with. But the reality is that in the end the relationship between the agency and the Japanese does reflect a kind of dominance based on shame. Always more pragmatic than Roger, for Don the Japanese propensity to be submissive when shamed is just a convenient tool to manipulate them into a deal. Unlike Roger, his emotional detachment is what gives him strength as a businessman to help his culture move past its prejudices into mutually beneficial arrangements. Don cares not a whit about cultural reconciliation; he is purely motivated by the competitive spirit to win and to make something lasting.
Mad Men implies that it is not idealism that wrought such profound changes in society, but the pragmatic realities engendered by capitalism. Weiner presents business as effectively harmonizing a relationship that had been based upon dominance and submission, with all its complex negotiations of guilt and shame. Don’s ability to objectively analyze a culture, to peer into what it is that motivates people, is central to his genius as an adman and as a figure of transformation, here as elsewhere.
Delightfully adding to the great myth of Don Draper that the show oozes, we now see that his boldness to break the rules and think creatively mean that he is not only able to recreate his self, but to recreate his society and the modern world as well. That he is a machiavellian calculator, a callous and detached man out to manipulate others, is finely ironic or darkly appropriate, depending on how you judge the commercial world that people like Don helped to create.
How do Weiner and Co view the relative value of the modern world? With their normal subtle irony. Assuaging Roger’s sense of disloyalty to his fallen brothers-in-arms, Joan reminds him that he fought to make the world a safer place, and “you won, and now it is”, but he’s not so sure, and her reason for believing is that she “has to”. In the time period the show has covered, the world has seen the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of Kennedy. Near the episode’s end, Pete, Lane, and Don cheerfully discuss their new project of selling dangerous Japanese cars to Americans, a grim reminder of the kinds of safety issues that would come to plague the modern world. More than all these references is the overwhelming sense of sadness that permeates the show as a result of the disconnection and loneliness that seems foisted upon the characters, few of whom have the relationships they want in life. All these give at best an ambiguous value to the world fast coming to be, filled with “wonder and ease” though it may be.
However you see that world, it is apparent that the world Don and Betty have created for Sally is defunct. The second major storyline of the episode connects the world of an innocent, Sally, with the world of the guilty: Don and the rest of the Adults. Just as there is a negotiation of power concerning shame between Don and the Japanese, there is a similar dynamic of transmitting shame occurring between Betty, Don, and Sally. Sally’s storyline is a fascinating juxtaposition since it focuses our attention on the effects to the innocent of the society coming to be. She is dealing with the kind of emotional bereavement that Don’s mode of life necessitates.
Sally struggles from the simultaneous onset of puberty and the abandonment of Don in an environment of neglect. Having lost Grandpa Gene, who encouraged and empowered rather than restricting her, she now is adrift between her parents’ enmities. She’s developing a sexual curiosity which reflects the desire to possess her ephemeral father. Thinking that he is having sex with the babysitter, she cuts her hair in an attempt to fashion herself after Don’s supposed love interest. She later masturbates to a television image of a man resembling Don. This “acting out” is viewed immediately as problematic and Sally is shamed by all around her.
The show then untangles for us the complex transmission of shame that Sally experiences. In the hair cutting instance, the babysitter begins the shaming process but her reproach is driven by fear of Don and Don’s vigilance is driven by fear of Betty. Later on, we see that Betty’s rigidness is in part a response to the Victorian attitudes of society displayed by the indignant mother who catches Sally masturbating. Betty is quickly put on the defensive when the righteous mother suggests that some kind of perverted activity takes place in the house, and we see that Betty is not much more powerful than Sally in falling victim to the power of another’s judgment to shame one into conformity.
Sally’s notion that “the man pees inside the woman” suggests that the lack of discussion about sexuality has the effect of associating sex with shameful practices. She is old enough to perceive that sexual connections underlie her mother and father’s new loyalties but that such things are kept secret. She likely associates sex with the breakup of her family, and in time, she may come to view her own sexuality with guilt.
If she did not, then certainly she would feel shame as a result of her mother’s reaction. Betty’s ignorance and cruelty as a mother are on full display in this episode, transmitting to Sally the same neuroses she was enslaved by. Having just been interrupted having sex with Henry, she yells at Sally that “You don’t do those things. You don’t do them in private and you especially don’t do them in public!” When Sally denies wrongdoing, she says, “Don’t you lie to me. I’ll cut your fingers off.” This perfect example of the hypocritical, abrasive, and coercive system of shame and control which was wielded on younger generations makes abundantly clear why the sexual revolution was inevitable.
When in her discussion with the new therapist Betty is asked about her own history with masturbation, she answers with obvious embarassment: “I was private, I mostly outgrew it.” Characteristic of the Western “guilt” culture, Betty feels bad for behaviors she engaged in as a child, even though she was never explicitly blamed for them. She internalized the guilt, just as she’s forcing Sally to internalize guilt about the feelings she has towards her father. Yet things are more complicated than this. Betty acknowledges that “all kids do it”, but is troubled by the public nature of Sally’s transgression. The implication is that the act only requires feelings of guilt if found out, a characteristic of the Japanese “shame” culture. Furthermore, she thinks Sally is misbehaving to punish her for having divorced Don. This in turn reflects her own guilt about having broken up her family. A person’s motives and words are never what they appear, even to themselves.
Don’s callousness is not as abhorrent as Betty’s draconian style, but may be equally blameworthy. He seems completely insensitive to Sally’s need for him, responding to Sally’s comment that she doesn’t like him going out with strange women by saying “You don’t have to”. When told that Sally had cut her hair, he responds by saying, “I could have just left them alone’, as if the purpose of childcare is not emotional support but the maintenance of conformity. As he admits to Dr. Faye in a rare moment of openness, he feels his own complex feelings of shame around his children, as he cyclically misses them, doesn’t know what to do with them, and is then relieved to be rid of them.
That Don can be so savvy in business and so clueless in his personal life is a central irony throughout Mad Men. Don’s emotional detachment, such an attribute for his work, is a bane on him and his family. The one bright spot of hope is Dr. Faye’s suggestion that Sally will be fine as long as she knows she has a father that loves her. Don appears moved by that proposition, or perhaps relieved since that would excuse his betrayals as inconsequential. In any case, it is not so clear that Sally does know that her father loves her, especially as he doesn’t defend her when Betty relegates her to a psychiatrist. The image of Sally internalizing the stigma of being sent to a psychiatrist, accompanied only by Carla, is heartbreaking when we know that all she needs is Don and Betty’s support and unconditional love. What that culture of guilt will do to her, how it will reform her relationships, will be of special interest as society attempts to unhinge itself from that repressive system over the next decade.
Yep: Busted again.
What do you make of Lane's comment at the end about the Honda car at least having windows so you can see your brains splattered? I keep thinking there has to be some deeper meaning to this.
The first three episodes of this season are trilogy of sorts, framed by Don’s first holidays after the divorce. This is always a terribly painful period of reflection for divorcee’s. It makes a great storyline vehicle for Weiner to tell us what has happened to everyone, individually and in toto, during the past year since the end of last season. Because these are primarily character studies rather than being driven linear storylines or historical events of the time, they can seem less snappy and less fun. Yet taking the time for this is more example of what makes this series so special.
Don remains the protagonist and driving force of the series. He is the star of CSDP. He knows what to do in that world. He turns around his disastrous first interview with a second tier publication by having an exceptional one with The Wall Street Journal. He has put the young firm out front with the Glo-Coat commercial. He kicks out a loser client that stands between him and the future. He rejects the research on where people are now because he is instinctively getting ready for an imminent future when everything will change. He stands down the past in the form of Lee Garner, Jr. as the rest of the firm are enslaved to him, and while Pete and Peggy are pulling stunts to keep third tier clients. Finally, he reaches out to Lane and makes him a part of the family, a “made man” if you will.
Don is on top of his game at work and ready for the future. His personal life is a mess because he simply does not know how to deal with the divorce. With advent of 1965, he learns he is losing Anna, his last tie to his two former lives, which mirrors the loss of his family and that life. He lets the mess of his personal life spill into the work arena through his tryst with Alison. After that public humiliation and Joan chastising him by saddling him with one of the worst secretaries in history, he is not likely to make that mistake again anytime soon.
Leave to Anna to sum it up best and have the most spot-on analysis Dick/Don, “I want you to do exactly what you want to do.” This echoes Lee Garner, Jr. at the Christmas party, “This just like Christmas when I was a kid. You ask for something and get it. Makes you happy.” Later Anna adds , “You’ll be fine. You’ll make the most of it. You always do.”
So that is what the trilogy tells us about Don, the office and his personal world. We have been closure on the past year, while anticipating a new world just around the corner. The trilogy ends with Joan at the head of the table and Bert Cooper missing, as she asks, “Gentlemen, shall we begin 1965?” weiner has set the table for the future. With episodes 4 and 5, Weiner returns to his traditional storytelling narrative and begins hitting social issues we have been waiting for.
I have repeatedly gotten a visceral feeling that Grandpa Gene molested Betty as a child and was either molesting Sally or working towards that.
I have absolutely no basis to justify that, but I get iit over and over again. Last night at the end of Betty's interview with the counsellor, she mentioned Grandpa Gene and Sally. After the counselor left, there was a close-up shot of the doll house. It creeped me out, and I once again had that feeling.
The choice of Honda as a potential client is really interesting. Honda at the time was a dominant motorcycle manufacturer but really made a splash through its innovative and much copied advertising campaign "You meet the nicest people on a Honda". This link documents their ads and the copycats it led to:
http://www.motorcycle.com/manufacturer/motorcycle-advertising-part-one-51612.html
The ads came from Grey but it could be pure SCDP!
DD
But in this episode, I thought about alienation in terms of Don and Betty. The burden of assuming another man's identity keeps Don from identifying human emotions, except with Anna and occasionally but unfortunately rarely with his children. When you're alienated from yourself, you're unable to identify your own pain,which then makes you mostly unaware of the pain you inflict on others. Betty IS a terrible mother, but she was so raised to keep up appearances that she can't identify a real feeling if it slaps her in the face. Like many emotionally inadequate people, she views her children as vehicles to give back to her rather than the other way around, so Sally's behavior -- messing with her appearance, when appearances are so important to Betty and performing a private act in public (although it looked like the other little girls were sleeping, and Ilya Kuriakan was really hot) -- is seen by Betty as a way to get back at her rather than expressions of her little girl's emotional turmoil.
Back at SCDP, I was struck by how our Joanie was the smartest guy in the room when Don calls Joan, Pete and Peggy in for the meeting in which the trap for Chaough was set. I was also struck by how direct she was with Roger and how much she's grown since Season 1. She and Peggy are both symbols of the changes women will make as they feel themselves more empowered. Joan still uses her feminine wiles and obvious physical gifts, but she's using her brain more.
And Dr. Faye does seem to be getting into Don's head. He let down his guard just a little with her, even if her answer about Sally was pretty pop psychological. BTW the conventional wisdom, I think then and even now, is that a girl's relationship with her father is a template for future relationships with men -- Betty's father may have loved her, but he was probably both a little distant and pretty domineering. At the end of his life, he saw that Betty had grown up to be a woman, he didn't really like and tried to change things for Sally.
While there was certainly stigma attached to seeing a shrink, I think Sally needs someone in her corner, who accepts her unconditionally, and if that's Dr. Edna, it's better than no one. Unfortunately, we know that Sally's parents probably won't like what Dr. Edna has to say, so who knows how long this relationship will last?
Finally, I'm trying to remember when the first Honda cars came out. I had some friends, who bought a Civic in the very early '70's, and I think it was fairly new on the market then. It was certainly tiny. And the Honda motorcycles brought back memories. I had a friend, who bought a Honda 90 our senior year in high school and we used to happily ride on open highways with no helmets. I remember one night in 1965, driving from our suburban home to Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music. There, on a beautiful summer night, we parked the bike and sat on the curb, listening to Dave Van Ronk singing "Mr. Tambourine Man." Talk about your magical musical moments.
I loved this observation "Becoming something by claiming to be it is a move that Don takes as being akin to copyright infringement when someone else tries it, and we can all but hear him mentally vowing to whip Chaough’s ass."
I was talking to another OSer about this yesterday... becoming something by virtue of claiming to be it, which incites people to want to whip your ass. Brilliant deducing and excellent wording.
I'm now about 98% convinced that neither Betty nor Sally were molested by Gene. I think Betty was drawn to him because her mother was so disapproving, and Sally just liked having someone in the house, who showed that he was genuinely interested in her -- and for a brief time, Grandpa Gene was around nearly all the time.
I thought Betty's tearing up over the doll house had to do with her longing for the perfect family -- she neither came from a perfect family nor can she create one. I may have been hallucinating it, but I thought the doll house even had a chaise lounge.
BTW, I can't get over how much older Betty is dressing. By my calculations, she's 33, and even though 33 was considered much older in 1965 than it is now, that ice-blue outfit would have been appropriate for someone much older.
Finally, ten is not too young to experiment with masturbation, but I agree with Alan Sepinwall, whom I just read on HitFix -- I was a little uncomfortable at the thought of Kiernan Shipka being directed to do that scene.
The book in question apparently distinguishes between shame cultures (Japan) and guilt cultures (the West)--in any case, I saw the Sally plot as touching on both shame and guilt. I remember my mother coming into the room where I was sitting as an 8 year old, sparwling on a chair with my legs up, wearing shorts', "Don't sit like that!!" was her horrified command. I felt puzzled and ashamed and didn't know what I had done wrong. Hope Dr. Edna helps Sally, but it looks like she would be more help to Betty, who was staring dreamily at that dollhouse.
So, any theories on how long the Blakenship will be tormenting Don? I have read that some think it is cheap humor--personally, I think Miss Blankenship is there to help Don be purged of some his womanizing guilt--his own personal purgatory.
Nelly, thanks!
Wow, Ryan, that was not a comment, but an entire blog post of its own! you should be writing about this show (if you aren't already). I mostly was nodding my head at your psychoanalytical take on things, although a few details didn't seem right (e.g., Sally is masturbating to the image of David McCallum, who doesn't resemble Don in the slightest) but that's nitpicking. I think your parallel dissection of the cultural and personal psyches was really fascinating to read. thanks!
Steven, ha! And...thanks.
Dorinda, thanks!
Grateful, I didn't make anything of it particularly, but thought Ryan had a great insight into it in his comment, so you may want to read that.
Tennessee, I think there is a lot to what you say. I don't think, though, that Don is anywhere near closure on either his marriage or his divorce (and let's not even talk about how behind Betty is in that regard). In my experience watching divorced people, that's a very long slow process, and I think Weiner & co want us to see at least some of that. I'm not expecting the show to become all about business and drop Don's family life. As for the molestation angle, it's occurred to me, too, but it somehow feels too predictable to me for MM. I also think it would relegate Betty's behavior to that of a victim, and I think they intend her to seem more normal and universal than that. I mean, clearly she is damaged in some way, but it seems an easy out to make it about sexual abuse. Making it a more complex case of social conditioning and rigid family upbringing makes it both more interesting and also more of a general comment on cultural changes, which is of course MM's specialty.
DDDD, thanks for that link, which I will check out! I limit the amount of research I do for each episode, writing these recaps, so I always appreciate it when people have stuff like that to add.
Adele, thanks as always for your very thoughtful comments, which add a lot. I really liked your explanation of the emotional dynamics at play. And I well remember those early "CVCC" Hondas! A high school teacher I had in the early 70's drove one and we thought it was hilariously tiny, and then my bro-in-law bought one. People used to have to get out of them going up hills if there were too many people in the car (as in...more than the driver sometimes). Who could imagine how far they'd go from such a modest start?? I also agree with your take on Grandpa Gene (ditto when he groped Betty thinking she was her mother and people thought he had molested her - -that kind of behavior is not uncommon in people with dementia). And it also struck me that Betty was looking terribly matronly these days -- or is it that she's playing the proper Republican wife?? And yes, I also thought about Shipka being directed to do that scene, although I've read she doesn't get to read the entire script or see entire episodes of the show if her mother doesn't approve of parts. It's entirely possible she doesn't quite know what she was supposed to be doing in that scene (and of course her hands are not shown in any explicit way).
Gabby, I've always loved that Burns quote and it's stuck in my head since college lit classes. (Although I had it wrong in memory -- I thought it was "god a gie us", so was glad I googled it!)
MaryCal, wow , that Weiner comment stuns me! I'll have to listen to that. And yes, Roger has suggested that Don's being punished by Bert and Joan for his transgression with Allison by having Blankenship as his secretary. Her scenes are quite funny, but they will get repetitive if they go on for too much longer, so I predict she'll be replaced before too long. As for Grandpa, I think Sally is just understandably grieving a loving relative who was giving her what her parents were not.
Lisa, thanks!
Zanelle, thanks!
seajane, you and me both! I was too young to have any sexual feelings but I was still mesmerized by him. It's amazing how young those crushes occur.
I agree that Don seems to be turning a corner.
Great insights. Don, of course, is a master of pretending to be something he's not--and that's how he beat the competition.
One of the interesting moments from last night's episode was Betty talking with the child psychologist. Did you notice the way Betty looked happily at the doll house family at the end of the scene? It was not the first time that Mad Men alludes to Ibsen's "A Doll's House."
I'm a little disappointed in seeing Betty turn into someone so harsh and judgemental. After all, she has the house and a new hubby, but she at last seems to be wearing the divorce much worse than Don. We'll see what the future holds; she seemed so full of possibilities in previous seasons. Maybe she will just turn out to be one of those smart girls/women for whom women's lib came too late.
Her freak-out over Sally's activity was believable. Masturbation was pretty much in the closet in those days and I imagine, more so for women.
After looking like stress was getting the better of him, Don is really hitting his stride. The stimulation that comes with business competition along with a fun love life has been known to do wonders. Just as scoring a big contract and becoming a father has done for Pete.
Wasn't it something to see Roger apologizing? And even Joan tactfully upbraiding him? His must still be by far the biggest account so surely something's in the works for him coming soon.
One small quibble, smoking wasn't so commonly associated with death back then. I know folks called them coffin nails since the 20s or 30s but I think it wasn't till later in the 70s that the general perception really shifted.
I'd best close off before this mushrooms into another 2,000+ word comment. Thanks so much for your work
Joan RULES!
Kudos to January Jones for being willing to play such an unsympathetic bitch. She just gets worse and worse.
This season I am struck by how weak and ineffectual Don has become since he acknowledged his previous identity as Dick. He can't get laid, and he has fired scretaries who were 10 times as good as Miss Blankenship. She is a hoot!
By the way, for anyone assuming the masturbation blow-up is a relic of the medieval past, it's still with us today, unfortunately. About 20 years ago a fellow PTA mom proudly told me that she told her son that hair would grow on his palms if he masturbated. I'm sure nothing has changed even in the last 20 years.
That said, I wanted to add some information that might be relevant about Lyle Evans. There was a NY lawyer named Lyle Evans Mahon that argued a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1955, American Surety Company of New York, v. John H. C. Gainfort, [United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. - 219 F.2d 111].
From what I can construe of this decision, basically the two parties had been involved in a court proceding, with a judgment rendered in California in 1935. Under California law, the judgment remained enforceable for 20 years. The argument made in the federal appellate court in 1955 was that since both parties were currently residing in New York (Gainfort left CA in 1936,) the NY limitation of 5 years should apply. Fundamentally, that the judgment was 20 years in the past (reference Campbell’s argument to Sterling about the war) and the two parties were now theoretically relocated on neutral ground (NY)- so what happened “there” and “then” did not apply to “here” and “now.”
I found Betty's scene with Dr. Edna fascinating, especially her gaze at the doll house. Does this symbolize her own childlike nature and wish to retreat into the safety and comfort of her childhood, or is it an Ibsenian preview of her coming to terms with the problems her childhood has caused her . Like the heroine of Ibsen's playwill she finally come to accept that defining herself through others as wife, daughter or mother is the root cause of her unhappiness and move on to take control of her own life? Weiner's played the Ibsen card before, and there have been several moment where it looked like Betty was going to escape that childhood prison. So perhaps this is just another tease. I for one am rooting for Betty to make that Friedan-esque leap. I saw glimmers of awareness as she began to open up about her mother -- something she refused to do with the untrustworthy Dr. Wayne -- but maybe it's just another MM tease.
Something else isn't mentioned. Betty has no complaints about her sex life. Female orgasm was becoming a big subject about this time and later. ("Candy" was published in 1958. I read it in 1965. Sophisticated people were reading "Lady Chatterly's Lover", and Henry Miller in the early 60's.) Of course Betty may not expect pleasure from sex, but she knows she's expected to give such to her husband. We don't know. Like a good girl of the 50's, Betty doesn't talk about sex. Yet.
A lot of people assume Sally's headed for big trouble. Maybe I'm projecting my own past onto her, but I think she's headed for the counterculture (which could mean big trouble s well.)
Where the fuck did this come from? Let me suggest that it comes from us projecting our own conflicts regarding unspeakable or shameful sexual conduct on a historical culture that had different issues.
Note that we have only recently began to come out of our own cultural hysteria regarding this subject. More specifically, I am referring to the witch hunts waged against day care providers, fueled by the now almost totally discredited notion of repressed memory syndrome.
But, consider the following:
1. Betty isn't Sylvia Plath. That is, despite her flaws, she is relatively successful in her life. She married Don who is basically a stand up guy and is becoming spectacularly successful with his career. Husband #2 is also an impressive guy. She likes sex.
2. Sally is also fine. Touching herself while watching TV is hardly shocking, and seems quite normal.
3. Both of them loved Gene.
The only way to reconcile these facts with sexual molestation (whatever that means exactly) is that either he didn't do it. Or more shocking, maybe it isn't that abnormal or harmful per se. That is, maybe the extreme pathology associated with it is more a function of the details than the act.
Since exogamy and the incest taboo are the basis of Civilization -- All early social structures depend on kinship based relationships that require "marrying out" of the nuclear family -- my money is on Gene having kept his pants up around his lineal descents.
Don actually read the book.
In spite of everything else, doing the work makes a huge difference.
Betty's character displays much of the same dichotomy, being quite a bit less than honest with Sally, with Henry, and with the other Mom (whose name I can't remember). But then being unusually candid and able to look at both herself and her situation unflinchingly when talking to Sally's psychiatrist. (The actress playing the psychiatrist did a stand-out job, I must mention in passing.)
Whether Betty will be rewarded for her self-honesty remains to be seen; it is largely dependent on whether she can take it out of the psychiatrist's office and into the world. But perhaps it is a spark, a brief ray of sunshine to let us see that, odious as she was in this episode--and has been lately in general--perhaps she has begun a (I hate this phrase, but it fits) a voyage of self-discovery, a first step that may lead to a Gloria Steinem admiring, "Our Bodies, Our Selves" reading woman in the 70s. Who knows?
On a personal note, Don's behavior towards Phoebe irritated me if only because I find Nora Zehetner irresistible; I would hate to see her written out of the series.