We were backpacking in Desolation Wilderness near Lake Tahoe, Dave and I, and for some reason the topic of
the Cuban Missile Crisis reared its portentous head. The nostalgia of the trip probably supplied
the reason, many years after Boy Scouts and other young adventures in the same
mountains. Or maybe the current election, with the pall of burning California
obscuring whatever hope we might project on the future. The end of the world by naval blockade seems
so . . . last century. Whatever the
reason, my buddy, who grew up down the street, recalled the tension in his
house as the deadline counted down, the duck and cover becoming
prescriptive. This is the conventional story
of the day; however, in my house, I remember barely a hitch in our routine. It
wasn’t that they were uninformed, just unmoved. We seemed to me to live in a
manufactured reality, even more so in memory.
How could it come to be that we would cease to exist? Stuff and
nonsense!
And this month we have a second run at this strange time in
the AMC hit Mad Men. The season begins on Valentines Day of 1963,
post Cuba,
and we can't doubt that it will end on November 22nd. It is rare (although Deadwood also aspired to this) that a dramatic television series
has found the key to a historical moment and so nailed it. And this is not
about Mathew Weiner's slavish obsession with early 60's décor and slang, the
kids flipping dry cleaning bags over their heads, or all the gloved hands
extending from taxicabs. This is about
history as it’s lived.
In the first season, we learned everything there was to know
about Don Draper. He was a name stolen from a corpse, an empty suit, a bogus citation. As the consummate inventor of his own past,
what else could he use to make a living but nostalgia? Will Lucky Strikes eat your lungs . . .
maybe, but 'It's toasted!' Choose life and a style and you'll never have to choose again. The only way to fly!
Draper was created by Rod Serling (they were always ad men), dreaming up
his summer on the train to Willoughby
but stepping into he void.
This was the last time in America that all professional men
wore a hat and a handkerchief.
Kennedy got rid of the hat and Sam Giancana returns the favor in the
season finale. In fact, this was the last time that professional men existed as
a class. You can see that tension at
every turn of the show. No sooner has
Draper created the perfect model of Manhattan
life then it becomes threatened on every side, hence his perfectly in-tune
sentiment, recreating things that substitute for people that never existed.
Betty Draper aches to be the sort of impulsive, earthy person that her husband
actually would prefer. And so on through the cast. But none of them is ready
for the plumber in the Mercedes.
This was what we left behind, slowly emerging into the light
of day. The conformity of the era only
appears that way from outside. One family lived in the day another, outside of
it. Both in fear of the howling
shitstorm of the future. Mad Men gets this perfectly.
There was really nothing to rebel against anymore than one could fight a plastic bag,
it conformed to your shape, sealing you from possibility with an illusion of
boundary. And beyond that a world of total disorder, only dimly seen. It is
this knife's edge, this infinitesimal, of which great history is best about.