According to Wikipedia, the origin of the line “Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be” can be confidently first attributed to a 1959 novel titled “The Tents of Wickedness” by Peter De Vries. The ease of unearthing this fact suggests that cultural research ain’t what it used to be either. For people of a certain - - over 60 - - age, this on-line reach into the past seems remarkable, despite the fact that the same generation facilitated its creation. Nostalgia, ‘to return home,’ frequently is found with another Greek word of gauze and twilight . . . ‘ephemera,’ Greek for ‘of a single day.’ The word began life in the 14th century signifying rapidly extinguished fevers. It migrated in the 1600’s to the mayflies, order Ephemeroptera, who were erroneously thought to live for only a summer’s day. Now, of course, we have www.ephemerasociety.org and other such resources, which pluck the wings from our collective past and reanimate them into ‘Fear The Walking Dead,’ as tautological a title as was ever put to videotape!
Given all that, it’s remarkable - - perhaps again, only to viewers of a certain age - - that two television shows, AMC’s debutant offering, ‘Mad Men’ and the ‘Late Night/Late Show With David Letterman,’ get shoveled into their respective tombs in the same week. Letterman is so private that we may not see him again until this really happens. Be that as it may, we have a series that chronicles history from 1960 to 1970 and a talk show that began in 1980. The connection is in that final Mad Men moment, the Hilltop commercial, Don’s Mona Lisa smile and its meaning to pop culture.
Mathew Weiner said that giving the world a Coke is not to him an ironic gesture and that he intended to end the series on that famous commercial since the beginning. I think that makes sense. From the get-go he has used advertising as both a mirror and driver of history . . . a totemic biofeedback machine. Sterling Cooper is introduced in 1960 to us as Nixon’s ad agency and in 1970; with the New Nixon finally in the White House - - with McCann Erickson’s harpoon firmly in their flank - - Sterling and (surviving) Partners is poised to reinvent itself once again. And, in actuality, Madison Avenue did surrender to Haight Street in the 70’s and began to chug down the counter-culture. McCann and their kin turned a page and began to sell the 1960’s right back to the now 30-something people who created it. American irony - - despite Weiner’s objection - - entered the mainstream and it came in a 12-ounce bottle, sweetened with Aspartame. I reckon much right-wing rage is a bastard out of that bedchamber.
About this same time, Dave Letterman was earning his chops on the old Mary Tyler Moore variety show, ‘Mary.’ From the chorus line, his signature, gap-toothed grin mocked the creaky format of the show. For the next eleven years on NBC, he continued to subvert every element of talk show shtick and entertainment industriousness. He was a renegade hippie weirdo - - in a fashionable suit and white socks - - and when he jumped to CBS in 1992, all of that became main stream. His Top Ten List became just as tired as Ms. Moore’s hamstring muscles by the end of the first week. When Craig Ferguson and Geoff the gay skeleton sidekick, began following Dave in 2005, their self-deprecating anarchy seemed almost 90’s passé.
I figure the bottle of Coke and the ironic grin were handed off from Don to Dave at some point in the 70’s, despite Weiner’s protestations. The well-told truth is that none of this is explicitly bad . . . nor is it clearly benign. Soda pop is not Lucky Strike, after all, but it does make you fat and when students ask their history professors, “why did people do such terrible things back then,” the only adequate response is to quote Steve McQueen in The Magnificent Seven, “it seemed to be a good idea at the time.” The fact that they were wrong only proves the power of self-delusion. By the end of the Great Big Show, we can’t confidently say that Don Draper’s smile is either good or bad. It’s really just the ephemera of a summer’s night. And isn’t that what Enlightenment is all about?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ieicflBG_Y