Speaking of period dramas on television, John Rogers recently told me to watch Life on Mars. So I am. And so far it’s really quite good: early Hill Street Blues meets A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (or something).
Anyway, the thing I’m enjoying most is the show’s relentless critique of nostalgia. The main character, a contemporary British detective who finds himself transported back in time to Manchester in 1973, can’t seem to decide if he misses his friends or his cell phone more. When he’s at his most despairing, in the early episodes at least, he focuses on the dearth of creature comforts available to him. Even if you weren’t trained as an environmental historian, the emphasis on material conditions — a lack of central heat, spotty electricity, a studio apartment appointed with a twin bed — is pretty obvious. It’s a healthy reminder that the past, even the recent past — forget the damp and drafty castles of the Middle Ages — was pretty grim.
The point may be that our current age is wondrous, filled with innovations straight out of science fiction, especially in the realm of policing and medicine. Regardless, though I suspect historians are especially cranky about the emptiness of nostalgia, I think the show gets its view of the historical city just right: unlike Mad Men, which makes the early 60s built environment seem awfully appealing — that furniture! that color palette! — Life on Mars suggests that urban life used to suck.
45 comments
November 5, 2009 at 9:20 pm
snarkout
Yeah, they use the setting for more than sight gags about the outfits. (Was it someone right here at EotAW who pointed out that one of the reasons Casino Royale’s rather dingy Eurotrash setting plays as sophisticated and exotic is that Britain in the mid-’50s was so comparatively poor?) Enjoy LoM! Season 1 > Season 2, although apparently familiarity with actual ’70s UK cop drama The Sweeney is more helpful in the second. (“It means he gets results, you stupid chief!”)
November 5, 2009 at 9:43 pm
teofilo
Presentist.
November 5, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Josh
You might have been thinking of Simon Winder’s The Man Who Saved Britain, snark. From this article in the Times Literary Supplement:
November 5, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Josh
And I really need to watch the original Life On Mars. The US version was much better than I thought it’d be, but it was let down by some really clunky plotting.
November 5, 2009 at 9:58 pm
ari
There’s an American version? Will wonders never cease?
November 5, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Josh
Yeah, it was on within the past year. Harvey Keitel played Gene Hunt.
November 5, 2009 at 10:18 pm
ari
it was on within the past year
Ah, that explains why I had no idea: I was napping then.
November 5, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Charlieford
“..our current age is wondrous, filled with innovations straight out of science fiction…” Maybe it is, but where’s my rocket-pack?
November 5, 2009 at 11:03 pm
bitchphd
a mere oily tropical fruit on the windswept Channel coast”.
1. Avocados are not “mere oily tropical fruit.”
2. Actually, if you think about it for half a second, being able to eat an avocado on the Channel coast is pretty damn impressive, actually. Let alone being able to take doing so for granted.
November 5, 2009 at 11:15 pm
andrew
Has anyone done a serious, or at least extended, comparison between films/tv made during a particular time period and films/tv made later but set in that same period? There are definitely aspects of the past – certain degrees of its crappiness, for example – that wouldn’t have been considered acceptable if shown on tv/film within its own time period.
November 6, 2009 at 7:21 am
jacobus
“Life on Mars suggests that urban life in 1970s Manchester used to suck.”
Which no one anywhere anytime has denied. But 1950s New York, 1920s San Francisco, 1900s Paris, 1890s Vienna… those would be fascinating places to live, even if your creature comforts are decidedly sparing.
November 6, 2009 at 7:45 am
Malaclypse
But 1950s New York, 1920s San Francisco, 1900s Paris, 1890s Vienna… those would be fascinating places to liveprovided you could specify your race, gender, and social class in advance, even if your creature comforts are decidedly sparing.
Fixed.
November 6, 2009 at 7:57 am
Ahistoricality
provided you could specify your race, gender, religion and social class in advance
Fixed, as they say. Granted, the modern age is better for Jews than anything earlier, but, with the exception of ’50s NY…. not so great.
November 6, 2009 at 8:50 am
Vance
If the key term is “fascinating”, many of those places and times might qualify even if you didn’t win the Rawlsian cultural lottery. But you wouldn’t be in on the fun, the art, or the luxury.
November 6, 2009 at 9:28 am
JRoth
I think Malaclypse’s correction applies to the present day, nu?
November 6, 2009 at 9:34 am
JRoth
WRT Mad Men, seems to me that the show is pretty clear that the 1960s smelled awful (20+ episodes, and I still get grossed out by all the smoking – sorry, smokers) and that the domestic food was pretty gross (Betty’s meatloaf looks like the meat in Parents). Beyond that, I have trouble believing that Manhattan in the early ’60s was really all that tough on white collar workers (other notes: Peggy’s initial apt. situation is plainly unpleasant, and it certainly occurred to me that Don’s Caddie would seem incredibly crummy alongside a modern Chevy, let a lone a modern Cadillac – but I don’t think the latter point is made clear by the show, just something that occurred to me).
November 6, 2009 at 10:56 am
ari
jacobus, if your point is that the cultural and environmental histories of cities are often very different things, I think that’s dead right. And it’s also true that people of different classes experience the material dimension of urban life in vastly different ways. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. My argument, if that’s what it is, is that one of Life on Mars’s recurring themes is that the material dimension of urban life used to be a lot grimmer than it is today. I don’t think Mad Men, which also focuses, with its gorgeous period tableaus, on the material world, makes that point at all.
November 6, 2009 at 11:00 am
ari
And no, JRoth, I don’t think Mad Men makes it clear that the 60s smelled awful. By contrast, there are few if any instances that I can think of in which a character says that smoking fouls the air. Instead, as is era-appropriate, people just blithely smoke or accept that their peers and colleagues are smoking. You’d need to have an ad-man from the future show up in Mad Men for a critique of the stink of cigarette smoke to make much sense. And that’s why the critique works on Life on Mars.
November 6, 2009 at 11:06 am
JRoth
Are people so isolated from smokers that they don’t get the olfactory implications of smoking? And at least at the outset of the show, smoke-filled air often accompanies the heavy smoking.
Given that smoking is still pretty common in the present day (unlike corncob mattresses and coldwater flats), I don’t think you need the interloper from the present to make these things explicit.
Do you keep waiting for a Gloria Steinem to show up and explain to us that the women at Sterling Cooper find their roles stifling? I think that certain leaps we can make without hand-holding.
November 6, 2009 at 11:16 am
Charlieford
I liked the early ’60s . . . we drank whole milk, exclusively, and never thought twice about it.
November 6, 2009 at 12:09 pm
ari
Do you keep waiting for a Gloria Steinem to show up and explain to us that the women at Sterling Cooper find their roles stifling? I think that certain leaps we can make without hand-holding.
JRoth, I don’t think most/many people in the 60s thought cigarette smoke smelled especially bad. Or at least there’s nothing in the show — that I’ve seen — to suggest that they did. I do, though, think that many women in the 60s found their gender roles stifling. And that’s one of the points of the show, right? Just as it’s one of the points of Life on Mars that the material conditions of 1970s Manchester were, compared to 2006 Manchester, quite awful.
November 6, 2009 at 12:33 pm
JPool
I’ve only seen the American version (gauche I know) and not all of that. I like the fact that it’s 1973 New York is very much a Sidney Lumet kind of New York, and that part of his cognitive dissonance comes not just different ethics of police work, but from dealing with both race and gender in the 1970s and the consequences that attach, even for a white male, to challenging either of those dynamics. There are some fine Durkheinian points up for discussion, were one so inclined. I also like that rather than just being a time-travelling story, it raises Open Your Eyes type questions fairly early.
November 6, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Walt
If you smell cigarette smoke all the time, you don’t realize it smells bad. My mother was a chain smoker, and I didn’t realize how strong the smell of smoke was until I moved away to college and came home to visit.
November 6, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Lurker
Vance,
about “fascinating”. When you note that say, 1950’s New York would be “fascinating” regardless of the socio-economic position of the observer, I can’t get the image of Mr. Spock out of my mind. The Vulcan frowning, noting: “Fascinating.”
November 6, 2009 at 1:23 pm
grackle
…it certainly occurred to me that Don’s Caddie would seem incredibly crummy alongside a modern Chevy, let a lone a modern Cadillac…
Obviously you have no experience of those marvelous machines of yesteryear – big comfortable couches with acres of leg room, the Caddies with plush upholstery, powerful engines, smooth rides; these were great cars. I’d trade my current model auto in a minute for a new ‘56 Chevy Impala wagon with its’ economical 15 mpg 283 V8.
Also, having grown up with central heating in the 50’s as well as, on the other hand, having experienced numerous rental places since, with, at most a single wall heater to heat three or four rooms – which are still ubiquitous in many urban areas – I wonder at the assumption that the 70’s were so much less comfortable. Couldn’t it be economic class difference? Britain has had a long history of parsimony in home heating. I have no idea how widespread American style central heating is there even now.
November 6, 2009 at 1:24 pm
grackle
It may have been the Bel Aire in 56.
November 6, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Vance
Lurker: that was exactly the sense of the word I had in mind. There are lots of things to say about the world of Invisible Man, but it’s not uninteresting.
November 6, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Malaclypse
I think Malaclypse’s correction applies to the present day, nu?
But I think it applies less now than at most points. Sexism still exists, as do all the other isms, but Mad Men makes the point nicely that naked bigotry was accepted then in a way it is not today. Yes, miles to go, but at least we are aware that these things are problems.
I’d trade my current model auto in a minute for a new ‘56 Chevy Impala wagon with its’ economical 15 mpg 283 V8.
And if you were ever in a collision, you would realize that the trade was a bad, bad idea. Actually, as the Impala doesn’t have seat belts, you probably would not survive to realize your mistake.
November 6, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Terence Dodge
Hey Where did you find a copy of the Brit version? netflix has the American, and no response to my request for the original of course.
Terence
November 6, 2009 at 8:10 pm
ari
I got the British version through Netflix, actually.
November 6, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Terence Dodge
Yes I just found out..the wife is enjoying Harvey Keitel in the American version.
November 6, 2009 at 9:46 pm
ari
I may try the American version next. But after what we Yanks did to State of Play — Ben Affleck? Really? — I might just stick with the original.
November 7, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Barry Freed
Actually the American version was pretty damn good.
November 8, 2009 at 6:31 am
lawguy
I was born in the late 40s. From what I can remember all the houses my family lived in had central heating. Even the older ones, although none of them had A/C. No humidifiers either.
I’m not sure perhaps the English really aren’t interested in heating in their homes.
The show sounds interesting, though.
November 8, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Erik Lund
Hey, lawguy: where did you live? You can do without central heating in Britain, not so much New York, or Toronto. If I’m recalling travellers’ stories correctly, central heat still isn’t universal in places like Dunedin (“Gateway to the Antarctic!”) and Brisbane, where it can get pretty cold at night. Central heating falls precisly into the category of rising tide of everyday conveniences that Ari is pointing out.
November 8, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Keir
Central heat very much not universal in Dunedin, esp. in poorer/student areas. (Insulation isn’t even universal in Dunedin.)
(True of most of New Zealand actually, and it’s a disgrace.)
November 8, 2009 at 4:51 pm
elizardbreath
The thing about the original post, though, that you adjust really quickly to lack of creature comforts, within any kind of reasonable range — I’m a pampered American urbanite, and two years in a tropical country with no air conditioning, no potable running water (or hot running water) or access to a private car really wasn’t difficult or unpleasant, just disconcerting for the first month or so. People in the ’70s weren’t uncomfortable all the time, they had what they were used to.
(This is particularly true of the cigarette smoke thing — anyone my age or older should remember when there was smoke in any public space and most private ones all the time, and most people didn’t mind. I know I didn’t — the only time cigarette smoke bothered me was in a VW Bug with two chainsmokers and the windows rolled up.)
November 8, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Gramps
This is the weirdest post and set of comments yet.
I was a grown man when the 1970’s rolled around, and as far as I can tell creature comforts in the USA have not changed.
Sure could use a smoke, though.
November 9, 2009 at 2:48 am
Walt
In the old days, you could really enjoy nostalgia, before you had historians mucking it up.
November 9, 2009 at 8:31 am
chris y
We had central heating of sorts (not in every room) in Britain from the early 60s – before that we’d been abroad a while, so I don’t know when it became widely available. But Keir is right that the British climate is sort of marginal when it comes to prioritising central heating. If you haven’t got it, there are maybe 10-12 days a year when you really wish you had, just as in Mediterranean countries there are 10-12 days when you really wish you had a simple bar heater. But if your budget is limited, it’s not the first thing you think of.
Actually,
material existence has improvedstuff has increased massively since the 70s. You are now officially a deprived household if you don’t have a washing machine. In the 70s, most people used laundromats. There are plenty of similar indicators. I was in my prime of youth in that decade and I don’t feel remotely nostalgic for it.November 10, 2009 at 10:41 am
In the provinces
I think the contrast can be resolved very simply. Urban life in 1970s Manchester was awful; urban life in 1960s New York was much better.
November 10, 2009 at 11:43 am
ari
I think that you’re right about that. But I also think that life in 1960s New York was nowhere near as appealing as Mad Men makes it appear, much as life in the 1990s New York was nowhere near as appealing as Friends made it appear.
November 10, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Erik Lund
That life in the past is appealing qua being life in the past would be the core of the critique, right? I just wonder if a positive take on life in the past is really about the subject that it appears to be about.
That is, is there something about projecting life in the past that gives us pleasure? Given the intensity of nostalgia, I have to wonder if there isn’t something neurological going on. (I certainly don’t think that a critique of nostalgia as being inherently anti-progressive will stand. But I would have to make a pitch for “reactionary progressivism” to make that work. Wait, work outsourced.
Or, possibly, that I’ve just had too much coffee to be coherent.
November 10, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Vance
Nostalgia can take the form of “things were so much better then for me”, or “for people like me” or “close to me”, but I’m sure we’ve all also heard claims that things were better in some way for everybody back when. True or false, this does at least express a sincere concern for everybody, and an effort to imagine what might be better for everybody. Almost worse than being false, though, (can you tell I’m not a historian?), I think this form of nostalgia, while it shows hearts are in the right places, is weak as a spur to action.
November 10, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Erik Lund
Funny you should mention a spur to action. I’ve been bearing down on what makes me feel nostalgia so intensely, and I’ve been wondering if it has something to do with the fight-or-flight reflex. That is, nostalgia is the part of the brain that identifies a safe place to run to kicking in.
As a pragmatic political issue, I can’t help thinking about Paul Krugman and Brad Delong’s recent spree of nostalgia for the world of 1945–75 as a way of preparing public discourse south of 49 for higher tax rates. And historically, “restoring the ancient constitution” is the very definition of Whig (and Disraelite) progressivism –the latter being then “progressive conservatism.” (Memo to Stephen Harper: still want my party back.)