From the BBC’s Adam Curtis:
In Mad Men we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and unease. They feel there is something more, something beyond. And they feel stuck.
I think we are fascinated because we have a lurking feeling that we are living in a very similar time. A time that, despite all the great forces of history whirling around in the world outside, somehow feels stuck. And above all has no real vision of the future.
And as we watch the group of characters from 50 years ago, we get reassurance because we know that they are on the edge of a vast change that will transform their world and lead them out of their stifling technocratic order and back into the giant onrush of history.
The question is whether we might be at a similar point, waiting for something to happen. But we have no idea what it is going to be.
Curtis talks here about Rosser Reeves, at least one of the real-life people who goes into Don Draper, and the model of advertising he represented, as against the more social-scientific, psychological version that was sweeping over Madison Avenue in the 1960s. He’s also got a discussion of Shirley Polykoff, some of whom is in Peggy Olsen. And there’s some terrific video of these people talking about the business of advertising, if you have the time.
11 comments
August 23, 2010 at 9:53 am
JP Stormcrow
Post title brings the thought that as interesting as it would have been to be a fly on the wall for any president, doing so for LBJ would likely to have been the most entertaining.
August 23, 2010 at 10:58 am
eric
The best joke ever in the footnotes of the JAH — indeed, the only joke of which I’m aware in the footnotes of the JAH — follows along those lines. Bruce Schulman was critiquing the original transcription of the LBJ audiotapes:
Note 10 reads, “… As Beschloss notes, the secretary could hardly be blamed for the error. Packs of bastards were far more likely to appear in Johnson’s conversation than Pakistani ambassadors.”
“Taping History,” JAH 85:2 (Sept 1998): 571-578; on 574.
August 23, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Dr J
Speaking of LBJ, recordings, and flies:
http://whitehousetapes.net/clip/lyndon-johnson-joe-haggar-lbj-orders-some-new-haggar-pants
August 23, 2010 at 5:39 pm
eric
Mr. President, please learn the euphemisms of the trade: “In other words, you like just a little more stride in the crotch.”
August 23, 2010 at 8:01 pm
NM
If the President wants to talk about his bunghole, he can talk about his bunghole, son. That’s the American Way.
August 23, 2010 at 8:21 pm
JP Stormcrow
Thanks, never heard that. Now, oh history ones, whose funeral was he “running to”? (Tape is dated 8/9/64.)
August 23, 2010 at 8:59 pm
eric
he can talk about his bunghole, son. That’s the American Way
Unless he wants to do it in a former Burlington Coat Factory outlet. Then it’s sacrilegious, do you hear me?
August 23, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Vance
The burp in that conversation is sublime. Mr. Haggar’s obsequiousness is unruffled.
August 23, 2010 at 10:04 pm
erubin
Say, sorry to hijack the thread, but Edward Kohn was on The Daily Show last week promoting his book Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt. As the resident Teddy Roosevelt expert (last I checked), do you have any thoughts on Kohn, his book, or the subject matter? Is it worth a read?
August 24, 2010 at 6:37 am
Fats Durston
Thank you, DrJ (and eric, NM, Vance), that made my morning.
Hilarious though the bungholes, balls, and belches were, my absolute favorite part was to learn that the president carried him a pocket knife. (And that he sounded near identical to the fellars I used to work with on the road crew.)
August 24, 2010 at 8:53 am
Dr J
Where I’ve previously heard only puerile hilariousness in this recording, I now hear bullying. LBJ is like a (profane) cat playing with poor Mr. Haggar’s mouse. I’M GONNA SIT HERE AND TALK ABOUT MY NUTS AND BUNGHOLE, AND YOU’RE GONNA LAY BACK AND TAKE IT BECAUSE I’M THE DURN PRESIDENT.
I wonder if Mr. Haggar had just donated to the GOP.