Little Retreat - 5: Thinking About a Longer One

I just found this article, which might be of interest to anyone wondering about silent retreats.

For the next couple of hours, I am contemplating Mad Men.

But in the background: hopefulness for next summer.

As I used to tell my students: everything is connected.

(I have no idea what the connection between Mad Men and a silent prayer retreat might be, other than that those are the two things on my mind at the moment.)

Don Draper?

So how is it that in a poll on something called Ask Men, Don Draper was named as the most influential man?

He is

1. a fictional character

2. a hopeless philanderer

3. who lies obsessively

4. about, among other things, his identity

5. to, his wife, among other people, about virtually everything.

All of the above make him a compelling character, but . . .

influential?

OK, I wouldn't mind if his hats influenced men's styles. Jon Hamm is ridiculously handsome and Don Draper's hats are pretty cool. But that's about it.

Live-Blogging Mad Men

The Lovely Daughter in response to Ann-Margret's singing in Bye Bye Birdie: Did people like that noise?

Pete has to bring up his illustrious great-great-grandfather.

LD: Why does Pete have Paul and Ken has everybody else?

Gregarious Son: Don can sell a woman in a white dress a ketchup popsicle.

Pregnant Betty drinking wine and smoking a cigarette.

GS in response to Peggy's imitation of Ann-Margret: Peggy doesn't like it so much now that the guys are treating her like one of them.

LD: I'd rather be treated like a guy than a secretary at that place.

GS on Ann-Margret: She's very good looking; I don't think anyone cares what she sounds like.

LD and GS during commercial break discussing gender and laundry.

GS: So Don has made his wife feel better and gotten his brother-in-law's family out of the house and he doesn't have to pay for it and his father-in-law's house will be untouched. Don is VICIOUS.

Oh please, tell me Peggy is not going to risk another pregnancy.

Betty's father is back in Prohibition.

Peggy's into one-night stands now?

Everyone in our living room, looking at Don looking at teacher: Uh-oh.

LD: Independent brunette women are his downfall.

GS: I don't know about his downfall.

None of us get the ending.

On Another Topic: Mad Women

In the past few days, I have watched the entire first season of Mad Men and most of the second. In my need for something to take my mind off the life I have been handed, I have become completely addicted.

As I have mentioned, the rampant sexism of the early 1960s is on display as an overarching theme and in every detail of this brilliant production. I've been thinking a lot about the women characters:

Betty (Bryn Mawr) ~ childlike wife of ad genius Don, with her intelligence and sexuality simmering rapidly toward explosion.

Helen (Mount Holyoke) ~ scorned by the neighborhood housewives due to her status as a "divorcee' " and her job in a jewelry shop.

Joan (Radcliffe? BU? I tend to think perhaps the latter on the basis of her roommate's reference to having seen her on the first day of college walking across the "Common" rather than the "Yard," but maybe the writers thought the former allusion would be more accessible to viewers) ~ the office manager with a figure that seems to grow more pronounced with every episode and a pragmatic desperation that enables her to keeps tabs on every type of temperature in the office.

Rachel (Brandeis? Barnard?) ~ exotic (to Don, because she is Jewish) and adult, a businesswoman whose mind gleams with ambition.

Peggy (no college, no husband) ~ whose quixotic combination of innocence, intelligence, and drive are pushing her out of the secretarial pool and into the no-woman's land of copywriting.

The fashions in this "Marilyn or Jackie?" world (one of the running metaphors of the series) highlight both the narrow path each woman walks and the barriers she seeks to circumnavigate:

Betty ~ form-fitting bodices and full skirts, breasts and waist accentuated and hips hidden under the petticoats of a little girl, the madonna of her era.

Helen ~ pencil skirts marking a return to the dating world and cardigan sweaters a nod to her status as mother of two.

Joan ~ full figure molded by armoured undergarments and poured into her clothing, exuding her own confusing and distracting blend of office professionalism and blatant invitation.

Rachel ~ elegant suits and elaborate hairstyles, the businesswoman who longs for genuine love.

Peggy ~ the wardrobe of a young adolescent trying to figure out who she is and where she belongs, hiding the reality of a pregnancy she could not believe in and an ambition equally mystifying to her.

Who would I have been?

Peggy, I suppose. When we were a year into Mount Holyoke, one of my friends and I decided we should drop out and go to Katie Gibbs, where we might learn to type and thus become actually employable. We harbored no dreams of finding husbands in the cool elegance of Boston office buildings, however; our plan was to make enough money to head for British Columbia and some kind of adventurous outdoor life. Like Peggy, we were somewhere in the middle ~ uncertain about who we were, dissatisfied with the role models of the past, unsure about how to create a different kind of future.

Three years later, I was in law school. I hope Mad Men remains a success so that we can watch how its women veer out of the roles the 1950s seemed to have preordained for them.