Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

I have an odd relationship to the show Mad Men. I've watched it several times through, and I really admire it on many levels. Currently it's my best reference for the writing of subtext, something I'm really bad at and need to learn to improve. And the costuming is masterful; analysis of it really teaches you how to do it. But I wouldn't exactly say I like it. I get weary of how consequences for people's negative actions tend to not have all that much of an impact because of the need to keep the show going, and nobody ever grows or changes, which I find wearying.

My mom watched the show before I did. She found it fascinating as a depiction of a time period she remembered very differently. She was born in 1953, so she was a child in the '60s, and her family was working class in a small industrial town, "where people didn't have as much, and they weren't as miserable." She said she found it fascinating to see those people who lived the life that most of the people in her world aspired to-- especially when it didn't seem to make them any happier.

I connect it to her not only because she introduced it to me, but also because of the character of Sally Draper. Personality- and circumstance-wise, they were almost nothing alike. Sally was a privileged girl with a rough, rebellious relationship with her divorced parents, while my mother was nice and well-behaved, "ethnic" for her town, without much money, in a family that was loving and close. But I can't help but think of her when I watch that beautiful little blonde girl, born only a year later than Mom was, experiencing a number of the same cultural influences. Nobody pays any attention to Sally's potential; my mom was always regretful that she was never encouraged to be anything but a teacher or a nurse, when she was smart enough to do anything. And then, of course, there's the smoking.

I still find that part of Mad Men hard to watch. Not just the fact that everybody's smoking all the time, but the culture around smoking. It's ubiquitous, expected, almost enforced. That's the culture that taught my mom the habit. She didn't start as young as Sally-- who I think was around twelve --but not that long later, in high school. My granddad didn't even do it and took a hard line against it. But things still ended up how they ended up. So it's a little hard for me. To watch the culture shape that little blonde girl in the way it shaped another little blonde girl into something that ended up killing her.

That's kind of over-the-top and maudlin. I still watch the show; I've watched it like three times through. But I think about it.