Comments on: Sex and the Single (or Married) “Mad” Man

By: Mad Men: still aggressively anti-sexy : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:01:26 +0000

[...] that we’re so cheap, we squeak? It’s true.) I stand by my claim of last month that Mad Men goes out of its way to ensure that no one enjoys any sexual pleasure whatsoever. In this episode, Don and Sal are on a business trip to Baltimore, and both of them hook [...]

By: Must be swell being a steer : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:33:39 +0000

[...] on the state of heterosexuality and the pill in the early 1960s, which she wrote in response to my post about what a grim, joyless undertaking is heterosex on Mad Men. This is just an open thread, for anyone who wants to “share.” Consider it a [...]

By: Historiann

Historiann — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:53:38 +0000

Thanks, KC–I’ll come over and take a look.

By: Knitting Clio

Knitting Clio — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:15:22 +0000

Just posted some longer comments on my blog but for some reason they're not tracking back.

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:02:30 +0000

Historiann, re the littering query: I really think there *has* been a sea change on that over the period you mention, perhaps comparable to the way we would view a tobacco smoke filled public enclosed space today if we entered one that mirrored America even ten years ago.
The “Highway Beautification” movement was largely about persuading people not to be “litterbugs,” although Lady Bird Johnson also added commercial billboards to that category. And it’s amazing to think that the iconic “First Earth Day” in April, 1970 was largely, in the provinces at least, a community turn out event to scour unsightly debris from roadsides and streamsides. Later notions of ecological interaction as defining of “the environment” were scarcely on the ideological radar screen much less anything about “sustainability.” There are certainly noisome city neighborhoods today filled with urban detritus–ironically, seldom moreso than right after the refuse trucks go by to pick up, and scatter, the leavings. But that we even notice their noisomeness is somewhat a measure of how far the threshhold of perception has moved on that question.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:03:27 +0000

LOAF–thanks for the intel on Hildy/Notorious. (I didn’t know that secretary’s name.) No, not the actress who plays Joan. I just thought the sarcasm of her first major line was a lot like Notorious, so it was a kind of looks & personality meld. (Until she bonked Harold Crane, that is. Our Notorious has much higher standards, I am sure!)

By: life_of_a_fool

life_of_a_fool — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:59:49 +0000

I had never thought about how depressing the sex is, but that’s an interesting observation. I never really thought of it separately from the general miserableness of everyone.

I don’t take it as a “we’re so superior today,” though I can see how it could be read that way. And I definitely agree that it’s the 1960’s filtered through the 2000’s.

On the birth control issue, I took Peggy’s trip to the doctor to mean that all the secretaries (and so all the female employees) were on the pill (because the women are meant as a “perk” of the male employees).

Oh, I think you mean that Notorious PhD looks like Hildy, not Joan (the portrayer of whom was in Firefly).

By: Historiann

Historiann — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:02:53 +0000

HistoryMaven–I don’t feel virtuous, I feel a little overwhelmed and intimidated by the washer, which seemed to me in the store to have the simplest dials and options, but which now (as Fratguy put it) disturbs me because it seems “self aware.”

By: HistoryMaven

HistoryMaven — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:33:40 +0000

To heck with Mad Men, Historian, is that an LG washer? I just bought one, too. Is it so wrong to feel so virtuous?

By: Historiann

Historiann — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:23:14 +0000

Oh, and p.s.: There was another totally gratuitous and egregious “we’re so enlightened and superior, aren’t we” self-congratulatory moment in an episode I saw last night, when Don and Betty were packing up to return home after a picnic in a park with the kids. Don wings his beer can into the park, and Betty picks up the picnic blanket and just leaves all of the paper plates and napkins on the ground.

Littering! Yet another reason to feel superior, confident that our values are the right ones, eh?

I wasn’t alive in 1962, although I remember the “Crying Indian” ads from the 1970s to try to get people to stop littering on American highways. But–I seriously doubt that people were just throwing trash on the ground in urban spaces. This scene just struck me as totally over-the-top, but if some of you remember 1962-63 and disagree, let me know.