(S P O I L E R S)
In
which there’s not gonna be a cake. Am I
the only one who knows that?
“My God, the
suburbs! They encircled the city’s boundaries like enemy territory, and we
thought of them as a loss of privacy, a cesspool of conformity and a life of
indescribable dreariness in some split-level village where the place-name
appeared in the
New York Times only when some bored housewife blew off her head with a
shotgun” —John Cheever, Esquire, July 1960.
It should probably come as no
surprise that John Cheever, the Ovid of Ossining, the Chekhov of the suburbs,
made a brief cameo appearance in my Sophomore English curriculum. Aside from
being one of the most accomplished, lauded, and prolific short story authors in
modern American literature, he also served as an early litmus test/object
lesson for my students. Midway through
the Catcher in the Rye unit that
kicked off the year, I supplemented the weekly Salinger reading with Cheever’s
devastating short tale “The Swimmer”, ten or so pages (depending on the format)
of the most expertly constructed, mournfully poetic chronicling of one man’s
annihilation of his life that you could imagine. If you haven’t read “The Swimmer”, stop right
now and go do so. No, really. It’s fantastic. (Most of my former students
in the audience are keeled over laughing right now.)
Okay, you’re back? Cool.
So yes, the story of Ned Merrill and the steady, brutal stripping away
of all his illusions is, quite possibly, one of the saddest works of American
short fiction in the canon. Remove
yourself a bit from the pure plot mechanics and you’ll also see that Cheever
was at the height of his stylistic powers with “The Swimmer.” The famed opening line (“It was one of those
midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying “I drank too much last night.”) could be a summary of his entire
literary career, and of a certain strain of booze-soaked 20th
century American fiction that still holds many readers in its sway (check out
Olivia Laing’s fascinating The Trip to
Echo Spring for a trenchant analysis of the alcoholism that joined the
careers of Cheever, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver,
Tennessee Williams, and John Berryman.)
And the way that Cheever skillfully weaves together the visual symbolism
of the story, how subtle hints of inexplicably changing weather methodically
build toward the desolate late autumn landscape of Ned’s soul, leaves the
reader shaken and dazed when he finally ends up at the door of his abandoned
homestead.
I wanted the students to see that
if you broke down even a story this short into its individual parts, you’d find
that months and months of work could go into crafting such a sleekly designed
misery machine. So we’d usually spend
almost an entire class period tearing apart “The Swimmer”, looking for the
foreshadowing strewn throughout, picking up on the subtle changes in Ned’s
physical strength, charting the hints of doom that Cheever increasingly places
in the neighbors’ mouths at each successive stop in Ned’s voyage along the
Lucinda river. I also used this tack for
the first two pages of The Great Gatsby,
which for my money are two of the greatest pages in literature, so densely
packed with allusions and foreshadowing, the story of Nick Carraway’s life in
miniature.
It probably shouldn’t surprise
you that a lot of the Sophomores were…um…not very enamored of these days of
granular analysis. And I got it: when
you’re 16 years old, spending 45 minutes picking apart a story about an aging
alcoholic in 1964 (or an enigmatic single guy in 1922) isn’t exactly what you
dream about at night. Rest assured
former Sophomores: when I first read “The Swimmer” during my Junior year of college,
I was mildly befuddled too. My ultimate
hope was that some unfamiliar heavy lifting so early in the year would be good
training for the analysis that they’d be required to pursue for the rest of the
year (and for the rest of their academic careers.) Many a Sophomore was probably just confused
about why we were spending so much time talking about drunks.
(A good chunk of the students I
knew over the years thought that I was a major stoner, mainly because I love
psychedelic music. One or two privately
swore that I was on LSD. I later learned
that one in particular thought that I was a major cokehead…because sometimes I
rubbed my nose a lot…due to my seasonal allergies. All of this, despite the fact that I was one
of the most straight edge adults in the building, something I professed to them
on several occasions. Nevertheless,
these bits of misguided speculation actually endeared me to a certain segment
of those students. Somehow, I had become
the adult Ferris Bueller. Oh well,
someone has to be the righteous dude.)
After the sprawling plot threads
of Mad Men’s first two episodes,
“Marriage of Figaro” serves as a much more streamlined affair, focusing mainly
on the dichotomy of Don’s home and work life. And it’s haunted by the ghost of
John Cheever (it’s no coincidence that the Drapers home is smack dab in the
middle of Ossining, NY.) Although years
of biographical study have shown Cheever’s opinion of suburban life to be more
shaded than he often let on, his famous Esquire
quote (featured at the beginning of this essay) on the banality of that
life still holds much wickedly humorous weight and power. And it encapsulates the general state of
malaise that Don (and, in some ways, Betty) feels during Sally’s birthday
party, as he slowly realizes just how rotten this dream life really is.
(In my final year of teaching, I
dove deeper into Cheever’s biography than I had previously, bringing to light
how his deeply repressed homosexuality only added to the existential split in
all aspects of his life. As part of this
exploration, I read the Esquire quote
to the students, which I followed with a gleeful and ironic “HA!” Their blank stares were amusing. Somehow I hadn’t put two and two together:
many of these students lived in the Columbus versions of Ossining. It was the only life that they really
knew. We’ll touch on this in more depth
in the essay for Episode 4.)
There’s a gorgeous moment early
in the episode when Rachel Menken concludes her tour of the department store by
taking Don to her favorite spot: the roof (much like he repackaged his
seemingly inferior self for greater mass appeal, he’s also trying to repackage
Menken’s for a wider audience.) There, with
the picturesque Manhattan skyline as a backdrop, Don kisses her for the first
time. It’s another example of how the
show deftly plays off of audience expectations built by decades of movie lore. The way the shots are composed and the soft
lighting are straight out of a classic romantic drama, and Don again ably plays
the role of the suave Cary Grant figure.
(It’s also notable that Rachel tells him that her mother died in
childbirth, as we’ll soon know that Don’s prostitute mother also died as he was
born; the two outsiders find yet another bond.)
When they join together, it’s a downright exhilarating experience. It’s also Don starting on his third romantic
interest. And when, in a moment of
admirable restraint, he tells her that he’s married, Rachel’s rebuke knocks the
breath out of him. Even his attempt at
drawing her back to him, in which he tells he that he knew what he wanted from
the moment she stormed out of their first meeting, is a pure fantasy; as Rachel
reminds him, he stormed out of the meeting. Once again, Don is pitching himself with an
idealized version of reality.
(We’ll talk more about this as
the season rolls on, but this bit of business is a reminder of the
multi-faceted power of Mad Men’s
formal and narrative aesthetic. The show
is both a gorgeous, seductive representation of refined romantic cool and a
complete deconstruction of that same state of mind. The rooftop scene makes you swoon while also
reminding you of just how amoral Don can be.
Just as Henry Hill’s ascension through the mob in Goodfellas is both a thrilling flight of fancy and a brutal
indictment of the lifestyle, so too is Don Draper’s journey both exceedingly
cool and exceedingly repulsive.)
After this aborted romantic
interlude, Don’s home life can only be a disappointment to him. The day of Sally’s birthday party begins with
a few tender moments between father and daughter, but once the guests arrive,
the rot begins to set in. The
neighborhood men are generally crass and sexist (Carlton Parker, husband of Betty’s
pal Francine, marks his series debut by smarmily hitting on Helen Bishop
minutes after she arrives at the party.)
And the women are even worse, as they spend most of their time cattily
tearing into Helen, both before and during her arrival. When they ask her why she walks around the
neighborhood at night, it’s like they’re asking why she has a third arm.
Much like Midge Daniels, Helen
Bishop is another Mad Men character
who, though she only appears in five episodes, makes the viewer yearn for more
of her presence. Darby Stanchfield ably
captures the full range of Helen’s proto-feminist leanings, including a charged
sex appeal that’s embedded in her confidence.
In her rebuke of Carlton’s advances, her sarcasm is so icy and withering
that she almost makes it seem like she’s serious (the second time in this
episode that a female outsider puts a man in his place.) When she joins Don on the back porch, two
outcasts are once again joined together.
“Interesting crowd in there” she entreats him; his reply (“same crowd
out here”) reflects the tableau from several scenes hence, when the kids
playing house parrot their parents’ nasty arguments (proving that the adults
truly are just kids with more money.)
For a moment, the audience is led to believe that Don is about to plow
through his fourth woman (as are
Betty’s friends), but he’s dispatched to get the birthday cake. And these two reflective loners never have a
romantic moment.
It’s the birthday cake
appointment that brings Don full circle, both in terms of his plot arc and his
life. For the beginning of “Marriage of
Figaro” is the first time that we hear the two words that will forever change
the course of Mad Men and lend it a
power far beyond that of a ‘60s corporate procedural: Dick Whitman. At this point, the train passenger who
seemingly mistakes Don for his old Army buddy Dick seems like a throwaway
moment. But in retrospect, it’s the
first look at the real man behind the armor of Don Draper. And with that knowledge in mind, the rest of
the episode also gains in power, as we realize that much of what we see on the
homestead is Dick looking through Don’s eyes with mounting disappointment. As he records the party with his 8mm camera,
the grainy recorded images switch from kids running through the house to adults
caught in slightly awkward moments (including Carlton and Francine after she
rebuffs him.) Don as naughty voyeur is a
humorous sight, but when he comes upon Joyce and Andy locked in a clandestine
kiss, he’s reminded of his clinch with Rachel from the previous night…and that
Joyce and Andy are seemingly the only couple at the party who are genuinely
still in love.
After his brief meeting with
Helen, a depressed Don picks up the cake, but then drives past his house on the
way home. Eventually, we find him late
at night, parked at a railroad crossing (in another great crossfade, pictured
at the beginning of this article, of Betty leaning forward to cut Helen’s Sara
Lee cake as Don, in his car, wakes up.
The All-American couple are as close as a kiss, yet miles away from each
other.) As he balefully stares into the
distance, a passing train is reflected in the car window. At season’s end, we’ll see the tragic moment
when Dick Whitman fully committed to being Don Draper, in which he stayed on
the train as the body of the real Don was presented to his family as Dick. For now, Don manages to salvage his
reputation with the kids by bringing a dog home for them (much to Betty’s
chagrin.) But just as the trains keep on
running, so too does the momentum of his past and the distorted flow of his
present. And they can only be ultimately
headed for a collision.
A few random notes to close:
*The first shot of the episode is
of the groundbreaking Doyle Dane Bernbach advertising campaign for the
Volkswagon Beetle, in this case the ad calling it a lemon. It marked the beginning of counterintuitive
marketing, a concept that’s integral to the modern advertising industry’s
widespread co-option of irony. The
Sterling Cooper brass hates the campaign, but once again Pete has a
preternatural understanding of its effectiveness. It’s notable too that during Sally’s party,
the men covertly insult Helen by ragging on her choice of a VW Bug as her car,
noting that the lack of a backseat means that she’ll have to pick up a midget
hitchhiker to get some action. Classy.
*In my Sophomore curriculum, this
episode coincided with the chapter of Great
Gatsby featuring Nick’s first visit to the wild bacchanal of Gatsby’s famed
party. Most of the students picked up on
the parallels between Gatsby’s shindig and Sally’s birthday party: the glossy
exterior, the slight sense of confusion, the absent host, the heart of darkness
that’s slowly revealed as the part wears on.
*This is also the first episode
in which Don’s coworkers take note of his mysterious charisma and charm. Pete is jealous that during another botched
meeting with Rachel Menken, Don saves the day by flirting with her. And when he wonders how Don does it, Harry
notes that no one knows anything about him, that for all they know, Don could
be Batman. Let’s see…Bruce Wayne….dual
identity….early childhood trauma of losing parents…hmmm….
*Mad Men’s humor is often underappreciated, but this episode makes
great use of the lighter side of these characters. In particular, there’s a great running bit
about the Chinese couple planted in Pete’s office as a practical joke, which
ends with Don escorting Rachel to the elevator only to be met by a
chicken. “New junior executive” Don
dryly quips.
*And finally, in the “Ladies Room”
essay, I completely forgot to mention my favorite Plath line, from her poetic
patriarchal takedown “Daddy”: “Every woman adores a fascist.” I once had a graduating senior pay tribute to
our Bell Jar time together by putting
this quote on her senior yearbook page.
And boy, does the line serve as fertile ground for the male-female
relationships throughout the run of Mad
Men.
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