(S P O I L E R S)
In
which we take a break from the booze and self-loathing.
“Babylon” marks a sort of
chronological and spiritual midway point for Season 1 of Mad Men. It also generally
marked the final episode that we would watch in Sophomore English before the
arrival of two weeks of Winter Break. So
in that spirit, it’s time for a brief intermission from this series of
essays. Herewith is some tying up of
loose ends, and some unravelling of others.
*I’m always intrigued by people
who watch Mad Men, even for a season
or two, and can only see Don as a morally repugnant character. Especially if they’ve seen an episode like “Babylon.” Or parts of Season 2 where, amidst the
gratuitous Bobbie Barrett-shagging, Don shows a real commitment to the concept
of loyalty during the botched American Airlines deal, and some hardcore
pondering of his empty, glamorous life.
Granted, the show doesn’t always throw these insights in your face. And a lot of Don’s reflective nature is motivated by his rivalry with the
uber-unctuous Duck Phillips. But Don is
such a compelling, conflicted figure that it’s too reductive to pigeonhole him
as a despicable hedonist, or a bro-tastic icon of cool; he’s both of those, and
more.
*This interlude in the class also
marked the point where our time with The
Great Gatsby was coming to an end.
If you’ve read it, then you can probably see the major parallels between
Don and Gatsby, the Drapers and the Buchanans, the jetset world of 1960 Madison
Avenue and the sanctuary of old money privilege that is 1922 Long Island, etc.
etc.
When we reached the penultimate
chapter of the book (in which George Wilson murders Gatsby, and then himself) I
wouldn’t assign the final chapter, instead telling the student to come to class
on the next discussion day, when we’d take care of the final part. When they arrived, I would surprise them by
reading the final chapter aloud. I have
a long history of theatrical acting and public speaking, so I hoped that even
if some of the students had hated the book, my attempt at conveying the
crushing emotions of the final section might sell them on at least part of
it. Or maybe they’d just get a kick out
of hearing my mellifluous voice assuming the roles of Nick, Tom, Jordan, Meyer
Wolfsheim, etc.
Now here’s the part of the story that
many of those students might not have caught onto at the time. As I’ve made clear to most sentient men,
women, children, dogs, and mannequins, Gatsby
is my favorite book. (You can read more
about it in my epic review of the 2013 film version of the book.) I’ve read it ten or eleven times. But even with all that experience, I still
find it very moving…and for different reasons every time I read it. So moving that each time I read that final
chapter to the class, I almost started crying at several points. I would genuinely have to choke back tears at
least two or three times. Now, some of
this reaction would depend on if the class was figuratively giving me the
finger at this point. And more often
than not, my moments of emotional bleeding would be at their strongest during
the first class of the day (sorry 5th and 8th periods
across the years.)
But yeah, certain images or passages
really got to me every time. Nick
realizing that almost no one would show up at Gatsby’s funeral, and that Daisy
hasn’t even sent flowers. His vivid
memories of the train rides back west from college, in the midst of which he
realizes that he and the main characters of the book were all Westerners who “possessed
some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.” His final phone conversation with Jordan
Baker, in which he ruefully tells her “I’m thirty. I’m five years too old to lie to myself and
call it honor” (trust me, experience with one too many Jordan Bakers over the
years will do this to you.)
And Nick’s final confrontation
with Tom, in which he finally confirms that Tom essentially signed Gatsby’s
death warrant. Even now when I read the
following passage, I get a bit misty:
“They
were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and
then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it
was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had
made…”
That was a brutal moment to read
as a teen, but life had since taught me that this sentence spoke more truth
about the world than many books did. And
the stark brutality of that truth always put a noticeable hitch and waver in my
voice. The only other moment in my
teaching career that was guaranteed to elicit the same feeling was the
climactic sequence in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown
(which I taught in a Literature and Film course), the awful collapse of hope in
which Noah Cross utters that most terrible of truths: “You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have
to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they're capable of
anything.” And the final scene, in which
Evelyn Mulwray answers J.J. Gittes plea to let the police take care of her
father by yelling “He owns the
police.” Damn. Yeah.
And, of course, there was the
final page of Gatsby, in which Nick
looks out on Manhasset Bay and ponders the twin dreams of America and Jay
Gatsby himself. And how “we beat on,
boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Still powerful today. I’m sure that a few of the more perceptive
students caught my suppressed tears during this day. But for those who didn’t…yeah, reading the
final chapter kinda tore me up.
*In my four years of teaching Mad Men as part of the Sophomore English
curriculum, I occasionally got some heat from colleagues of various stripes and
levels of authority about the pedagogical appropriateness of teaching a full
season of a television show. To quote
one detractor’s withering assessment “So basically you’re teaching a pop
culture class.” (It should be noted that
said person made this assessment many months into that school year…and with
almost no prior involvement or contextual knowledge of my methodology. Or its results.) And hey, a few of you might also be thinking
the same thing. So here’s my one stop
defense.
We live in an age that is
saturated in media like no other before it.
At no other time of modern history has so much media been available in
so many formats, and in so many permutations.
And that point of saturation is only increasing each day. Pre-teens and
teenagers, in particular, have grown up fully immersed in this pool of
information and entertainment. The frictionless
experience that so many Silicon Valley hucksters strive for in all forms of
technology has also made the media deluge easier than ever to unconsciously
digest. The advent of the smartphone has
made it possible, for the first time in history, to have almost all of this
media with you 24 hours a day, in any situation and place. (At this point, if you haven’t already seen it,
I highly recommend checking out David Cronenberg’s 1983 masterpiece Videodrome, as prophetic a film about
the melding of mind and media as I’ve ever seen. And long live the new flesh.)
I think that any educator, hell,
any person worth their salt realizes that it’s imperative in such a
hyper-driven, hyper-saturated media environment to include critical media
studies in the scholastic setting.
Emphasis on critical. I’ve seen
my share of attempts at media studies that double as TED talks for the
magnificence of the modern media and technological machine. Deep analysis of all forms of media, their
inherent aesthetics, and their impact on different types of audiences is the
best way to prepare young people to be the critical thinkers who will hopefully
drive the media environment in a more positive and productive manner in the
future.
And in this media-saturated
environment, television is experiencing a renaissance of sorts. Much of the traditional major network content
is dying, but the episodic drama (and, to some extent, comedy) has become one
of the great cultural flashpoints of this era.
As the increasing corporate strictures of Hollywood make complex
individual filmmaking (at least on a mass level) more and more difficult to
achieve, television (mostly premium cable so far) has become the playground in
which artistic visionaries can experiment with long form narrative, moral and ethical
ambiguous characterization, and deep philosophical exploration that would make
most studio execs blanch if they read about it in a script for a two hour film. The
Sopranos was such a genius work and a massive hit because it was wildly
entertaining, profanely funny, and profoundly challenging; at the time,
achieving all three in the television world wasn’t that easy. Breaking
Bad gained much of its popularity and watchability from its suspense-laden
plot arcs. But it was also a fascinating
character study of moral rot and the complex motivations for it. And it’s one of the most beautifully shot
shows of the modern era, Michael Slovis’s painterly compositions turning
Albuquerque into a neon-noir landscape of splendorous desolation.
All of this brings us back to Mad Men, which might be the unlikeliest
water cooler show of this so-called New Golden Age of Television. As I mentioned in the intro essay, I chose to
teach the show because it so closely hews to the greater concerns of The Great Gatsby and In the Lake of the Woods. But it also contains everything that we, as
humanities teachers, were supposed to champion.
A long form narrative that requires careful attention to detail. Realistic characters whose hopes, dreams,
flaws, and motivations can only be fully understood through context. A finely tuned visual sensibility that is
sometimes the main storytelling voice. A
dissection of one of the most influential periods of American history. A compelling, cautionary tale about the birth
of the modern advertising industry, which has stealthily colonized our minds;
what could be better than learning to analyze a show that, in and of itself,
analyzes media history?
One other criticism that was
thrown my way was that taking one class period per week to watch an episode together
was a waste of time, that I should use the flipped classroom model
instead. For those of you unfamiliar
with this latest educational fad, it advocates that instructors should tape any
lecture-related material, have students watch it at home the night before
class, and then devote the class period to group work and discussion. As with most education fads, it’s interesting
in theory, but too often applied across the board without contextual
understanding of the individual class dynamic.
And like most edu-fads, it’s actually one that’s already been recycled
several times. (For a concise analysis of the flipped classroom fad, check out
this piece by the always spot-on education analyst Audrey Watters.)
In any case, this line of criticism
was, at best, both amusing and wrongheaded.
It was also delivered by someone who had never seen the classroom
dynamic on the days that we would watch an episode. For all the talk that we, as educators,
engaged in concerning the importance of shared experiences (especially in a
technocratic society that can all too often promote a solipsistic attitude),
you’d think that anyone would understand the power (and, let’s be honest, the
pure enjoyment) of 15-18 people gathered together to watch an episode of Mad Men together. Anyone could watch “5G” at home, but they
wouldn’t experience the electric tension in the air when Don walks into the
hotel with his mysterious satchel, an entire group of people on the edge of their seats. And
the post-screening discussions that we engaged in, when insights and questions were still fresh
in everyone’s heads (mine included), when we could talk about the historical
context and references of the episode in an immediate fashion? Yeah, I don’t feel like I need to explain
myself much more. Other than to remind you that the bulk of the essays in this series reflect the content of that classroom unit...and I've only mildly touched on all the literary content. And needless to say, I still get former students telling me how
meaningful that unit was to them.
*On the final day of classes
before Winter Break, I’d have some fun and play a collection of Mad Men-related videos for the students
(or at least those who hadn’t taken off for vacation early.) You can watch those videos in playlist form here. I’d also highly recommend watching
this episode of Between Two Ferns,
which I also showed. And yes, I like
websites too.
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