Don’s first-season moments with Midge are as rosy as rosy can be—they listen to Miles Davis, smoke a little pot here and there, and go their respective ways—him back to Ossining, her back to Bob Dylan-types and ‘I love you, Grandma!’ greeting cards.

In Don’s mind, the women he medicates with never change. In reality, they stay in the Village too long and wind up slaves to the needle.

Yes, in a quickly decaying New York, it makes sense that counterculture rears its ugly head in the form of heroin-addicted Midge and her would-be pimp husband.

A year or so away from the Velvet Underground’s ode to the drug, Village heroin use was in full swing. A 1965 Life Magazine shoot takes us inside the claustrophobic world of two addicts—a young couple who steal and hustle to feed their collective habit and leave their squalid quarters only to score (don’t even get me started on how much like the recent activities of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce this is).

Don tells Midge that he’s expected to see her in the Village, and of course he has! Don Draper knows nothing of what it meant to be an early bohemian woman—remember, Midge is living the boho life in 1960, a solid six years before little Peggy Olsen dares to venture over to a loft party. By 1966, Midge’s art career has gone nowhere, and the Dons of New York have moved on to younger and brighter things, and Midge’s flouting of convention has left her (literally) high and dry.

Destruction is on its way—to our SCDP heroes, to the women they throw money at, to the very city in which they all ply their trade. In a few short years, the Village will be uninhabitable for besuited businessmen like Don. The walls are closing in, and Don Draper’s only starting to notice.

*Footnote by- Angela Serratore

November 26, 2009

Don is not interested in your dime-store critique of the capitalist ‘system.’

Ok, Footnotes crowd: Let’s get long form! I think you’ll like. From one of the best scenes of the series.

* * *

Man in Fez Hat: Dig Ad man had a heart. Toothpaste doesn’t solve anything. Dacron sure as hell won’t bring back those ten dead kids in Biloxi.

Don: Neither will buying some Tokaji wine and leaning up against a wall in Grand Central pretending you’re a vagrant.

Man in Fez Hat: You what it’s like to watch all you ants go into your hive? I wipe my ass with the Wall Street Journal. …Look at you—satisfied, dreaming up jingles for soap flakes and spot remover, telling yourself you’re free.

Don: My god. Stop talking. Make something of yourself

Midge’s Lover: Like you? You make the lie. You invent want. You’re for them… not us.

Don: Well I hate to break it to you, but there is no big lie. There is no system. The universe is indifferent .

Man in Fez Hat: Man, why’d you have to say that?

* * *

It is so easy to take Don’s side in this moment. History, more or less proves him right. (Plus, it’s difficult to feel sympathy for a pigeon-chested twentysomething in a peasant shirt when he is standing next to Don Draper). The political changes that defined the 60’s and 70’s came about through a combination of disciplined political action — not music festivals.

This idea of counterculture, and the Us v. Them dichotomy has always existed Western Civilization (see supreme court case Jesus v Romans), but this specific bohemian scorn against ‘the ad man’ was fomented specifically during the 1960s.

In the view of Midge’s glassy eyed party guests, society had become overrun with lies and propaganda thanks to hyper consumption fueled by advertising. The world was soiled by injustices (like Biloxi) and yet people were told freedom was to be found in washing machines and Cadillacs. “The system”, then, was considered a huge swindle of images and symbols that repressed individualism and truth. The way to rebel was to renounce symbols of greed, discipline, and uniformity.

The rub? This was done by adopting a whole new system of symbols: a hammer and sickle pin to show your defiance to the rigid McCarthyism of the 50’s, a bare midriff to outrage the mothers who taught their daughters to be polite and find husbands, or even a Paul Kinsey style beard to broadcast the notion that you and your face will not be constricted by the tyranny of disposable razors!

Yet according to Don there is no system; the universe does not care what kind of shoes you do or don’t wear; it will continue to spin mercilessly, unmoved by human turmoil (no one knows this better than a dust bowl farmhand like Dick Whitman). So the counterculture that Midge’s buddies adopted was supposed to build a new world on individual freedom. Now, we have the benefit of being 40 years in the future and seeing that this project of theirs did not work so well: The system of hyper consumerism was not staved off by bearded men in ironic fez hats, it’s actually still thriving!

So then, where does that leave Don? Don is also in revolt, yes? But is his brand of rebellion any more or else authentic than the hippies in the corner? After all this conversation is being had in the apartment of Don’s mistress. Don revels in the same kind of hedonism and rule breaking to satisfy his individuality as the dope smokers do. I mean, the guy shows up an hour late every day, bucks at authority, and has joyless sex with powerful women for what reason exactly? To shake off that creeping alienation that comes from a world living in a world of well disguised lies?

At least his feet are clean when he does it.

November 16, 2009

Can you guess what Boho lover lady put on for her afternoon romp with Don?

Of course you can.

It is the crowning jewel of a masterpiece: Blue in Green. It’s the third track on Miles Davis’ 1959 Kind of Blue. The composition was co-written by Bill Evans who played piano on the album. Evans was to the piano, what Davis was to the trumpet. Both men begun with a bop beat and then slinked into a cooler, looser, slow-like-honey mode with the rising influence of West Coast jazz at the the beginning of the 1960’s. Davis, of course, went on to wilder orchestrations and built a discography defined by musical innovation.

Evans found his steady rhythm in cool jazz. In the mid-sixties he was a part of the breezey California sound along with tenor sax titan Stan Getz. The two did album together which is also very good to listen to when committing adultery in the Village. Or anywhere.

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