by Tristan J Nankervis
Don Draper is a genius ad-man. In the first episode of Mad Men, this is played as an ability to pull the magic answer to an immediate problem out of thin air; this is a traditional approach to genius in American pop culture across any field. Usually, it’s played as either recalling simple facts at lightning speed or being able to build objects useful to the current situation. Don’s genius in the pilot is slightly rarer and closer to Dr House – summoning a correct answer via intuition and metaphor. The series, however, quickly and ultimately complicates this with an idea that is actionable to the viewer, and therefore much more interesting than most presentations of genius: Don simply enjoys doing the work you have to do anyway.
The thing that keeps Don sympathetic, even as he’s an antihero asshole, is that he’s curious about other people – both for its own sake and to further his work. Even if he didn’t have advertising, he’d still be going out and listening to people, picking up their views, and working out how he relates to them. For him, the pitches are essentially an outlet for his theories on human nature. And for him, the art of advertising – the imagery, the lines – are things he’d be collating and interpolating anyway.
Which is another way of saying he is always practising. Capitalists often profess that its advantage is that it provides real, concrete feedback for ideas – the marketplace of ideas being the standard term – and for Don, that’s very much true. Even outside the literal system of clients, he can see what audiences are responding to, both in his own work and in others, as well as awards and other forms of recognition. He would be making advertising in one form or another regardless, but he also has meaningful feedback to learn from.
What’s interesting about Mad Men and what makes it worthy art is that it explores the emotions of this experience. Aside from the fact that his art is ephemeral and arguably makes the world worse, he’s also taken aback by how easy it is, especially compared to other people. People (often young people) enjoy self-identifying as geniuses because of the idea that they inherently get something with very little work; Don, interestingly, wonders if he doesn’t deserve his success because of how easily it came to him.
Mad Men takes pains to show he came from a place that valorized hard work; the working class and poor often take identity and value from the fact that they have to work and sweat to make a living, unlike those pampered upper class and inner-city types who live and work in comfortable, climate-controlled environments. Look up the book The Classic Slum by Robert Roberts, which delves heavily into this; it’s standard human nature to rationalize the life you lived, and if Don is separate from most of humanity, it’s not in something he has, but in what he lacks: that ability to justify to himself what he was going to do anyway.
Don is so inclined to soak up human self-expression – film, television, novels, poetry, other advertising – that he fails to see what he does as work. There’s a great line in the second episode of the whole series when Roger remarks to Don, “I can never get used to the fact that most of the time it looks like you’re doing nothing,” because of course, Don is interpolating the things he’s seen, trying to work out how they fit together into the message he wants to convey and the image he wants to express. For some people – especially Roger – that introspection is a lot of work; for Don, it’s life. The tragedy of Don Draper is that he’s only dimly aware that how he’s living is how, ideally, everyone would be living all the time – following their harmless impulses into productivity. Following their own genius.
What did we watch?
Red vs Blue, Season One, Episode Nine
“Look at what I found!”
“I found it!”
“Look at what I took credit for finding!”
“Donut, I told you not to touch anything! You touched everything! That’s the exact opposite of touching nothing!”
You know, between this and 8-Bit Theater, I can see that my problem with writing comedy is that I can’t not take the plot seriously. I can’t let go of caring. This is a dumb, lazy scifi plot with funny lines. On the other hand, all my D&D games are like this. The explanations are even dumber than the questions; Tucker asks how they could possibly have destroyed the present when they’re supposed to be in it at all times, and the others are exasperated by his inability to believe the present has been destroyed, even though they’re in the future.
This is the point where they switched from using the original Halo to Halo 2, with the jump into the future being an ‘explanation’ (“We’re in the future! Things are very shiny here.”). There was a gap in production here, and you can feel that in the better timing and greater density of jokes, including a wider range of satirical targets – the characters put on a play to explain the situation and end up commenting on the nature of looking back at the past and looking forward to the future (“I have a crapload of wars that seemed meaningful at the time, but now seem trivial and stupid.”), not in any serious fashion, but as a jumping off point for one-liners.
Tucker continues to be the only one burned by the teleporter. This ends up playing into the plot.
Grif is obsessed with being a hardened criminal. This ends up a very funny sequence.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – RIP Tom Stoppard, about as unlikely a script doctor as you’ll ever find. But fair to say that without him reworking the relationship between Indy and his dad, this probably would have been an entertaining bur slight movie. And even with Stoppard’s additions, even with the same level of expertise that Spielberg brought to Raiders, this is kind of rote until Connery enters the scene. And I love both the prickly but loving relationship between father and son, and Connery playing so against type. I don’t love the “secret origin” of Indy, bur River Phoenix was pretty okay. And “it belongs in a museum” hasn’t aged well (ask Erik Killmonger about that).
The Practice, “Black Widows”/”Death Penalties” – In the former, Bobby defends a woman accused of killing her older husband through rough sex, screwing up the case badly along the way; and Helen tricks a 15 year old accused of killing her unborn (third trimester) child into confessing. Would a DA really insist on trying such a poor kid? Some interesting ethical dilemmas, plus Victoria Principal as the accused wife and Alex Rocco very briefly as a doctor offering testimony about Viagra. The latter is much stronger, as Helen and Bobby once more square off about euthanasia, only this time it’s not doctor assisted but a husband out and out shooting his dying wife, and as Ellenor takes on a desperate attempt to save someone on death row in Pennsylvania by getting a new DNA test on the rape kit, since such testing has improved. Neither of these cases is really new for the show, but we get a great focus on Bobby’s still lingering anguish over pulling the plug for his dying mother and see Ellenor at her best. Charles Durning returns once more as Bobby’s dad (oddly not coming back for Bobby and Lindsey’s wedding).
It is easy and not wrong to see the “secret origin” stuff as hokey but as spectacle it rules and that hat cut is just the fucking best. Spielberg, man. On the other hand, no way does Spielberg come up with “She talksh in her shleep,” so RIP Stoppard for that one.
Apparently it wasn’t Stoppard either, but an ad lib from Connery.
Ha! Should’ve guessed.
Various stuff on the TV during the long weekend!
Swingers — an odd movie now, the open and winking thefts/homages to works from the past five years are a bit weird (Favareau is no Scorsese or Tarantino, which he knows but goofs on anyway), the faux Rat Pack vibes are pretty dopey (the “money” shit especially) and the swing music is almost magic realism except that it actually happened. However it benefits incredibly from lowered expectations and standards, whatever Favareau’s limits as a director (and as an actor) he’s still using basic craft here that is now in short supply, including in whatever “live action” animation horse shit he’s currently making. So a decent time overall, Vince Vaughan still overflowing with charisma and the NHL 95 scene remains a classic (would be interested to see where this falls in filmed depiction of video games, obviously lots of arcade stuff beforehand and The Wizard is about Nintendo, but this feels like a milestone in accurately capturing this kind of interaction between game and players).
Accepted — Justin Long is a 28-year-old playing a high school senior and fucking looks it, get this trash out of my face.
Office Christmas Party — relatives claimed this was a new holiday classic, it has some laughs but also a lot of overexplained and overcranked mania and if it is not Netflix slop it’s pointing the way there as opposed to Swingers’ direction. But it could be worse, and it was distracting enough to grab my brother’s attention so he fucked up at cards and got yelled at by my other brother as I euchred them both, and that is the true spirit of the season, so holiday classic it is.
Live music — my guys Caspian played a small club, much smaller than they’re able to fill, that used to be another club where I saw them a bunch back in the day (it is oriented in reverse now, the stage now on the back wall, which still feels weird), in what is becoming a yearly event. And they fucking nuked the place, they have always been a drop-everything-and-see-them live band but on a small stage in front of a local crowd they had fun and let loose, pulling from 20 years of songs and playing through a few technical issues to blow everyone away (the woman dancing next to me was having a ball, at one point throwing up her fists to pound back on the music). The last movement of Arcs of Command, one of their heaviest and best songs, always rips but here it was a Noise, the hammer of the gods slamming down on us, just incredible stuff. Hopefully it won’t be another year before they play out here again.
I normally play so conservatively that I never get euchered, but it happened *twice* in a single game last month.
I will get reckless but less so toward endgame (going out on a euchre is no fun). It’s the name of the game! And I definitely made a few conservative choices that were immediately punished by the euchre gods, passing on a possible but euchreable hand and taking the one-point loss only to get utter garbage in the next deal and being stuck losing with no action.
Haven’t seen Swingers in ages, but it was a great favorite in college and a lot of fun. Vaughn I think is a huge reason the movie works– I could write a lot about why, but, to keep it simple with a metaphor you’ll appreciate, Trent is the Ray Smuckles to Mikey’s Roast Beef Kazenakis– the good-time party guy who sincerely cares about his depressed best friend and wants to uplift him.
It’s just fun. And I also enjoy how much “Vegas, baby, Vegas!” became a thing when they’re in Vegas for like the first ten minutes of the movie.
In terms of “new holiday classics,” my sister recommended us The Night Before a few years ago and that turned out to be pretty fun – Seth Rogen, Anthony Mackie, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, with a pretty great supporting cast and a couple of killer cameos I won’t spoil. (And a karaoke performance of “Runaway”!) Classic, I don’t know, but it was fun enough to not regret watching it.
Ha, The Night Before was recommended by the same person! But it was not immediately available, so Party it was. Will keep it in mind.
And great call on Vaughn’s Ray-ness, not only in genuinely caring about his pal but in having the ineffable charisma to do so (and just generally behave) in ways you’d be annoyed by in most people.
Ma vie en rose
Bless TCM for doing some trans programming right now, despite predictable obnoxiousness from people about it.
This is one of the rare films that someone could both fairly describe as a candy-colored confection and a devastating, harrowing look at the crushing of a child’s soul. The way the exuberant fantasies of the first half–surviving despite some setbacks–give way to the cold, blue-for-boys-tinged almost-unrelenting real world of the second, with even the happy family scenes having collapsed like a house of cards, is brutal. And the score used for the “happy ending” underlines what we already know: this acceptance won’t last. Ludo’s parents are able to accept her only as long as it doesn’t interfere with the lives they want, and the new neighbors accepting some childish “cross-dressing” at a party doesn’t mean they’ll accept it everywhere else. More of the same is coming. If Ludo’s suicide attempt didn’t change things, I don’t think her mom’s vision will either.
Without Honor
This is going to be this week’s Streaming Shuffle, so I’ll just say in advance that it was one of my favorite Noirvember discoveries: an unusual bit of suburban domestic noir that pairs very well with Cause for Alarm. Feminist, humane but cynical, and incredibly effective at only 69 minutes. Agnes Moorehead only has a supporting turn here, but she blows the lid off the place.
Logan’s Run
I kind of like how the ending gives you room to believe that a lot of these people are doomed to a slow death by starvation: it’s not emphasized, but we know Box’s “protein from the sea” stopped coming, and we know the Old Man could no longer fish in a particular spot. Cool mall-like set design and vine-covered buildings. Michael York’s reaction to the computer cavalierly taking away four years of his life is great, as is his final, surprisingly affecting scene with Richard Jordan (“You renewed”). I also like how Peter Ustinov is not a generic wise, cool old man but a bit rambling and distracted and obsessed with cats and Cats. But while I like a lot, this doesn’t add up to a whole movie that I like, so it all still felt like a little bit of a let down, a strangely underbaked one at that.
The Fabulous Baker Boys
Lovely, sad, sexy, sultry movie: Michelle Pfeiffer’s “Makin’ Whoopee” performance was every bit as beautifully hot as I’d heard. Her character is not only the catalyst for the plot–shaking up the long-time functional unhappiness of Jake Baker, who’s suffocated most of his dreams for this double act but also won’t fully commit to the professionalism and cheesiness it requires–she also speed-runs it, taking less time than the brothers to decide what she wants and what she’s willing to give up (or at least risk losing) to get it. Pfeiffer’s performance is exquisite, as always. Beau Bridges is underrated, and both his big speech and his reconciliation with Jack are excellently played: the first an eruption of anger that his brother can’t see that he’s a person too, just one with very different priorities, and the second a warm, weary embrace of love that can live on through a lot more changes than Jack was ever willing to risk before.
Thanksgiving
Pretty good throwback slasher with good kills and a few nice frills of character development. I always appreciate a very on-theme killer. Patrick Dempsey seems to be having a blast in this, and he hits all the right notes. I still miss the grungy, grimy, grainy ’70s aesthetic from the trailer, but this is a fun time.
The Public Enemy
That ending title card is such a joke, and it knows it. We’ve just spent the whole movie following a character who definitely felt like a fully realized person, complete with an exploration of his childhood, his vicious flaws, and his tentative virtues. Cagney is a very vivid performer–he captures the screen whenever he’s on it–but I feel like the real star here is the surprisingly nuanced and nonjudgmental script, which follows its protagonist to some grotesque places but also consistently finds human details in his characterization. It’s also interesting how this documents the rational side of being a gangster, like Paddy’s self-interested accumulation of genuine loyalty, and how that pairs with the deeper emotional drives. This wisely doesn’t try to explain Tom even as it documents him. To some extent, he’s just like this–moved by cruelty and pleasure–and to some extent, he was made like this, born into a family where his father–the representative of both literal and moral law–was also violent. He’s both. He’s inseparable from everything. That makes him, in contrast to that closing message, not a problem to be solved but a person who’s bound to his own fate, which is both grand and diminishing and ugly. Fantastic final image.
I was so completely charmed by my first viewing of Logan’s Run (especially the robot, and the big finale being “what if there was loads of cats?”) but I’ve never dared go back in for a second one in case I see more of the flaws that everyone else seems to see in it.
It has some really good bits! Especially the cats.
Cagney’s performance here has to be one of the first really “modern” ones in movies, right? He doesn’t feel anywhere as bound to silent and stage acting as some of the early talkies actors, more like Brando and Dean decades ahead of schedule.
The Taste of Things – continued adventures in food / chef cinema, and it doesn’t get much better than this. What a gorgeous film, it’s far removed from the intense, high-pressure restaurant movies where they have to cook better than ever before to save the establishment from closure or whatever. This one has tragedy in it, but the wonderfully relaxed pleasures that surround it are harder to shake than the sadness.
Yum, Yum, Yum! A Taste of the Cajun and Creole Cooking of Louisiana – another Les Blank doc, this one doesn’t do much that Always for Pleasure didn’t already do (apart from having a ridiculously long title) but watching people cook, eat and play the fiddle is delightful as ever.
3 Women – Altman double-bill! I’ve had a copy of this one kicking around for ages and kept putting it off because I thought it would be very serious and austere for some reason. It’s not, it’s fucking mad and quite funny – the closest comparison I can make from the other Altman I’ve seen is to Brewster McCloud which I didn’t expect at all. This one does veer off into psychological horror territory later on but mostly I enjoyed not really knowing what the hell was going on. I don’t always click with 70s Altman as much as I’d like to but I thought this was pretty great.
Gosford Park – late-era Altman seems to click with me a little better and this was another really fun one. I love a murder mystery with a stacked cast and I’m not sure they get any more stacked than this? A ludicrous number of moving parts and while I did think there was a little too much of an effort to tie up too many plot strands in the last 10 minutes than there really needed to be, I had few other complaints. Compelling stuff with a ton of great performances.
A New Leaf – third time I’ve seen this and it remains a total delight, I love Elaine May so much and Matthau’s miniscule character development over the course of the film is hilarious. True love means deciding PROBABLY not to go through with murder.
This is a fantastic line-up, and even thinking about the first two films has me hungry. (The Altman Super Draft has me wanting to check out more Altmans, though Gosford Park is already a favorite.)
“You have your head in the arm hole.”
I haven’t started on the Altman draft yet but looking forward to finding out which ones they stick at the bottom so I can focus on seeing more of the good ones! Nashville is still a major blind spot for me. Really want to rewatch The Long Goodbye as well as it feels like it SHOULD tick all of my boxes but I didn’t quite get on the right wavelength first time through.
“watching people cook, eat and play the fiddle is delightful as ever” is something more movies would do well to remember! Also, the guy with the enormous smoke pit in his backyard: I want to go to there.
I’m mostly pescatarian these days but I’m not sure how long my resolve would last if I visited the guy with the Enormous Smoke Pit.
What did we play?
Back to Slay the Spire. This is an excellent game in general, and though it involves a lot of strategic and tactical decisions (and sometimes pulling up a calculator app), I’m also used to it enough by now–and a sloppy enough player–that it’s also excellent at giving me something to do while listening to podcasts. Did a couple runs this weekend and eventually succeeded in killing the Heart as the Ironclad (I don’t think I’d ever done that before?) with a curse deck, where I had cards that–once upgraded–let me do 20 HP worth of damage to my opponent every time I drew a status or curse card, and then I loaded up my deck with curses I’d normally avoid and cards that produce damaging status cards as a side-effect, and I did cascading levels of damage. It was magnificent.
On future Ironclad runs, I should probably try other approaches to deckbuilding, like amplifying my strength, but I’m feeling very rosy about my curse deck. Very fun approach and very different to how I’d played with any of the other character builds.
One of these days, I need to do essays on my favorite games. This would certainly be one of them.
Once more unto the Star Wars RPG over Discord, finishing the business from three weeks ago. My character didn’t really get to do much, but it was fun, and it’s interesting to delve into a different party than my usual and see how people handle the tasks. Of course, short RPs are also very different than long term plays, but it’s nice to have an ending. Sort of, since another adventure awaits the party in the new year.
Celebrity — once again the youths faced off against the olds and eked out a narrow victory, which they celebrated with the vigor of their station. But in-game they were baffled by Roy Orbison (referred to as “Orbinson,” open the schools), an old celeb specifically inserted to screw them over, and Mr. Hanky The Christmas Poo, which was surprising to me — I guess South Park and that particular episode really are that old, but it hasn’t entered the younger consciousness? OPEN THE SCHOOLS! On the other hand, the adults were absolutely destroyed by the dreaded Robert Irwin, who is apparently the son of Steve and the winner of Dancing With The Stars — I think the proximity to someone we would have known placed him in some kind of phantom zone, even when he was explained he slipped from memory. Terrible!
And of course a shit ton of euchre, we won some and lost some. I had a terrible game where I reneged twice but my partner helpfully suggested I needed to drink more and that did the trick, my humors must have been out of balance.
Streets of Rage 2 – Sega Genesis Classics on Nintendo Switch Online
Played from the start up to a game over on Hard difficulty. I always forget just how good the level design here is, with every section flowing gracefully on to the next one. For instance, on the theme park level, you go from the main area and enter a dark ride loading before boarding a swinging galleon ride. What I’d forgotten was that in the loading section you can already see the galleon’s ropes in the foreground, teasing the next section while keeping the surprise. I’d also forgotten how the fourth level boss is a pretty tough filter who nearly always takes most of my lives before I can take him down, so my session ended shortly after that.
Finished Dragon Quest II HD-2D remake sometime early in the week, including the post-game content, which wasn’t strictly necessary but was fine enough. Got my party so strong going through it that the final boss fights were a breeze. (Oddly, an optional boss you can fight before the ending ended up being by far my toughest challenge.)
I was going to take a break for a while, but after having enough drinks over the Thanksgiving holiday, I decided to launch into Dragon Quest III HD-2D remake. It came out a year before the I/II remake, and I think the developers intended you to play them in that order (which is, in the DQ universe, the chronological order of the games). But I played them in the original release order. I wish this one had a couple of the QoL features I/II does. But it does add a lot of new stuff, including a few new classes. That said, sometimes I do feel like some of the additions to the games add too much random stuff for us to run around and do that isn’t necessary or particularly fun.
“Which is another way of saying he is always practising” — what about the famous (and awesome) Don Draper naps? Or his moviegoing, which is in some ways just being in touch with the culture he needs to reflect/manipulate for money but also feels like a way of letting his unconscious out. A way to get to where he’s going but without the more forward effort and engagement of his regular life. Because while Don Draper is always practicing and Don Draper is always soaking up human expression, Dick Whitman was not, right? This is the premise of the show, that “Don Draper” is practice and work, a choice to be these things. It is interesting to compare to Roger, who is jealous of Don’s ability but is more natural in his ability (schmoozing) because of who he is from the start, a rich charismatic guy. Or to Pete, who is always working and also always showing the work. Don’s success comes easy to him, all he had to do was completely re-invent himself and maintain the reinvention every day of his life to do it — this contradiction is what makes him so fascinating and as a person unsustainable.
Year of the Month update!
This December, we’ll be taking pitches on anything from 1948, like these movies, albums, and books.
Dec. 18th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Rope
Dec. 20th: Lauren James: The Lottery
Here’s how we’re wrapping up this month:
Nov. 28th: Gillian Nelson: Legend of the Three Caballeros
And here’s the movies, albums, books, TV, and games from 1985 for you to write about next January.
Jan. 2nd: Gillian Nelson: Return to Oz
Jan. 5th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Rambo: First Blood Part II
Jan. 9th: Gillian Nelson: Advice on Lice
Jan. 16th: Gillian Nelson: The Wuzzles/The Gummi Bears
Jan. 19th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Breakfast Club
Jan. 23rd: Gillian Nelson: The Golden Girls