"Slug Bug, No Slug Back!"

Many view the Volkswagen (VW) Beetle, first built by the Germans in 1931, as an ugly or delicate type car, but fact trumps over everything.  The Volkswagen Beetle is actually the bestselling and longest lived car in the history of the automobile industry. In the first season of the AMC television series Mad Men, Episode 3, the guests at Bobby's birthday party (Carlton, Chet and Jack) are caught making fun of Helen Bishop for driving a Volkswagen Beetle. In the episode there is a reference made by Chet at the party by saying, "The last time I saw one of those things (Volkswagen) I was throwing a grenade into it." This line, although it seems of no significance, is actually quite informative.  The history of the beetle car is an interesting one.  It actually began being produced in the 1930's and it was used exclusively by Nazi Germany in World War II.  This is why it is believed that the beetle car actually had a lot of trouble selling when it first was released into the world market. 

Image credit: http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/7d7d2a8cb6204602e8ad0afd0a8b16f0442bbc73_m.gif

 

The car that was at first most hated by just about everyone around the world turned it around and became the bestselling car in the automotive industry, even beating Ford's Model T.  How could this possibly happen?  One word: Advertisement. During the 1960's the Beetle had just started to become quite a bit popular through witty advertisement. In Benjamin Preston's article "The VW Beetle Started with the Nazis, Boomed under MadMen and Died in Mexico," he mentions the low points and how it managed through advertisement to reach a bestselling status. In the television series Mad Men, Episode 3 Marriage at Figaro, Don discusses the VW Beetle with his coworkers. They are trying to find something wrong with the famous "Lemon" VW ad.  The guys can't seem to find a thing and Don says, “Love it or hate it (The Ad), the fact is we have been talking about this for the last 15 minutes." This is the type of advertising that brought the VW out of being just about bankrupt to being one of the most successful car industries in the world. 

Image credit: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6GebuQC08QFyvZ9A90ZoG-4UOCOYNioEzedI8uVZu47EyKVS1RnN_HSJFeM97SfQjr6wizW9kNnKP6e5wjW5L1WHxi_xeSn4TnLAXMAgERT4qaQW4WOf0-lK2MvDq1ggqLWvYdB8suRI/s1600/HitlerPorscheVW1938.png

 

The beetle in present day is actually looked at as an affordable and economical car. Nowadays, most people couldn't tell you that the beetle was first produced by the Nazi's. In fact today the VW Beetle has grown so popular today that even kids play games with relation to it. VW still dedicates a lot of time and money towards advertisement. VW always has an ad during the super bowl, which is considered the best time in the world to advertise.  VW is a company that has made one of the greatest comebacks of all time.  They did this not through a bail out or through creating something new, but through advertisement. Don portrays this type of effective advertisement when he presents his pitch on The Wheel. Don takes something seemingly useless and turns it into a present day slide show of pictures.  

Links referenced:

http://jalopnik.com/5917545/the-vw-beetle-started-with-nazis-boomed-under-mad-men-and-died-in-mexico

http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/7d7d2a8cb6204602e8ad0afd0a8b16f0442bbc73_m.gif

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6GebuQC08QFyvZ9A90ZoG-4UOCOYNioEzedI8uVZu47EyKVS1RnN_HSJFeM97SfQjr6wizW9kNnKP6e5wjW5L1WHxi_xeSn4TnLAXMAgERT4qaQW4WOf0-lK2MvDq1ggqLWvYdB8suRI/s1600/HitlerPorscheVW1938.png

 

Figaro, Figaro, Figaro!!

The negative opinions that some individuals possess towards the protagonist in the series, Mad Men, Don Draper (Jon Hamm), are preposterous.  Yes, most of us are aware of his philandering with various women besides his wife, Betty Draper (January Jones).  However, there have been “Dons” in society dating back to the Eighteenth Century, and this is not referring to The Sopranos or The Godfather Trilogy people!

In actuality, The Figaro Trilogy was written in the late 1770’s by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais.  This trilogy consisted of the comical plays including The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro, and The Guilty Mother.  The most well-known third of this saga is the second of the three parts.  Ironically, although Beaumarchais wrote The Marriage of Figaro to fulfill the request proposed by Louis François, Prince of Conti, the play was banned by the ruling authorities in France.  With the French Revolution right around the corner and tempers between societal classes erupting, Beaumarchais’s masterpiece served no place in the highly unstable culture of France.  Beaumarchais austerely highlighted the restrictions in which the different societal class ranks possessed.  It wasn’t for almost a decade until Mozart remastered Beaumarchais’s play into his own version of The Marriage of Figaro, the comical opera.

After viewing the third episode of the first season titled “The Marriage of Figaro” it seemed that there were definite connections with the opera composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  As practically any viewer of this season would know, Don Draper is married to Betty.  In this episode, Don is seen on the rooftop of Rachel Menken’s (Maggie Siff) department store with Rachel herself.  Throughout the scene, Don leans in and the two start kissing each other.  Later in the episode, Don is seen full of depression and lacking fulfillment in his life while he is of attendance at his own daughter’s (Kiernan Shipka) birthday party.

Since the basis of the plot has been established, the parallels of the episode with the opera can be discussed.  In this opera, the characters that should be acknowledged are the Count, his wife Rosine, Figaro, and his fiancée Suzanne.  After three years, the Count grows uninterested in his wife and their marriage.  Just like Don, the Count grows miserable with his seemingly ideal life.  The Count actually desires to pursue Figaro’s fiancée.  The connection to make here would be that in a sense Rachel Menken represents Suzanne.  All throughout the first season, practically all of the viewers notice and comprehend the idea that most of the men in the show are not obedient to their wives.  Personally, the opera, The Marriage of Figaro, was just the original version of the series, Mad Men, dating back to the Eighteenth Century.

On a side note, let it be known that the popular line “Figaro, Figaro, Figaro!” is not actually in the opera, The Marriage of Figaro.  However, it is in the prequel, The Barber of Seville, in which this phrase was coined. 

To think that I always thought Figaro was just the cute kitten created by the Walt Disney Company! 

Links referenced:

http://entertainmentguide.local.com/synopsis-the-marriage-figaro-beaumarchais-2261.html

http://www.reginaopera.org/figaro.htm

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11886151

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marriage_of_Figaro_(play)

Adultry Is Everyone's Problem

The first time I watched Mad Men one of the main flaws I found in almost all of the adult characters was infidelity. No matter how much I wanted to relate to the cast, and to view Don Draper as my protagonist, this one major flaw slapped me in the face. From as long as I can remember adultery has been in the headlines. From my parents’ discussion of the Clinton scandal dominating the room, to last week my roommates' critical examination of the broken marriages of Tiger Woods, Sandra Bullock, and Jenifer Aniston (just to name a few). Adultery has never been spoken of as anything less than a sin growing up, and there is no reason why I or anyone else with my upbringing would consider it the same thing. Yet, if you turn on the television or surf the web you are guaranteed to find images of adultery are clear. The 1960s and last week are no different when it comes to the appropriateness or existence or adultery.

Mad Men does not shy away from showing their audience their leading men and women straying from or participating in the act of adultery. This is not shown because “sex sells” but because adultery was common place during this period, especially in the higher classes of American society. Don Draper and Roger Sterling are merely products of their time. Women were in on it too. In 1962, one of the bestselling women’s books was Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Gurley Brown, the editor and chief of Cosmopolitan magazine from 1965-1997. Gurley Brown instructs young women how to work the system in which they were restrained by. She taught them many lessons that she learned during her 30+ years of being a single girl in the city from how to be financially sound and choose the best roommate, to how to chase a married man. This book was controversial at the time mainly because she voiced what was already being done behind closed doors. Joan Holloway is a great example of a woman who is sexually independent and allows men of every marital status to help her get the things she wants in life without toiling with the idea of marriage. Society is aware that adultery is a sin, and grounds for divorce even, but this does not hinder most people from straying. Gurley Brown in I’m Wild Again published in 1999 wrote a section about adultery. She asked one of the married men she had an affair with why he felt he “needed” to stray. The response was shocking; it was not selfish or deflecting the issue, he merely said “It just felt civilized."

I feel it is important for Mad Men’s audience to keep this in mind as they watch the series - to see it more as a cultural norm or rather something that was expected of them. People of that time married for different reasons, went to college for different reasons, and loved for different reasons. To compare them to today’s cultural standards is unfair and from my personal experience can build biases in your mind toward the show. Even though the reasons to turn to adultery may be different for today’s married couple, the rate of which marriages are ended due to marital infidelity seem to mirror the past. Today there are even dating websites devoted to adultery. These sites such as AshleyMadison.com, are providing an easier way for married people to stray. No longer are men confined to finding a woman on a train or taking off their wedding ring when entering a bar, but they are able to openly advertise for what exactly they are looking for. Are we today still as naïve about the severity and vastness of adultery as were the people of the 1960s? Or are we just as equally blinded by denial and refuse to consider that not everyone plays by the same rules taught to us? Or even that we ignore the rules when it comes to our own lives?

Sources referenced: Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America by Natasha Vargas-Cooper

The Time Without Cell Phones

In Episode 3, “Marriage of Figaro," of Mad Men Season 1, Don drove to pick up his daughter Sally’s birthday cake but did not come back until very late at night. When Don did not show up after one hour after leaving, Betty and the wives fiercely worried and called the bakery. However, they were informed that Don had picked up the cake a long time ago. Since Don was unreachable, the birthday party was almost wasted by the unpredicted absence of the cake.

Imagine what would happen today if Don did not come back on time with the cake. It would not even necessary for Betty to call the bakery. Instead, she would call Don’s cell phone with a single hit on the speed dial key on her cell phone. Even if Don did not pick up the phone, she could leave thousands of voice messages or simply find out Don’s location with some easy-to-use GPS services, for example, the AT&T FamilyMap.

How annoying all these things were going to be if they were available in Mad Men! Don was a man who had frustration in his marriage and needed some private space to think through some issues. Everyone can have personal issues or emergencies, and they usually happen in a bad time. In the case of Don, it was his daughter’s birthday, and the time he was supposed to bring back the cake. For some people, his decision of going to the railroad side to think and drink was irresponsible. Of course, whoever in the position of Betty would not accept Don’s action. However, in the perspective of somebody who needs the private time, the absence of cell phone was the best protection of the privacy and efficient meditation. A thorough meditation might be able to inspire the person to take new approaches to address his or her frustration. In Don’s case, even though there was not really anything indicating the result of his meditation, his uninterrupted private space also allowed him to somehow make up his “wrong doing”-he bought a golden retriever as the birthday gift to Sally. In the show, Don’s returning with the dog did not lead to a verbal conflict between him and Betty. However, if he were called back by cell phone, he would neither be able to finish his meditation, nor avoid a quarrel with Betty, which could be a disaster.

What Don did on her daughter’s birthday party would not be considered right by many people, but his uninterrupted private space might be something that people are jealous of. In the time of cell phone, we do miss the time without it sometimes.

Scandal in the Office

What book could be so scandalous that Joan is discreet about it? In “Marriage of Figaro”, Joan (Christina Hendricks) discretely returns Lady Chatterley’s Lover to another secretary, Marge (Stephanie Courtney). When Marge gives it to Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), Joan advises her that it would attract the wrong type of person if she read it on the train. Written by Englishman D.H. Lawrence in the early 1920s, Lady Chatterley’s Lover was one of the most commonly banned books of the early 20th Century. It is the story of an aristocratic woman in post-WWI England whose husband became injured after their marriage, driving her to elicit affairs with a playwright and the gamekeeper on her estate. The novel’s explicit descriptions of sex and its use of words that were unprintable at the time led to its being banned in the United States.

Book banning was a major issue across America in the early 20th Century. In 1930, US Senator Smoot petitioned the recent repeal of banning foreign published books. The Senator declared “I'd rather have a child of mine use opium than read these books” and “I've not taken ten minutes on Lady Chatterley's Lover, outside of looking at its opening pages. It is most damnable! It is written by a man with a diseased mind and a soul so black that he would obscure even the darkness of hell!” His fire and brimstone speech convinced the Senate to return to the old system of banning foreign published books. In 1959, however, a court case repealed the ban and salacious foreign novels could then be legally enjoyed by Joan, Peggy and Marge. Even though the book was legal, its themes were still extreme taboos in polite society. Fortunately, we can all now enjoy Lady Chatterley’s Lover by simply visiting our local bookstore; just don’t take it on the Metro, as it still attracts the wrong kind of people.





Links Referenced: Bibliomania and "National Affairs: Decency Squabble" from Time.

Feeling Trapped

A very memorable scene from the earlier part of the series was the birthday party scene from the third episode entitled "The Marriage of Figaro." In this scene we really got to see the dynamics of suburban life. Rather than experiencing a sense of community, like one would expect from a birthday party scene, the viewer feels trapped like the characters in the scene. Most of this is can be attested to the crowded, claustrophobic sense created by the way the scene was filmed. In contrast the characters that are the most trapped are the ones we see by themselves. We can see, from the way the scene is framed, that Betty, Don, and Helen feel trapped by suburban life.

The viewer only sees Betty Draper alone for about thirty seconds in the beginning of the scene. We see her making a punch for the adults. Instead of pouring a moderate amount of alcohol in to the cocktail, she dumps an extreme amount in to the pitcher. She then sighs and picks up the drink. We next see her in a sea of neighbors and friends with a happy smiling face serving drinks to the guests. It then becomes obvious throughout the remainder of the scene that her main concern is being a proper housewife and making sure everything is perfect.

After a few minutes, Helen Bishop enters the scene with her son Glen. Up to this point we know that Helen had recently hit a rough patch and gone through a divorce. The scene becomes interesting when the women are talking about their honeymoons and marriages in the kitchen. Helen displays herself as a strong woman as tensions rise within the conversation. The camera begins to switch between three extremely tight shots at lightning speed. Unlike the other characters, Helen Bishop has found her escape. She is asked about walking an she explains that she does it just to clear her mind. She shows strength through her ability to cope with stress and difficult situations. The other women don’t accept this and they put it off as her being divorced and deranged.

Finally, there is Don. We see Don taking home movies. There are three shots that we see from the first person perspective. We first see the kids running around. Then, we are taken to a shot of Helen and one of the men having a very intense and semi argumentative conversation. We end by seeing a couple sharing a kiss. These three shots represent three different aspect of Don’s life. There are the kids, who is will always make him happy no matter what. Then the other two shots represent the two options he has with his wife. He can either be bicker-some and put on the facade of being happy, or he can be loving and caring towards her. Pressured by this Don attempts to escape to the backyard where the children are playing house and bickering like their parents, a subtle reminder of the life he doesn’t want to lead.

Helen then joins Don outside, and they mention how the crowd of adults inside the house is the same as the crowd of children outside the house. Inside the kitchen the women are still discussing how they don’t approve of Helen’s lifestyle. It is brought to Betty’s attention that Don is outside conversing with Helen. Immediately, Betty goes and removes Don by telling him to go get the cake. Don does so and the scene ends with Don finally finding his escape by driving off, disappearing. Where he goes we don’t exactly know.

By the end of the scene that two of the characters have found a way of dealing with their sense of entrapment. Don has his escape of getting away and leaving the house for extended periods of time. Helen has her walking. Betty doesn’t have something like this. As the series progresses it is almost a sure thing that she will try to find an escape. This will likely be one of her greatest struggles. When she succeeds, it will be one of her greatest accomplishments. For now, we leave that in the hands of the writers.

Where Do Betty and Don Live?

There are actually multiple answers to this question.

On the show, they live in a town called Ossining in Westchester County, New York. It is located about 30 miles away from Madison Avenue in New York City and would take no more than an hour to commute to. The choice of Ossining has raised eyebrows among Mad Men fans and history buffs alike because an ad man of Don's stature and a woman as society conscious as Betty would have most likely lived in Connecticut or the East Side, Chappaqua, Darien, Rye. This has led many to speculate that creator Matthew Weiner chose Ossining because it was the hometown of writer John Cheever who wrote many short stories dealing with suburban angst.

Of course the show does not actually film in Ossining. The home that we have come to call "the Draper Household" is actually located 632 Arden Road in Pasadena, California. Check out a street view on Google maps.

More surprising is the fact that the Drapers actually moved and forgot to tell us! In the Pilot episode, this is the house of Don and Betty:

When it is time for Sally's birthday in Episode 3, this is their home:

Whether their house is in Pasadena or Ossining, I'm sure we would all like to be invited over for dinner. But sorry Don and Betty, we can't bring the scotch.

Links referenced: AMCTV and Iamnotastalker.com.