You may not have noticed, but it has gotten better

I am taking a page from the book of Liz at Los Angelista and offering a glimpse of my thoughts about the series Mad Men, much as she has done. .

One of the best things to show up on AMC in a long time, MM offers a glimpse of a time that in current context seems almost surreal, and surely it couldn’t have been so, is the thought that comes to mind. Was there ever a generation of males that was so hedonistic, so crass and unfeeling, so ‘alpha’, so debauched?

Was there ever a generation of females so utterly under the sway of their Type-A spouses that they persistently looked the other way when their mates screwed anybody in panties that caught their fancy, ignored their alcoholic excesses and were so utterly disregarded as people of any worth other than being (always willing) bed partners and homemakers?

Homemakers of a sort. In their elite lifestyles, there was always ‘help’ in the household, so their days played out through the bottom of a wine glass, banal pursuits, gossip with lame friends, and complete boredom with their lot in life, though they loved the luxuries. Could such women bail out of their velvet prisons? They could, but what would they do. They were ill-schooled, and even those that were educated were victims of the glass-ceiling syndrome, so they’d never be able to recapture the luxuries they possessed should they divorce. So, let him screw whom he fancies and always pretend it didn’t happen.

Wendy, who is younger than I am, wondered if the depiction of ‘that’ world was accurate. “Surely it couldn’t have been that blatant,” she said. “Surely there were people with ‘genuine’ feelings for each other.”

No doubt there were. But, since I was in my teens at the time MM takes place, I know it’s not as much of a stretch as people might like to believe. Until the advent of the pill, the series makes apparent, women were stifled under the weight of a social system that worked well to the advantage of the male. MM makes that vividy apparent.

When I was in my youth – pre-pill – there were lots of ‘good girls.’ What that meant was that they were not more morally stalwart than females of a later generation, they were just afraid to ‘go all the way’ (as the saying went) because the risks of pregnancy were too great. Pregnancy and then, often as not, an unwanted marriage to a male who, although trapped, was a supporter of the existing mores.

Mind you, there was a lot of adventurous and imaginative petting at the time. Amazing what you can do without doing ‘it’. Sometimes we actually did the old it, but fear then dominated the ensuing 28 days until the all clear sounded.

The other thing that amazes about MM is the lifestyle and the flagrant disregard of anything resembling healthful living. Smoking is a constant in the workplace and anywhere else. Excessive alcohol intake punctuates all social endeavors, including office gatherings, and nobody seems to give a rat’s ass about the dissipation. Meanwhile, the office girls are treated like pointy-titted bimbos. They are insulted, they are groped, they are screwed with their being no consequence to exploitation by their superiors, which would probably be deemed rape in some circles, or at the very least lead to termination for excessive sexual harassment. The office broads are fair game, and if they want to hold onto those jobs, they’d better play along.

At that time I was growing up in a ‘cocktail parties’ neighborhood and was never blind to the shenanigans of our elders in their regular booze-fueled get-togethers, at which there was much tippling, much flirting, and probably a lot more amongst those pillars of middle-class virtue. Of the kids I grew up with, I find it interesting (in a morbid way) how many ultimately evolved into alcoholism and other addictions, and the few who didn’t even live past their 40th birthdays.

One of my favorite aunts (now deceased) discussed just that with me a few years ago and put it into context:

“Our behavior was wrong,” she said. “And our children paid the price, and I find that tragic. There was too much drinking, too much partying, too much neglect, all in the belief we were having a good time. But, you must understand, we were children of the Depression and of the War. Now that we had money and some status we embraced that without much consideration for anything or anybody else.”

Mad Men offers an overview that suggests there were no decent and thoughtful people of that time. That is categorically untrue. I remember some fine, thoughtful, non-sexist, relatively clean living folks from my youth.

But, I also remember lots of others who could have populated the Madison Avenue of the Mad Men and fit in perfectly.

This old world is as screwed up in its own way as it ever was, but it’s screwed up differently, and in some areas it has actually improved.