Thank you "Don Draper": I now understand my late father
I have had the great luxury of watching MAD MEN on DVD and through this brilliant, brilliant show, I realize by disc three, that Jon Hamm as Don Draper gave me finally the opportunity to understand my late father, who like Draper, was a totally self made man with a complex childhood and a burning desire to make it in the business world, marry a beautiful woman (my late mother), and cheat consistently behind her back. But as I finish the first season, through the incredible portrayal of Draper by Hamm, who even resembles, my late father, I am no longer angry, but fully can comprehend his journey. Thank you, Matthew Weiner, for this totally well written, intelligent show.
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Sorry...title should read: "Thank you, Don Draper: I NOW understand my late father"....
Thanks Michael -- Your headline is fixed. One of the great things I've come to realize about the show's realism is it's ability to bring us back to our own memories. The boards are filled with comments about people recounting similar office shenanigans, sentiments, and memories from the era. It's truly a wonder that a fictional show can strike so many different chords depicting a "bygone" era -- a credit to the writers, producers, and actors all.
Michael, your headline says it all for us children of the WWII set. For me, it's Don Draper's hair cut and slick back, and I feel like I'm looking at my dad. My dad was blue collar , and never in the white collar world, but the uncommunicative temperament was still there, regardless of his line of work. It's the generation.
The rest, though, reminds me of my early bosses (who were in their 50's by the 1970s when I started working).
Mid 1960's is when the arguing began around the dinner table about the long hair, clothes, music, and generational attitudes on both sides took position and fired. Whew, lots of battles over differences in work, politics, society, dress, behavior, the war (Vietnam), and outlook.
MAD MEN is not only a tremendously well written, directed and brilliantly developed show, but in watching it, the show has been a cathartic look back at my childhood, like you said, our fathers, and remembering the tail end of the Korean war, the polio scares, a time of innocence, watching Wide Wide World with the late Dave Garroway on a television like that shown on MAD MEN, and then, as you have pointed out, seeing that fifties time turn into the radical sixties and Vietnam, marches, bombs in Berkeley (where I was born, and later went to school) and the anger of 1968 with civil rights, etc...MAD MEN will always bring me back to a period of great importance, not only personally, but for America.
I think that's why I loved "Forrest Gump" so much - pure nostalgia for the 1950s to 1990s. Born in 1954, I started school in 1960, and watching that film brought back alot of memories.
If you want to read a great book about the 1950's, check out David Halberta's "The Fifties" - it's very interesting (also wrote "The Best and The Brightest" about Vietnam), and has quite few other books on our society (Korean & Vietnam wars, fifties, sports, children).
That's David Halberstam (not Halberta).