Television
Eric Freeman
We’ve talked a lot over the last few weeks about Mad Men being about the Rise of the Boomers and how it pushed out a lost generation too young to fight in World War II and too old to drop acid with gurus and dropouts. The series depicts the end of a way of life, and if Conrad Hilton represents the embodiment of it, then Paris is the figurehead of what it has become. The Hilton name signifies something very different in 2009 than it did in 1963, and that dissonance says a lot about the culture shift that informs much of the series.
Television
Darren Franich
British jokes, this episode had plenty! Just as Season 2 of The Wire taught us that that there’s a whole world of Polack humor lurking in the urban enclaves of the eastern seaboard, and Season 3 of Deadwood taught us about lost race of Cornish people, so Season 3 of Mad Men has reminded us that, forty years ago, before the era of postracial humor and white-person self-deprecation, the most fertile ground for SFW naughty ethnic humor were our transatlantic neighbors. I’ve lost track of the number of references to the Revolutionary War, but Roger made a joke about the Union Jack. He also had the line of the night: somebody mentioned Guy might lose his foot, and Roger shook his head, “And right after he got it in the door.” Everybody had a good blood-drenched laugh about that.
Culture
Eric Freeman
Not to return to a constant predilection of mine, but I totally fucking love Madonna’s theme from Die Another Day. What’s key to its success is that it totally sounds like a Madonna song about Bond, not a Bond song which happens to be sung by Madonna. It’s weird to me that all of the singers starting with Tina Turner have been pretty big names, but when they record their song, they seem to forcefully amputate themselves from the song. It’s almost as if these artists get so caught up in their assignment — we must write a Bond Song.
Culture
Darren Franich
The Brosnan Bond movies completely botched the treatment of women; it’s like they were trying to straddle (pun very much intended) the line between typical Bond Girl hotness and Strong Independent ‘90s Female. As such, they’d usually give them legitimate titles and roles, only to give them nothing particularly interesting to do, with the end result always being that they’d dispatch a minor henchman/woman and then have sex with Bond as the credits rolled.
Television
Darren Franich
Jesus, Pregnancy! I watched last night’s episode with my girlfriend, so I can vouch for at least one female that last night’s presentation of the miracle of childbirth was easily the most disturbing in TV history. Or, perhaps more accurately, it’s the most disturbing portrayal of childbirth that didn’t involve any apparent medical difficulty whatsoever; you realized that the whole hellish routine (signing papers during contractions, last-minute substitute doctors, liberally administered drug cocktails) was all normal. Business as usual here on pregnancy row! The baby is breach! More demerol!
