Mad Men and Change

Time for a cocktail?

Change is neither good nor bad. It simply is.

--Don Draper, Mad Men

I've been trying to wrestle this post to the ground for weeks. The concept of "change" has weighed on my mind for quite awhile now, but I haven't been able to articulate those thoughts very clearly yet. Good thing I don't make a living expressing myself in writing. Oh, wait...

Well, anyway. I know Mad Men signed off a several weeks ago, but ever since I began watching it, this show has made me think about at least a couple of dimensions of change we all face (and which many of us deny).

Mad Men presents itself on so many levels: women's struggle for equal participation in society, the place of class in American society, time capsule, and commentary on consumerism. But the most compelling themes involve change. Can we change? How do we respond to change around us, both in the other people who occupy our lives and in society as a whole? Does it even matter? In other words, does anything ever really change?

You can find plenty of blogs and web sites about Mad Men that will recount the final stories far better than I, so I won't focus on any particular Mad Men plot here. Instead, I'd like to ruminate a bit on some of these change issues. Obviously the show has struck a nerve.

The joke around the Reeder household, such that it was, involved my father's perpetual 1958 style. As men's hair and sideburns grew long, as they stopped using Brylcreem, as the ties and lapels went wide, and as the suits became particularly polyesterish, Don Reeder stayed put. Short, slicked hair, trim sideburns, narrow ties. Don Reeder wasn't having any '70s nonsense, and certainly wasn't going to wear it. And while this spared himself the agony of having to look at 1970s pictures of himself and thinking "Holy Crap what was I thinking then?" he did stand out like a conspicuous facial tic through most of the decade. Teenage Chris Reeder for a time felt the blowback from that, as I had to constantly justify my own '70s do. 

On the show, we see society's styles and lifestyles changing at light speed during the 1960s, where one year back then was like five years today, while Don Draper seemingly stays put. As for the rest, maybe the dress styles and hair lengths change, but "personal growth" remains some utopian ideal that never really comes to fruition. We see characters making the same mistakes over and over. And while in a couple of the show's finale plotlines you see some characters seeming to chart a new course, you can easily seem then sliding back into familiar patterns in the fictional time period of 1971 and beyond after the show itself ends. Just like they did time and time again during the show's run. Maybe they hope to change, and maybe for a time they do, but ultimately they revert to the same patterns and actions that led them into trouble before.

Mad Men appears to contend that people never really change. Devices, styles, fashions, and customs may change, but people don't. And while even social opinions may change (e.g. the popular consensus about civil rights or They just polish their act. Some don't even adapt to change.

The last Mad Men episode has me thinking about the changes that occur in a lifetime. Both the changes within you and without you (to cop a '60s song title). Even if you never change, the world changes around you. Though we think of the '60s as the decade with the most rapid social change, the last 10-15 years have rivaled it. Newspapers gave way to the internet, pay phones gave way first to cell phones then to texts. We keep in touch as much through shared networks or "social media" as through direct contact. You may well know someone on the other side of the world better than your next door neighbor. Cars practically drive themselves. Kids can't hardly play without some rigid supervisory or "league" structure, replete with legal releases and mandatory parental volunteerism. We can cheaply get to places all around the world in a relative blink of the eye, or we can almost instantaneously communicate with anyone in the world if we don't feel like going there. Oh, and most everyone's cool with gays, non-whites, and women. Divorce. And on, and on, and on. Its topsy-turvy out there!

Clearly, "things change" and societies change. As "a people," we do change.

But do individuals change? Do you really want your 70 year old grandma going to the Skrillex concert and going water skiing the next day? Isn't there something to be said for constancy?

Its not like hair styles changing every two years. Its a fundamental and profound revolution in how we live our daily lives. Do we all have to change, or at least, do we all have to change at the same pace?

If you're Amish, its no big deal. Because apparently God told them that the technology level prevailing in the 1840s was just the right amount of technology. No more, no less.

But for the rest of us, at some point it starts to overwhelm the capacity to change along with the times. Can we even do it? Do we want to do it? Can we use uber? Can we adjust to "apps"? On the other hand, what's more cringe-worthy than some 50ish guy trying to wear the latest fashions? Or use the latest slang? Or listening to the latest music. You get left behind. You don't get the jokes. You don't know who the popular stars are, or what everyone's doing these days. You just pretend its still 1987 or whenever your personal Golden Age occurred. You become Uncle Rico, throwing the football to stay in shape in case you get your shot at the NFL, buying a mail order "time machine" to get back to that day of the state high school playoff so you could talk coach into putting you in the game. Or Ashley Wilkes, unable to adjust to life in the post-Antebellum South (modern reference).

And do we ever change as people? Our physical conditions mandate some level of change. We lack the stamina for fights. Or going out til 4 a.m. We've been through crisis and catharsis before; at some point it no longer registers. But do we change beyond the bites that time takes out of our souls?

Uh, no. At one level, no one changes. Not really. Not fundamentally. Because at some point, your personality becomes fully baked. You apply it to the conditions that you confront, but you tend to go with what's most comfortable and hope for the best. Oh, you may sharpen your act, or find a way to put a better face on your choices. Or even realize how you fall into patterns. But the fences that hem our choices grow strong as the years pass. We go for the known and the comfortable, no matter how well (or not) its worked in the past, over breaking new ground.

How many people do you know that have changed profoundly once they became an adult? Answer: not that many. Maybe if you completely hit rock bottom and the alternatives are death or radical change, maybe then you can change. Or maybe when the money runs out, or you suffer severe physical injuries, or lose a loved one, or something along those lines.

But not much else. In fact, usually you go the other way. You become a more distilled version of who you are. Whatever you were at 20, or 30, you're that to a much more intense degree at 50. No matter what you lived through. In fact, what you lived through just makes you rely on your core self that much more.

No, people don't generally learn from mistakes. Or if they do, they don't apply those lessons. Nor do they see a better way. They continue to fall in love on impulse. Or to resist love because it disrupts comfort or habit. They don't excel at work because they cannot bear the sacrifice.

Hey, in some ways, that's a good thing. Isn't constancy some sort of virtue? And if we were to change easily, who's to say the changes would always go in the right direction? You know, "I used to be a totally nice guy now I'm a real creep."

But though our core selves don't really change, many of us can change with the times. We can figure out how to use iPhones and uber and to vote electronically, even if at first its somewhat forced. You can listen to new music, watch new shows, use modern slang. Of course, you resemble Dr. Evil when you do. "Hey, I'm hip!" The more adventurous of us may change our hairstyles or clothes, or get into fads. Gross. But even when you do, you stand out like a sore, trend-riding hack. Other than incredibly creepy guys (or parents), what middle aged man is going to the Iggy Azalea concert? Or the Twilight movie? Or to laser tag (sorry, Barney Stinson). Atticus Finch wouldn't play football with the Methodists, I suspect in large part not just to avoid injury, but to avoid looking like a fool.

The show often depicted these sort of cringe-worthy, "give it up, idiot" moments, especially with Roger Sterling. Watch Roger, a man in his 50s who'd already had a heart attack, dropping acid while the Pet Sounds album plays in the background. Watch Roger leave his wife and kids and marry a 20ish secretary. Hanging out later with his daughter at the hippie commune, wearing a total porn 'stache, or piling multiple sex partners into an otherwise elegant mid-town hotel suite. You're obviously intended to react with some level of disapproval: anywhere between disgust to "tsk tsk." I know, "it was the Sixties." But things hadn't really gotten out of hand until the Seventies; most of America was still fairly conservative until the early 70s rolled around and things really started to get out of hand.

We asked Dad about all this once, like why he didn't wear more stylish suits or longer hair. He just said, "to thine own self be true." A veritable mike drop of a line. Go Dad! That pretty much trumps all other hands.

So we're all clear on this right? I really don't know what I was trying to say here. Change is hard I guess. Don't hate me for staying just like I am-super awesome!