I can't afford cable TV, so I don't see the big new serial dramas until they come out on, say, Netflix or Hulu for Roku. And then I usually reach the limits of my interest after about six hours: Breaking Bad? Good show! I sometimes wonder what happened to Malcolm's dad after the first six hours of his new life of crime. Well, I guess I'll never know. Downton Abbey? Good show! But not quite good enough to get me to watch more than six hours of it, even though the first season is only seven hours long and the first six hours have gotten us all the way up to England's peaceful summer of 1914 and I have this vague hunch that the season finale has some kind of big historical surprise twist up its sleeve. But six hours is my limit, so I guess I'll never find out what happened in August 1914. Something big, I'm sure!
I realize movies are out of fashion, but I do like to point out that they have one virtue over more 21st Centuryish forms of entertainment: noninterminableness. You sit yourself down in the movie theatre and, then, 115 minutes later, they make you go home.
Speaking of antinoninterminablebness, Mad Men is back for its 23rd season (note: check this before posting) of soft core porn for women with the better sort of degrees, but with a new purpose: to avenge Trayvon Martin! Or, at least, that's what it appears from this review in the NYT:
There was no question that “Mad Men” would get around to the civil rights movement. From the start, racism was the carbon monoxide of the show: a poison that couldn’t always be detected over the pungent scent of cigarettes, sexism, anti-Semitism, alcoholism, homophobia and adultery, but that sooner or later was bound to turn noxious.
That promise was made in the opening scene of the premiere episode of Season 1. The first face on screen is a black one in profile, that of a waiter carrying a tray of cocktails across a bar crowded with white, mostly male customers. ...
It’s the show’s willingness to put its characters in the context of the times, and not whitewash the white men, that gives it an edge and keeps a drama that in its fifth season has gotten — let’s face it — a little old and soapy, interesting to watch. Particularly at this moment, when the case of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager killed by an armed neighborhood watch volunteer, has become a heated cause, the 1960s look a lot like prologue.
Don and his colleagues are flip, self-centered and oblivious, no different from the many privileged Americans who stood on the sidelines and averted their eyes. They are the ones who ended up on the wrong side of history and whose testimony is usually left out of the textbooks, like the bourgeois Parisians who collaborated — faute de mieux — during the Nazi occupation, the South Africans who welcomed cheap labor under apartheid or the cadets who set fire to the clothes of the first female cadets admitted to the Citadel military college.
Okay!
Having watched six and a fraction episodes of the first season of Mad Men, quite enjoying the first 115 minutes before boredom began setting in, allow me to point out that my 2009 review in Taki's Magazine explains it all. For example:
While watching Mad Men, Weiner affords us ample opportunity to congratulate ourselves on how much progress we’ve made. For example, most of the black characters in Mad Men have servile jobs. Today, of course, things are infinitely better. Black men are seldom seen in servile jobs (unless they are African immigrants or gay). In fact, black men aren’t seen in any jobs as much anymore: ten percent of black men were out of the work force in Don Draper’s 1960 versus 24 percent in booming 2000. Indeed, black men aren’t even seen at all as much anymore because a million are now locked away in prison. (The incarceration rate of black male high school dropouts was one percent in the Bad Old Days of Dwight Eisenhower’s last year in office versus 25 percent in Bill Clinton’s glorious finale.)
The kicker to the joke is that Mad Men, despite being set in New York, is filmed in LA, where Latinos have been imported in vast numbers to fill the servant jobs that today’s upper-middle class whites no longer trust blacks with. Yet Hispanics are even more invisible to the Hollywood elite today than blacks were then.
The one thing I would add about Mad Men is that it's becoming more apparent, year by year, that 21st Century women of the educated castes who watch Mad Men find themselves increasingly sexually bored by all the pathetic, politically correct weenies of their own class. That's Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner's big conceptual breakthrough: that women these days are aroused by men masterful enough to violate today's thought crime taboos, if the ladies can simultaneously maintain plausible deniability that they are actually shocked, shocked by all the old "racism ... cigarettes, sexism, anti-Semitism, alcoholism, homophobia." Mad Men is not actually a satirical put-down of the past; instead, it's designed to be a titillating turn-on for the present.
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115 comments:
It warmed my heart to read that Sailer is so victimized he can't even afford cable.
Well, I agree with you, "Mad Men" is distended and melodramatic but most of these post-Sopranos Riveting Serial Dramas have the identical problem. It's like the democratization* of comic book fandom. A few years too late I began watching MM online. I made it through 2 1/2 episodes. I remember thinking, the writing is kinda good--scene where the 1 guy is showing the new girl around the various departments stood out for me---but they're clearly cable actors and not sympathetic, compelling. I turned to the excruciatingly detailed Wikipedia synopses and found the segments of the show which I wished to literally watch, skipped around season 1-4 this way.
* i.e. white woman with a B.A.
> women these days are aroused by men masterful
> enough to violate today's thought crime taboos
In private only, as even alpha ...holes must keep up appearances nowadays.
I can't afford cable TV
What kind of internet do you have? I think most cable broadband internet these days comes as a package with cable TV.
I'm the same way. I downloaded all of The Sopranos and Lost years ago, and watched the first 3 episodes of each, determined they were both good shows, but stopped watching. They were good, and I got what all the fuss was about, but they just weren't compelling enough for me to watch the rest.
Now I don't even bother watching the shows. If there's a lot of hype for a show, I'll just check out the trailers and determine, hey, that's probably a pretty good show, and if I was forced to sit down and watched I'd probably not be that bored and maybe even enjoy all the hours spent watching it. But they never seem to be compelling enough.
Like you note, movies have the virtue of ending in 2 hours. Though I'm more selective with movies these days.
Maybe it's the internet. It allows you to discover and watch so many movies and shows that you want to find and watch the good stuff, rather than just the stuff thrown at you.
Well, that's a new one on me.
'Idealized' caricatures of swaggering, self confident youngish professional white men living the good life (just like Tony Bennett's song of the period), during what is universally acknowledged as America's 'golden age' are now described as the moral equivalent of Nazi collaborators.
Sometimes I get the distinct feeling that certain quarters won't be satisfied until every white male newborn is either slaughtered at birth and his blood poured as a libation on the groud to a Martin Luther King statue, or a ritual castration, severing the entire male genitalia en bloc is performed on new born white males by a coven of white robed bull dykes.
"women these days are aroused by men masterful enough to violate today's thought crime taboos"
All right, I guess I just figured out my success rate at telling girls how much I despise minorities (or whatever it is I do). Especially non-white girls!
Oh, except Jewish girls.
Can't make this stuff up.
If you're going to watch one, make it the one where he writes the tobacco op-ed. Although you sorta need to recognize the earlier characters to enjoy it.
Steve, these posts are probably my favorites. Where you juxtapose long excerpts from your The Onion/NYT-LAT/Tom Freidman parody writing with one of your reg'lar-voice Taki/vDare essays.
I take it that your Times editors are familiiar with the man behind your noms de plume, and are In On The Joke.
By the way, there's a flourishing corner of the intrawebz where themes such as What Women Want are discussed forthrightly. From a married-guy point of view, #1 is the raunchy and NSFW Athol Kay, blogging at Married Man Sex Life. One female counterpart is Susan Walsh's Hooking Up Smart. YMMV, of course.
Downton Abbey: you should watch the last episode of series I, omit all the weekly episodes of series 2, but watch the double-length "Xmas Special" that ended it.
I'm watching "Homeland". It's a bit draggy.
I like to take my 60s nostalgia straight up: “Naked City” reruns on RetroTV. It reflects the whole sweetly idealistic, but still somewhat plausible New York Jewish liberalism of the early 1960s.
I am made uncomfortable only by the ads, which indicate who else is watching the show. The ads pitch things like the opportunity to sue the doctor who botched your prostate operation. I guess that is what awaits Don Draper.
I'm convinced this is behind the new popularity of sadomasochism ('Fifty Shades of Grey'?). College-educated women can rebrand being dominated as transgressive instead of traditional so they can do it without feeling like 50s women.
Drama series certainly can seem interminable if you try watching them in a glut, one episode after another on Netflix.
They're more bearable when consumed at the rate of one episode a week.
"They are the ones who ended up on the wrong side of history and whose testimony is usually left out of the textbooks, like the bourgeois Parisians who collaborated — faute de mieux — during the Nazi occupation"
Wow. So if you were a normal white person with a job who didn't march with King or join the Freedom Riders, you're the equivalent of a Nazi collaborator. Normal white people = Nazis. Typical from the NYT. I immediately looked for the name of the reviewer who wrote that, expecting it to be Berkowitz or similar, but no. Alessandra Stanley is the insane Marxist.
Is this a case of a gentile knowing on which side her bagel is buttered, or something else? Average liberals don't shriek quite so gratuitously. (A quick scan of her other reviews reveals a certain sour leftism but nothing so extreme.)
I have the same problem as Steve. Heard about "Curb Your Enthusiasm," took the first season out of the library, enjoyed several episodes and when it became clear that every one was going to have exactly the same plot, stopped watching. The episode titled "Affirmative Action" was quite good, though. Same problem with "The Office"; nearly always the same plot.
the case of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager killed by an armed neighborhood watch volunteer, has become a heated cause
I don't really get this one. Innocent people are killed every day, and it's not even clear how innocent Trayvon was. The left still attributes the fact that Zimmerman wasn't charged to their stuck-in-the-1950s conviction that cops are the shock troops of the racist regime. No, they just tend to become race realists through bitter experience.
Maybe the money shot quote for this entire piece. Not sure how you missed it.
Don Draper, Season 1: Ken, you’ll realize in your private life that at a certain point seduction is over, and force is actually being requested.
Sometimes I get the distinct feeling that certain quarters won't be satisfied until every white male newborn is either slaughtered at birth and his blood poured as a libation on the groud to a Martin Luther King statue, or a ritual castration, severing the entire male genitalia en bloc is performed on new born white males by a coven of white robed bull dykes.
There is such a coven, and their leader was an academian named Mary Daly. Read up about her. A scriptwriter couldn't make her up.
Rush Limbaugh has groupies?
i like watching mad men for the clothes. come to think of it, that's why i like downtown abbey, too. (~_^) (and for the dowager countess as well, of course!)
the writers/creators of mad men might hate wasps, but who they REALLY hate are white, middle-class stay-at-home moms. wow! is there anything likeable or even pitiable about betty draper at all?! nope. she is just meant to be hated. she is definitely no laura petrie!
if you're looking for an ok time-waster, i recommend boardwalk empire. good acting, good writing (minus the pc stuff, of course), and season two had some really terrific patricide/filicide stuff in it. don't know how good the show will be without the jimmy darmody storyline, tho, now that they (spoiler alert!) killed him off.
that's why the left in UK had such a hissy fit about Downton Abbey- not just that Julian Fellows is a conservative peer, but that the show does not include the ritual denunciations of the British 'class system' or show that the aristocracy was inherently 'anti semitic' or whatever- the show has a a benevolent Earl (and many were) staff that were loyal to the family and proud to serve (as many were)...
I chuckled at the thought of a similar show, set in the pre-civil war south :)
Merchant Ivory films got around it by choosing some 'colonialism sucks' theme... while all the while, I always suspected people were going to see the films were thinking the exact opposite.
I suspect (not being a watcher of any of these shows myself) that the length is much more endurable when they are watched one hour a time as intended.
"Don and his colleagues are flip, self-centered and oblivious, no different from the many privileged Americans who stood on the sidelines and averted their eyes."
That DOES include the white women of the time who also were "privileged" and "stood on the sidelines and averted their eyes", yes? So how come concern about disadvantaged minorities ALWAYS centers ONLY on white men as the evil oppressors?
It seems that white women were always there to gain the advantages of being oppressors. But according to feminism nowadays, 'women' belong among the 'oppressed' class and ONLY white men (rich and poor, educated and uneducated, advantaged and disadvantaged) were oppressors -- and that the present generations of white men (the majority of whom are, comparitively speaking, probably among some of the most tolerant individuals in recent history) must be punished for 'crimes' that were committed before they were even born and wtih which they had nothing to do.
If anything, "flip, self-centered and oblivious" are perfect terms to describe the attitudes and mores of the majority of all modern women who have been exposed to and influenced by modern man-hating feminism.
speaking of 'sexism', how did MLK treat women? what do rappers say about women? how does Jewish controlled porn industry treat shikse girls?
speaking of 'sexism', how did NY Times cover the Texas story of 23 black men raping an 11 yr old hispanic girl?
speaking of 'sexism', what is slut walk parade or Lady gaga in terms of female dignity?
And is the world of DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES and SEX AND THE CITY really admirable?
speaking of 'sexism' and 'racism', yep, Hollywood sure doesn't 'exploit' women and deny promotion to blacks and hispanics to upper-ranks of executive power.
liberal jews accuse Nazis of having been purist and using rhetoric of contamination to dehumanize Jews. gypsies, and the like.
Now, Jews do the same thing. If they don't agree with something, it is degraded as 'toxic' or 'noxious' or 'rabid' and 'virulent'. So, if you don't agree with them, you are mentally, morally, and spiritually contaminated. and consider the term 'homophobia'. if you find gay sex gross and oppose the gay agenda, you're not only anti-gay but sick in the head. you suffer from a phobia.
> Mad Men is not actually a satirical put-down of the past; instead, it's designed to be a titillating turn-on for the present.
Great insight, also people seem to miss the self-embarrassment created by the writers for the Jewish leftist character Abe ("Nuremburg on Madison Avenue, etc). I guess he does get the girl in the end, but no one is portrayed as harshly as him. The non-Jewish bohemian ad guy who dates Black is also not depicted sympathetically (more neutrally).
Your dumb reviewer's moral summary of the show sounds very like Abe's slant on things and not the slant of the show.
People like this reviewer are so far in the bubble that they read these PC idees fixes in, in the few remaining cases where such treacle /isn't/ being preached. If they met me and heard me talk about the problems of the West over the last 100 years, they would say "of course RS gets much of his edge from his pulling no punches about the privileged status of White males, [etc]."
I made it through part of the first episode of "Mad Men" back before I convinced my husband to cancel our cable. Loved the clothes and sets but it all seemed to occur in a hip, ironic vaccuum.
From the the vantage point of a child, that era had the glamour of the show but I don't recall people who didn't read The New Yorker as quite that hip and ironic. People--even sophisticated people--still knew how to have fun. After all, the economic boom of the 50s was a reaction to the wartime austerity of the 40's. In those days, keeping up with the Jones didn't mean denouncing lower-class whites for their latest display of racism, it meant having the latest kitchen appliances in turquoise or tomato red or seeing fourteen European countries in 5 days.
Ugh, "Downton Abbey", again gorgeous sets but 21 century morals and mores grafted onto the pre-War era. Just does not work for me. I gave up on it when Lady Mary accepted a commiserating hug from the portly old butler. I've read way too much Henry James for that to be plausible to me.
I will say I got hooked on both "Damages" and more recently, "The Killing". "Damages" is great b/c Glenn Close doesn't have to try to be likeable, she can just play herself and chew up the scenery with her formidable mandibles. Her gorgeous co-star, Rose Byrne, comes across as both beautiful and intelligent. Lots of plot twists and some great guest stars. (Ted Danson is hilarious.) It really moves. While laid up with my yearly bout of sinusitis, I watched 13 episodes in 24 hours.
"The Killing" is good, too, problems with the plot lines but a compelling lead female, attractively tawdry lead male and wonderful atmosphere in rain-drenched Seattle. I recommend it to all those who liked the Millennium Trilogy.
My personal suspicion is that Steve doesn't actually like TV all that much. He's just argued that he likes movies because they end. So if you don't like TV that much, why bother shelling out for cable?
I think he should celebrate his decision not to have cable as an example of right-wing counterculturalism. ;)
On partially on topic, but Anonymous 1:52 makes an excellent point.
Lots of people seem to find these long dramatic series compelling, so we obviously have a minority taste. But I don't think I could put in the time commitment to sit down week after week looking at a dramatic series unless we are talking about an epic along the lines Iliad or the Mahabratta. I try to avoid recurring expenses in both time and money these days. The silly old style sitcoms where everything at the end of twenty minutes winds up status quo ante, no matter what the plot complications, at least had/ have the advantage that you can miss lots of episodes and still get what is going on.
Plus we seem to have hit some sort of peak entertainment. The best stuff today is technically very good but not compelling.
The one thing I would add about Mad Men is that it's becoming more apparent, year by year, that 21st Century women of the educated castes who watch Mad Men find themselves increasingly sexually bored by all the pathetic, politically correct weenies of their own class.
Maybe it's just you, Steve...
Same here. I've had all the great mini-series queued up at Netflix for a couple years now, but just can't commit. Mad Men, Rome, The Wire...sheesh.
Movies are too damn long, too, but at least they do end the same night.
Steve, you have to watch "Breaking Bad". It's the real deal. The family stuff is boring but the rest is great.
I have been watching "Mad Men" on Netflix and yeah, it's a soap opera but all the characters and actors are good.
I have been enjoying "Boardwalk Empire" also. What all these shows really share is great writing. Great writing allows directors and actors to shine.
speaking of 'sexism', liberals sure have come a long way... judging by the behavior of Clinton, Gore, Strauss Kahn, Detroit education czar, and the like.
oddly enough, what the new gays want most of all is a return to the 50s without the 'homophobia'. so, gays will mock the 50s but with a certain fondness, a time when there was social order enough for men of refinement and manners to feel at home. it's mockery and nostalgia, or mockstalgia.
part of the reason for movies like THE HELP is liberals have a hard time dealing with current reality which is closer to RISE OF PLANET OF APES, and so they hark back to a time when the issues were simpler and blacks were better behaved--and showed such hope. so, even though they call themselves 'progressives', they hark to the good ole bad ole days. 'bad ole' cuz of 'racism' but 'good ole' because there was so much naive hope and promise.
for buchanan, the 50s were good ole days. for liberals, 50s were good ole bad ole days. this explains why we are still urged to read TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD. In this age of OJ trial, massive black rape, Omar Thorton, youth mobs, and etc, liberals want us to cling to the old myth of the innocent negro who never done no wrong. and it be revived in such movies as GREEN MILE where some giant negro with huge muscle just wanna love a little white mouse.
hey, how did NY Times leave out 'xenophobia'?! Injustice I say!
As Pat Buchanan's recent article said, the two cities with biggest income gaps are DC and SF. So, all this liberal griping about the 'injustices' in MADMEN shows that they are unwilling to face their own hypocrisies and prefer to target straw men of the past, the white male dominated yesteryear from which we grew out of. I guess it's okay when it's Jewish privilege and power.
"Mad Men is not actually a satirical put-down of the past; instead, it's designed to be a titillating turn-on for the present."
Sounds like the dynamic of SCARFACE and WALL STREET. Ostensibly, they are about the danger of drug trade and greed, but boy, it sure looks cool.
Same for THE GODFATHER. And I thought the inner world in NIXON was pretty impressive too.
Kissinger: "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."
Noninterminablness, that really does say it all.
One exception, The Wire. Holy cow that show is so good, you'll end up watching all 5 seasons in a matter of weeks.
The opening scene from the pilot is on Youtube. No action, no music, just two guys talking, yet if this doesn't grab you, you probably need shrink.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYgKmOJT_gM
Don and his colleagues are flip, self-centered and oblivious, no different from the many privileged Americans who stood on the sidelines and averted their eyes. They are the ones who ended up on the wrong side of history and whose testimony is usually left out of the textbooks, like the bourgeois Parisians who collaborated — faute de mieux — during the Nazi occupation, the South Africans who welcomed cheap labor under apartheid or the cadets who set fire to the clothes of the first female cadets admitted to the Citadel military college.
The entire New York Times world-view in a nutshell.
Yay, blacks/Jews/women! Boo, white men (who are all basically nazis)
Hollywood is a business and has something to sell. People like to see what looks good, but some things that look good are politically incorrect.
If GODFATHER were a grubby movie about real mafia hoodies, it wouldn't have been a hit. If TEN COMMANDMENTS had been grubby and realistic, it wouldn't have been much of a hit either--just like Pasolini's GOSPELIO ACCORDIONI MATTEO.
So, there's this need to glamorize everything, even the badmen. Or especially the badmen since, having less scruples, they know how to have a really good time. I mean who do we wanna see a movie about? Gordon Gekko or some honest working stiff?
To an extent, MADMEN is a continuance in the Judeo-Christian tradition of exulting in pagan excess... only to remind us how terrible and demonic it all is. So, TEN COMMANDMENTS shows us all the glory and grandeur of pagan ANCIENT EGYPT... but then reminds us it was all built by slavery and eeeeeeeeevil!!! This way, we can have the cake and eat it too. Indulge in pagan funnery and then side with good Moses against all those pagan nihilist-materialists. Same thing goes for SAMSON AND DELILAH. It's juicy to see Samson dilly dally with the luscious Delilah and her pagan delights, but in the end, Samson sees--spiritually as he's physically blinded--the light of God and well, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
Though TEN COMMANDMENTS was made for God-fearing conservatives, they were no doubt privately loving all the pagan funnery and glory even as they were consciously telling themselves how wicked it is.
This neurosis is rooted in Jewish culture/tradition with its prohibition of idolatry and strict morality about sexuality, beauty, and the like. Greeks like to show off their nude bodies. Jews hid their bodies, and this influenced Christians and Muslims, who are especially into hiding bodies(though to be sure, this had roots in indigenous Arab tradition as well). Also, Jews, especially the men, have felt a love/hatred for goy beauty. Many feel it is superior to how Jews look, and this leads to admiration... but also envy and resentment(and the suspicious that good looking goyim are making fun of 'ugly' Jews). Jewish power is based on wit, and many powerful Jews are like Woody Allen: smart in the head but ugly in the face. So, Jews are both dazzled by 'paganism' of white goyim and offended by it--not least because Nazism ideologically used white beauty and Jewish ugliness as the basis of the Holocaust.
Now, white Americans sided with Jews and fought the Nazis, but Jews see the closet Nazi in every whitey. Jews know that white beauty, male and female, are marketable items--as black muscle is in sports and black vocality is in music--, and so Jews rake in tons of money by selling white beauty. But white beauty is also tainted with 'white racism, privilege, blah blah'. It is a form of idolatry, a false god at odds with the one true god of Jewish moral superiority.
And so, MADMEN is just a repetition of TEN COMMANDMENTS dynamic. Indulge in pagan glory but then morally lecture against it. Make money off it but then knock it too.
In fact, many war movies work the same way, even anti-war ones. They sensationalize war and make it all very exciting but then remind us... war is tewwible!
And horror movies make us share the pleasure of some psycho murdering pretty babes, but at the end, one of the smart pretty babes kills the evil killer, and we feel morally redeemed(and conveniently forget that much of our thrill had been from the mayhem done to pretty nubile women).
Get your Mammon and morality at the same time. Jews sure know how to sell stuff.
"The first face on screen is a black one in profile, that of a waiter carrying a tray of cocktails across a bar crowded with white, mostly male customers. ..."
In fancy restaurants in NY, I wonder how many of the clientele are Jewish and how many of the drones working in the kitchen are Mexican?
American White males should be declared third-class citzens like Indians Dalits.
In a more serious note the amazing grow in the last two decades of Beta and Omega males in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan is something that isn't being properly examinated.
"The first face on screen is a black one in profile, that of a waiter carrying a tray of cocktails across a bar crowded with white, mostly male customers. ..".
I wonder how many cab riders in NY are Jewish. And how many cab drivers.
Mad Men is "freedom porn" for those enslaved by PC.
SPOT ON! Steve.
And just to show just how correct you are, the shows are mostly written by an all female associate writing staff, including the notorious Marti Noxon (famous for writing "beautiful victim who is victimized by her bad, bad, but SEXY! boyfriend.")
My thoughts are, most though not all of modern PC/hard-leftism is the reaction by most Upper Class White women to the White men around them being sexless, non-dominant competitors instead of potential sex partners. Hence the desire to endlessly punish White Beta Males, and the endless excuse making for those sufficiently Alpha arousing.
That's why George Zimmerman is "White" ... not because he is (he is the Spanish-speaking Latino adopted son of a Jewish guy in Florida) but because he fits the prejudices of most White upper class women who form the dominant consumers of media.
Isn't the past always kind of like a prologue for the present?
Anyway, Steve, the best way to enjoy a full season of a good show is to get a horrific flu. You need to be in a state where you're too weak to read, but the decongestants prevent you from sleeping.
" bourgeois Parisians who collaborated — faute de mieux — during the Nazi occupation"
????
The Nazis were Marxists. But. ok.
It warmed my heart to read that Sailer is so victimized he can't even afford cable.
Why you think Steve don't like Obama? Cuz Obama only pay black folks' cable bills.
It's designed to be a titillating turn-on for the present.
We can't really say this until we know what types of women are watching it. For example, that woman who called me a "wife-beater" when I asked her not to cut in front of me in line, I don't think she watches it.
While girls don't like weenies, I disagree that you have to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum to attact them. Spouting the typical spineless PC dogma WILL be a turn off, but the solution isn't to act like a Klansman.
Some girls respond to intellectual clarity and courage (though this is a pretty low-grade courage we're talking about). If you say the same BS PC crap she's heard all through college, she'll get bored, and, besides that, you're just demonstrating the ability to repeat everything she heard her professors say for 4 years. Meh. If you can talk intelligently about HBD, however, some girls recognize that it took some independent thought on your part to think those thoughts.
I'm generalizing from a small sample size, of course - my own experience. It does make sense, though, that being an emasculated PC Man is probably not going to get you anywhere, and that one aspect (probably a small one) of being perceived as different is not to repeat the feminized garbage of the academy.
I dunno. Worked for me.
Mad Men is popular because it features unusually well-written characters. However this post seems a little churlish for Steve. Was he really so annoyed by ads for the season 5 premiere that he had to announce that he hasn't watched the last four seasons? The subtext I'm getting is that Steve is simply irritated at the New York pseudo set, hears them chattering about Mad Men, ergo there must be something wrong with it. But finding out what would require renting it on Netflix, so instead he just writes about the fact that he hasn't watched it.
Okay, whatever, but while the Trayvon Massacre is unfolding, THIS is what he writes about?
"They were the ones who ended up on the wrong side of history..."
More like the wrong side of the disastrous 1965 immigration act.
Maybe it's the internet. It allows you to discover and watch so many movies and shows that you want to find and watch the good stuff, rather than just the stuff thrown at you.
The internet and, in the recent past, DVDs.
First of all, with EVERYTHING available, it's hard not to think that you're wasting your time watching anything for more than an hour or so because you're bound to be missing something else, right? There only so many hours in the day.
Secondly, now that you can download entire seasons (just as you can buy DVDs of entire seasons, for those us still living in the 2000s), it's easy to OD on any show, no matter how good. TV shows are not meant to be watched an entire season at a time. Of course you get bored.
Get cable, or FIOS, or whatever your ISP offers. It's really worth it, and you'll enjoy more TV shows because you'll see them as they were meant to be seen - one hour at a time, once a week.
I wish you would do this because I like your movie reviews and would like to see you review more TV shows as well. (For example, I'd love to know your opinion of "Southland," which takes place right in your backyard, and "Justified," which doesn't but which is one of the best shows on TV in a long time.
A white hetero man interacting with a woman of fertile age is pretty basic nowadays:
Woman see the white hetero man in her life through the zeitgeist's narrative that he's scum and her genes wonder why he isn't standing up for his honor. Concluding he might, indeed, be a beta unworthy of siring sons, as the narrative suggests, she tests him by being a hell-on-wheels bitch to confirm the diagnosis.
Man being genetically tested by the woman's genes, sees she is backed up by the Alpha of State and his hoards of incarcerated minority gangs with a hard-on for his pink ass. He backs down.
Woman, realizing she has had sex with this undermensch instinctively feels raped and goes ape-shit on his pink-ass.
of course the DWLs over at Dreher's are in denial...
One exception, The Wire. Holy cow that show is so good, you'll end up watching all 5 seasons in a matter of weeks.
Yeah, it's probably not bad, since everybody raves about it. But how good can it be? 5 seasons is like 60 hours of television.
I was wondering how long it would take Udolpho to clock in with his "Mad Men is great art" comment. For God's sake, doesn't Steve have a right to disagree with you about taste in TV? Of course, anyone who thinks that Mad Men has "unusually well-written characters" is either huffing glue or doesn't get out much. Well, whatever, Udolpho. It's probably all a problem of scale, anyway.
"Kylie said...
I made it through part of the first episode of "Mad Men" back before I convinced my husband to cancel our cable. Loved the clothes and sets but it all seemed to occur in a hip, ironic vaccuum."
Me, too. For me, it was just too seedy, exploitative, and finally sad. I cannot relate at all to any man or woman who enjoys the show. It seemed intelligent and all, but that didn't take away just the simple bad feeling it left me with.
Perhaps, it's because I'm a housewife, or as Steve says, not the kind of woman they're writing for.
One thing I kind of like about the GOP primary is the revealing of the gender gap that strongly favors the guy we are NOT supposed to like. It's one of those rare times when traditional women get acknowledged (and I voted for Paul, but I'm loving this.)
The sexiest fictional man of all time, but too "bad" for "Mad Men" watchers, was Henry James's Basil Ransom in, "The Bostonians".
"Today, of course, things are infinitely better. Black men are seldom seen in servile jobs (unless they are African immigrants or gay)."
Movies are funny. Most street criminals are white and most judges are black.
"The first face on screen is a black one in profile, that of a waiter carrying a tray of cocktails across a bar crowded with white, mostly male customers. ..."
How many editors at Ny Times are Jewish? How many janitors and cleaning ladies working in the Times building are Jewish? If not Jewish, I wonder what their races or ethnicities are.
It helps to watch shows while surfing the net. Whiskey sounds glad, the last paragraph of the post read like something he would write word for word.
You characters don't get it, do you?
Who the hell sits around and watches this crap on TV? Hint: It isn't white men - who are doing stuff in the real world, or surfing the net, or actually reading non-fiction. No, its mostly white chicks along with a few black folks and shut-ins.
That's why TV is what it is. "Mad men" is really just Soap about a Handsome, Alpha male (Don) and the chicks who love him/hate him and fight over him. All the other dudes and just background filler. That's what chicks like.
"For me, it ["Mad Men"] was just too seedy, exploitative, and finally sad. I cannot relate at all to any man or woman who enjoys the show. It seemed intelligent and all, but that didn't take away just the simple bad feeling it left me with.
Perhaps, it's because I'm a housewife, or as Steve says, not the kind of woman they're writing for."
They're not writing for this housewife, either. Which is odd because in some ways, my tastes are somewhat outside my demographic. I'm on a Korean horror/thriller/crime film kick right now.
But the thing about the Korean horror films I've seen so far is they all have the same message: be sure thy sin will find thee out. So all the horror and gore does not happen in a moral vacuum; the themes of justice and retribution are explored, too. Bloody and violent they may be but they aren't tawdry and sad like "Mad Men".
but the solution isn't to act like a Klansman
worked for ashley wilkes
"but the solution isn't to act like a Klansman
worked for ashley wilkes"
My all-time favorite fictional male.
How happy he and I could have been together, reading poetry, playing music, admiring the wisteria by moonlight, rueing the Late Unpleasantness with languid dismay....
Is Jim Bowery insane or brilliant?
By the way go back and look at Homicide Life on the Streets or read the book. Beats "wire'.
Someguy
They are the ones who ended up on the wrong side of history and whose testimony is usually left out of the textbooks, like the bourgeois Parisians who collaborated — faute de mieux — during the Nazi occupation, the South Africans who welcomed cheap labor under apartheid....
So, giving a Black immigrant a job is reprehensible? This guy's ad-hoc who-whom perspective is ludicrously transparent.
In the case of Mad Men, if you are impatient with interminable serials you wouldn't have seen the best of it. The first three seasons were just some show more than bearable to watch, the fourth was quite good -- hardly an unmissable masterpiece or anything like that, just very good.
Is Jim Bowery insane or brilliant?
Well he used the term "pink ass" twice in six sentences. What do you think?
"That's why TV is what it is. "Mad men" is really just Soap about a Handsome, Alpha male (Don) and the chicks who love him/hate him and fight over him. All the other dudes and just background filler. That's what chicks like."
You might be right. When I started to watch the show, it was kind of neat seeing the 60's and the un-pc stuff, but then I realized it was just Don sleeping with a bunch of women.
I was wondering how long it would take Udolpho to clock in with his "Mad Men is great art" comment.
I'm glad I'm always in your thoughts. Sadly, they're still disorganized. However I'll see what I can do.
My point was, why is Steve writing a fluff post like this when current events suggest much more interesting subject matter? Steve doesn't actually have anything to say about the series because he hasn't actually watched most of it. That's fine, but he goes ahead and wastes his time anyway. Is it all just a cynical grab for page hits these days?
But it is funny how furiously insecure this particular television show makes HBD nerds. That actually might be worthy of a post, which I'm certain you'll read with requisite indigestion.
A show like "The X Files" doesn't count right? If I remember correctly each episode tended to be self-contained and resolve itself. I could watch a show like that regularly.
But it is funny how furiously insecure this particular television show makes HBD nerds.
You sound like an angry, bitter beta male. Probably omega.
"But the thing about the Korean horror films I've seen so far is they all have the same message: be sure thy sin will find thee out. So all the horror and gore does not happen in a moral vacuum; the themes of justice and retribution are explored, too"
Gee, "Kylie", it's like you've never watched horror films before. Not that I'm going to watch Mad Men, or any of the other tripe passing for entertainment these days, but you'll often find that there's some moral attached to these shows. It's just that the intended myopic effect leaves the audience figuring out things in real time instead of having the message stated clearly and everything wrapped up in a neat little bow for you at the end. I suspect the MM reviewer just doesn't get it.
My point was, why is Steve writing a fluff post like this when current events suggest much more interesting subject matter? Steve doesn't actually have anything to say about the series because he hasn't actually watched most of it. That's fine, but he goes ahead and wastes his time anyway. Is it all just a cynical grab for page hits these days?
I think you're just angry that Steve dissed the show. You don't want to confront the reality that you're obsessed with the show because you like to drool over studs. You want to believe that it's because it's a truly good show. So you get angry when somebody shatters that illusion.
It is a good show, way above average.
Great posting. And "noninterminableness" is a genius coinage.
FWIW, I lack the gene that makes people want to plow thru long books or make it through season after season of TV shows. So I completely fail to understand why anyone would want a single art/entertainment work to consume (and be present thru) that much of their lives. I'd be perfectly OK with it if all art/entertainment works could be consumed in a single evening.
Kylie's comments are pretty great too.
Ray,
Along those lines, John Updike said that the best time in your life to read the super long 19th Century novelists is during summer vacation when you are a teenager, and he never got around to it then, and he was too old now.
As I wrote about Mad Men in 2009:
The downside of “And then what happens?” is that the answer usually turns out to be “A whole bunch of stuff.” While satisfying at the time, serials tend to be consumable only once. For example, although thirtysomething was immediately influential within the entertainment industry, it was almost forgotten by the public once its run was over in 1991. (It wasn’t even released on DVD until this year).
On the other hand, Seinfeld (something of a comic version of thirtysomething, but also a classic reset show in which not even, say, the sudden death of a fiancé has any discernible emotional impact on a character) remains a money machine in syndication.
Another chronic problem with shows that don’t reset is creeping soap operaization. Female fascination with relationships tends to crowd out every other subject over time. Even House, with the wonderful Hugh Laurie as a Sherlock Holmes-like genius/misanthrope solving one medical mystery per week, has become more of a soap opera over the years.
http://takimag.com/article/serial_killers/#ixzz1q1TlmIur
"The first face on screen is a black one in profile"
Though I made it halfway through the first episode (to see what all the fuss was about, but was turned off by the vibes of the characters), I don't recall that black man in profile.
But...presuming "in profile" in this instance was like a shadow or outline, how could one know the race of the person? Is someone implying that African Americans have, like, especially prominent lips of something? Huh? HUH??
Another chronic problem with shows that don’t reset is creeping soap operaization. Female fascination with relationships tends to crowd out every other subject over time.
Right. Interesting and captivating events or plots can usually be shown in a single movie. If you stretch something out into hours and seasons of shows, it's mostly because of relationship storylines that take up lots of dialogue.
I watched the entire first season. Mildly amusing, but didn't really get what all the fuss was about. Towards the end of that first season the show started getting awfully contrived and silly. Mad Men ain't a patch on The Wire or The Sopranos or even Breaking Bad.
"It is a good show, way above average."
Nice negging, Steve. Roissy will be proud.
It's hard to watch shows with your undivided attention, and harder still if PC keeps irritating every 5 minutes.
On the other hand, reality sounds much funnier than if it were given a free reign.
"Gee, "Kylie", it's like you've never watched horror films before."
Is it? Why don't you brief me on the moral attached to a Western horror movie like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or something more recent like "Wolf Creek" or "Hostel"? All I ever managed to get out of those is "Creepy madmen (not to be confused with Mad Men) do creepy things to as many non-creepy people as they can".
"Not that I'm going to watch Mad Men, or any of the other tripe passing for entertainment these days, but you'll often find that there's some moral attached to these shows."
If you're so sure there is without even having to watch them, then spare me the experience and tell me just what that moral might be beyond, "The hot guy gets the chicks and gets to treat them badly if he wants to".
"My point was, why is Steve writing a fluff post like this"
My point is, why are you asking why Steve chooses to write a fluff post when he's repeatedly said here that he became basically self-employed so he could write about whatever interests him?
"...when current events suggest much more interesting subject matter? "
Much more interesting to whom?
A show like "The X Files" doesn't count right? If I remember correctly each episode tended to be self-contained and resolve itself. I could watch a show like that regularly.
The X-Files famously had a story arc about alien invasion that lasted the entire series. Have you forgotten "oiliens" and Krycek and Cancer Man? Most of the series ran during the heyday of Usenet, and there were fanatical newsgroups devoted to discussing and speculating about the tiniest details of the so-called mytharc.
But you're right in that many episodes were what are known as "monster-of-the-week" stories, where Mulder and Scully solved - or sometimes didn't solve - strange cases that involved - or sometimes didn't involve - the supernatural.
You're also right that, today, the MOTW episodes are much more watchable. Some of them are television classics. I've been watching them off-and-on lately, which is what you can do with this type of show. The "mytharc" episodes are largely unwatchable in isolation and are not interesting enough to watch in sequence.
The early episodes of Law & Order (the original one that premiered in 1990 with Chris Noth and a succession of partners, ending with Jerry Ohrbach) were about as close to self-contained, non-relationship-driven shows as fictional TV gets. As I recall, many of those episodes were great television, but I haven't watched them in a long time.
Star Trek: The Next Generation was also most an episodic show, although there were some two-parters. It was much more driven by relationships and emotion, though. I didn't mind that because the show embodied such perfect, traditional gender archetypes, more than any TV show I can think of at the moment.
OT. I think I found the proof that men are more creative than women. This creativity is actually rooted in male vileness and craziness. I call it the WASHROOM RULE as there is where I found the evidence.
Today, I was hiking in the forest and came upon two nature-washrooms side by side. One is for guys and other is for gals. As there weren't no one around I checked both. Women's washroom, though something like an outhouse, was neat with smooth clean walls. In contrast the guys' washroom was dirty, and its walls were scribbled with all sorts of stuff like 'suck my thick cock', 'for free blow job call ___-____', and the like. All over the place too.
Some were done with markers, some with pen, and some even carved onto the stall door with a knife.
There were even illustrations of all kinds of penises, breasts, butts, and animals and humans doing weird things. It reminded me of cave paintings; it might be be called the Cave of Forgotten Creams. I must say it was vile and disgusting.. but creative(though not of an high order). High or low, what was plentifully evident was the male need to express himself, be nutty, be hostile, be outrageous, be different, to shock, to transgress, etc.
Based on evidence on women's washroom walls, there's less of such need or urge among womenfolk.
No doubt all prehistoric cave paintings were by men.
Now, washroom paintings and messages are not art, but they exhibit the creative urge in its most animal/crude/elemental form, and it seems there's plenty more of this among men.
Now, what about gays? I think it's like this. Women like to keep things neat. Men like to mess things up to be expressive. But gays have the male expressiveness but female sense of form and order. So, their expression tends to have more of a point and vision than simple male expression of 'LOOK AT MY COCK AND I WANT PUSSY'. So, a gay guy might feel the urge to paint something on the wall but more in the nature of interior decorating than writing lewd stuff. This may explain why so many great artists were gay.
I must admit I might have heard of the WASHROOM RULE before but I recall where.
"From the start, racism was the carbon monoxide of the show: a poison that couldn’t always be detected"
No, it's always been there, quite detectable. That's the biggest lie of the review.
"women these days are aroused by men masterful enough to violate today's thought crime taboos"
Women are aroused by men who aren't pussies. Always have been. Whining about blacks, Jews, gays, Asians, illegal aliens, etc. is another matter entirely. If you feel disapproval about the behaviors re: some of these groups you can express it. Just don't obsess about it, or let her see you obsessing about it. That may or may not imply that you're a "racist," but it definitely implies that you're firghtened by them.
I've known a few losers who were "racist," but I've also known some very smart, successful men who were, too. There was a huge difference in the ways the two types expressed their feelings on the matter, however.
"after one has seen a gay pride parade, what is there to like about gay culture?"
Right, because a group's entire culture is summed up by parade behavior.
What is there to like about gay culture? Here's just one item: go take in a few musicals and plays. Read the playbills, and note how large a fraction of the men in the cast are gay. From community theatre to Broadway, gays are everywhere in theatre. They typically don't have kids to feed, so they're willing to do it for love, and not just pay.
Any opinions about period serial dramas like "The Tudors" and "The Borgias"? I haven't watched either, but I really enjoyed "Rome."
One thing I kind of like about the GOP primary is the revealing of the gender gap that strongly favors the guy we are NOT supposed to like.
Women just think Santorum is cute!
Actually Romney also does slightly better among women than among men. This all evens out because Gingrich does a lot worse among women than among men. (or a lot better among men than among women, if you want to look at it that way)
Escapism is my solution for coping with nihilism. Therefore I prefer shows that don’t get significantly worse over time like the Sopranos and The Wire to go on forever.
The creator of the Wire said if he would have done a sixth season it would have been about Hispanics, re Sailer’s complain that Hollywood doesn’t notices them.
“Simon [creator] indicated that no theme seemed substantial enough to warrant a sixth season, except possibly the large influx of Latinos into Baltimore. Simon said that since no writer on the show spoke Spanish or had any intimate knowledge of the city's Latino population, the field work would be too cumbersome.”
Obviously you want to tie up the show at some point. The biggest mistake is not having an arch early on. The lack of reward ruined Lost and Battlestar-Galactica.
The best one right now is Game of Thrones, where the events are supposed to lead up to a conclusion. Even the fifth book was excellent, so if the author lives to finish the series I predict it will become the first high quality nerd classic on TV.
Any opinions about period serial dramas like "The Tudors" and "The Borgias"? I haven't watched either, but I really enjoyed "Rome."
If you liked Rome you'll like The Tudors. I haven't seen The Borgias yet.
Along those lines, John Updike said that the best time in your life to read the super long 19th Century novelists is during summer vacation when you are a teenager, and he never got around to it then, and he was too old now.
I slogged unfazedly through Of Human Bondage during my 14th summer. It was most educational.
Jane Eyre at 12; but I couldn't get through Bronte's Villette till much later and then it became obsessional reading.
" Of course, anyone who thinks that Mad Men has "unusually well-written characters" is either huffing glue or doesn't get out much. Well, whatever, Udolpho. It's probably all a problem of scale, anyway"
LMAO; he's talking to you, Pleasureman. (Inside joke, Udolpho will explain it.)
Athol Kay is very good. But the best quick entry into the Manosphere I have found is here:
http://hawaiianlibertarian.blogspot.com.au/
An Aladdin's Cave of stuff for men. I am a married man - 26 years, same woman. And the Manosphere insights, especially on Game, have helped me hugely. Men have to stop taking what women profess so seriously. Especially feminists who secretly read porn about dominating men. I believe that Andrea Dworkin actually wrote some.
This may explain why so many great artists were gay.
Exactly how many great artists were genuinely homosexual? Is their percentage among great artists any greater than it is among the general population? Offhand I can think of only a few great artists who were known beyond doubt to have been homosexual. Most artists of the very highest rank were definitely heterosexual.
"Now, what about gays? I think it's like this. Women like to keep things neat. Men like to mess things up to be expressive. But gays have the male expressiveness but female sense of form and order. So, their expression tends to have more of a point and vision than simple male expression of 'LOOK AT MY COCK AND I WANT PUSSY'. So, a gay guy might feel the urge to paint something on the wall but more in the nature of interior decorating than writing lewd stuff. This may explain why so many great artists were gay."
Clearly you haven't spent any time perusing the photos from any of the Folsom Street Fairs. (Helpful hint: I won't provide any links because they aren't SFW.)
"So, their [gays'] expression tends to have more of a point and vision than simple male expression of 'LOOK AT MY COCK AND I WANT PUSSY'."
Sure, if you consider 'LOOK AT MY COCK AND I WANT YOU TO SUCK IT' as having more of a "point and a vision".
Much more interesting to whom?
Wow, you actually took the time to type the world's dumbest question.
Also count me highly skeptical that most great artists were gay. And when you get into the modern era, the increasing percentages of gays in entertainment have plainly affected quality negatively, which goes counter to the thesis. If gays are naturally more creative and artistic, this should be a golden age, but it isn't. To take one example, the big film directors who are producing quality work are still 100% heterosexual. Who cares if their assistant's assistant who prints out the call sheet and gossips about the hairdresser is gay? As a longtime film buff, I am certain that the quality of films would go up if there were many fewer gays in Hollywood.
"Wow, you actually took the time to type the world's dumbest question."
Wow, you actually took the time to type an answer that made it clear you can't distinguish between dumb and rhetorical.
LMAO; Hey Sportette, I see you and Udolpho are friends; you should log into his site, now that's a REAL laugh riot...
http://mpcdot.com/forums/index.php?/topic/4071-troof-memorial-thread/page__p__72135__fromsearch__1#entry72135
Wow, you actually took the time to type an answer that made it clear you can't distinguish between dumb and rhetorical.
No it was just a dumb thing to type, as content-free as everything you've typed in reply to this post. For starters, why would it be intersting to Steve to make a fluff post about a show he doesn't watch? It's not interesting to anybody, I think he just did it in a fit of pique, not unlike your pissy replies here.
"Matthew said...
What is there to like about gay culture? Here's just one item: go take in a few musicals and plays. Read the playbills, and note how large a fraction of the men in the cast are gay. From community theatre to Broadway, gays are everywhere in theatre."
Yeah, Right...... Because the apotheosis of our civilization is "A Chorus Line".
"For starters, why would it be intersting[sic] to Steve to make a fluff post about a show he doesn't watch?"
Ask him.
"It's not interesting to anybody,"
And yet so far, it's got 114 comments.
"I think he just did it in a fit of pique,"
Then you don't know Steve (as a blogger, I mean, not as a private individual).
"... not unlike your pissy replies here."
You're projecting again. No surprise there because you write like a girl.
""... not unlike your pissy replies here."
You're projecting again. No surprise there because you write like a girl."
LMAO; hey Udo, you'd better throw more punches, Son: Sportette's ahead going into the 9th round!
LOL. Udo's getting his ass kicked by a woman.
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