Tag: California

Don Draper, Dick Whitman, Peggy, Sally, Joan, Coke, Mad Men and Us

Don on pay phone2The farewell to Mad Men, at least on Monday’s morning news programs, was all about “the Coke commercial” (indeed a brilliant, brilliant presence in the episode) the 60’s, advertising, capitalism and a Don Draper not at all like the man he described to Peggy in this phone call:

“I messed everything up. I’m not the man you think I am…. I broke all my vows. I scandalized my child. I took another man’s name. and made nothing of it.”

or his physical transformation – messy hair, plaid shirt and jeans – that returned him, at least briefly, to the “Dick Whitman” he once was.  Even his expressions were those of a country boy with a squint.

Joan faye peggy2
Joan, Peggy and Faye in the elevator in especially poignant episode about the women of Mad Men

Preoccupation  with “the commercial” overrode discussion of how important Mad Men has been to women: not only those who were teenagers as Don ascended and for whom so many scenes brought back memories of the scandalous neighborhood “divorcee,” of the Women’s Clubs and Garden Clubs and all the other “activities” suburban mothers created —  but also for those who came after, for whom some of what they saw of women’s lives was just a relic but way too much was way too familiar.

Don Draper’s journey, from brothel to executive suite to Esalen, is very much that of America through the 60’s and beyond.   It was a traumatic, scary, strange and exhilarating time, and whether you were there or you arrived later, it’s clear that Don’s misery and confusion mirrored what many of us, and, even more so, our parents felt every day.

Oh, and that Coke commercial? It was so perfect I laughed out loud as it appeared: all that we had hoped for and dreamed of, laid out in an air-brushed, multicultural, Benetton panorama.  I don’t think we knew then how far we would be today – maybe forever – from that dream, but watching it now, it seems quaint how sentimental we were, even in our days of rage.  Just like Don.

Harvey Milk, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and the Pain of Gay Life in America

James-baldwin
I was in high school when I read Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin's heartbreaking story of pain and loss.  It was the first time I'd understood anything of the harsh realities of life for gay men, and it changed me, opened my soul and my mind the way great writers are supposed to. Toni Morrison, his close friend who has often said that she misses him still, told NPR's Michele Martin how much she would have loved to see his reaction to the election of Barack Obama.  Me too. 

MILK poster
I kept thinking of Baldwin as I sat in a screening of Milk ,the story of a gay man, years later, who fought discrimination with determination – and humor – and lost his life to an assassin in the process.  Harvey Milk, played by Sean Penn, moved to San
Francisco from a dead-end job in Manhattan and ended up launching a political gay rights movement that took over first the Castro, then San Francisco, then the nation.  Battling anti-gay referenda in cities, towns and states, he made it possible, in ways probably not dreamed of when Baldwin fled US racism and homophobia by moving to Paris in the 1940's, for gays to live openly.

Here's what's hard though.  Baldwin wrote Giovanni's Room in 1956, when gay men suffered, for the most part, in secret.  Harvey Milk led his battles in the 1970's, as, at least in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, they emerged from the closet into the light, fighting for their rights every day as efforts were made to push them back into silence.  In California, one of Milk's greatest successes was the defeat of a bill that would force the termination of all gay teachers. 

Look at us now.  On the same landmark day that we elected Barack Obama president, California, in a statewide referendum, repealed the right for gays to marry.  Similar efforts have become a cottage industry, and have succeeded all over the country.  

Where kids are concerned, Florida, where Anita Bryant originated her cruel anti-gay campaign in the 70's, is still fighting to maintain a recently-overturned ban on gay adoption.  Arkansas and Utah ban any unmarried couples, straight or gay, from adopting or fostering children; Mississippi bans gay couples, but not single gays.   Arkansas voters last month approved a measure that, like Utah's bans any unmarried straight or gay couples from adopting or fostering children, a clever way to be "nondiscriminatory."  Gay couples who want the non-biological parent to adopt their baby have to choose carefully in which county they file their papers.  Get the wrong judge and you're toast.  Perfectly fine candidates can lose elections because of their stands supporting gay rights.   

To read the policy side of these issues in more detail, visit Leslie Bradshaw.  She's one of the most passionate writers about the past election and the current state of gay rights and discusses the issue far more completely than I can. 

But  to a pop culture vulture like me,  it's sad to sit through a docudrama, which is basically what MILK is, 52 years after Giovanni and 30+ after Harvey Milk, and feel that, in too many ways, it could be today's news.

  

ADD:  I just discovered this post from Uppercase Woman.  A great survey/meditation on gay marriage.