This scene from Mad Men, between Don Draper and Michael Ginsberg, has been memed endlessly since it aired. Draper and Ginsberg are both creatives, they're both ambitious, they butt heads, they have this exchange in the elevator. Score a point for Don Draper! What a cool insult. It's lived on like few things from the show. People share this exchange endlessly. I'm pretty sure I saw it on YouTube with the title “The Ultimate Putdown” or something like that.
Same vein as people who complain that Goodfellas or the Godfather, or Wolf of Wallstreet, glorified being in the mob/finance. Did you not finish the movie???
Separate but related--The idiot kid in White Lotus season 2 trying to talk shit about the Godfather being a sexist fantasy for misogynistic men was when I knew he was going to get punked.
You’re right and I think part of it is because he’s beautiful. If you’re handsome enough, everyone, including the viewer, will forgive the obvious and simply not see the rest. Another theme of the whole series, for me, is that beauty is sometimes enough in and of itself.
I'd wager a large chunk of the people who've used this meme have never seen Mad Men at all. They find the exchange, floating in the void, from some other meme template and say, "haha, great comeback, I'm gonna remix this meme for my situation".
Which feels like a microcosm of how culture is consumed and remixed in the modern age in general.
At one point my dad actually encouraged me to act like Ari from Entourage at work. You would have to know me to know how specifically disastrous this advice would be for me, but it is also generally disastrous (obviously).
"Americans want to think of themselves as very cool people who float above the fray, when in fact we tend to be obsessive about the world's adulation and embarrassed about the ways our systems are worse, such as in healthcare, crime, and public transit. Our showy indifference is a coping mechanism for being so powerful and unable to solve basic problems other countries solve I don't mean to pick on this guy; I just went looking for a recent use of this image."
Fuck this. Really fuck this.
I have traveled to Europe where most American liberals cement their embarrassment over the state of American vs them... and they are just a bunch of culturally harmonious white people... except in the few cities where they are not as much... and then the city is dirty and covered with graffiti.
We cannot solve problems because we are a mess of tribal cultural conflict that has been driven even further in conflict by the elite ruling class that needs endless validation for their assumed elite status.
We are the third most populated country and the most diverse. If you want to see a model for where we are headed look at Brazil, look at India. Talk about being embarrassed for the crime, healthcare and public transit.
What is the glue holding us together? It used to be Judea-Christian values and free-market principles combined with a functioning democratic political system. ALL of those things are being dismantled by the elites... the establishment... primarily the Democrats today. There is no glue now... only tribal conflict... because tribal conflict deflects from the elites looting the country to an empty sack. Fucking Gavin Newsom is raking in the cash to his personal bank account and yet California crime and homelessness continues to skyrocket. He keeps getting reelected even though he solves nothing. And he solves nothing because he is backed by his cabal of elites that manipulate the stupid seething masses to blame their neighbor for their misery instead of the elites.
Please pick one... a country that values its culture and assimilates the population to be one people that move as one and make decisions for the benefit of the whole (a nationalist focus), or a country that pursues the brain-dead globalist agenda while being at tribal cultural war within and a chaotic mess of unimpressive existence.
Idk. I feel like this is true yet also there's some sort of automatic flexing people do around these critically acclaimed shows where they assume fewer people get it than really do. Sure, I've seen YouTube comments where people idealize Don Draper, but I've never actuallyet someone irl who likes the show who doesn't understand the basic point you are trying to get across here.
Even if the assumption is right, thematic criticism is difficult. It requires some baseline level of cultural or artistic training or sensitivity to understand that dramatic irony creates a deliberate contrast between the way people trade status in a show and the core truth of the characters. I don't know when it clicked for me, but I know it wasn't until I was an adult who had already read a lot of books and studied a lot of philosophy and critical theory, and also tried my hand at creative writing. So watching Mad Men for the first time a year ago, I got it right away, but if I'd watched it in college, who knows?
I don't so much mind the de-contextualized memes, but I think one reason many people seem to grasp the wrong takeaways from these antiheroes is...a lot of people are kind of shitty people. I say this as someone who has a positive outlook on life and tends to think the best of others lol. But really. Part of why I don't get wildly disappointed by most people is that I realize so many people are pretty shallow and/or have really fucked up goals.
So my take is that some people do fawn over Henry Hill or Don Draper or Tony Soprano. But lots of people, myself included, get the show, were touched by the deeper aspects, and now just want to have some fun as fans. These are stories about male fantasies, and the moral brokenness of them. But after having watched the sopranos more times than I wish to admit, I want to joke with my friends about Paulie and his mother or the hilariousness of the phrase “colder than your sister’s tit”, not reflect endlessly about American avarice.
People tend to like anti hereos. A lot of people even want to be the villain. I will be controversial and say that if so many people are taking the "wrong" message from a piece of art, or more accurately what the author intended to convey or what you believe the author intended, then there is something in the art itself which invites this interpretation.
I'd argue that shows like Mad Men glamorize these characters even while condemning them somewhat. That's the key. If Don Draper had been a goofy, vulgar oaf no one would take that interpretation away. Same goes with the Wolf of Wall Street, which was basically porn start to finish. You can't make something seem sexy while claiming to condemn it and then cry foul when people want the sexy thing.
This is a tangential point but I also find people think certain pieces of media are groundbreaking or astonishingly good or w/e and then I watch them and I'm like... uh, what?
For example, Andor. A friend of mine whose opinion I generally respect a lot finally convinced me to watch Andor, and it was... fine? It looked great, anyway, but I found the characterization to be spotty, motivations to be driven largely by plot (which is of course the case for a lot of narrative fiction but the best narrative fiction makes it seem as though it's being driven by personality) and the analysis and examination of empire vs rebels to be rote and uninspired.
I texted with him and he's... never seen Citizen Kane! Which I did not know. And it's not like Citizen Kane is the best movie ever (I wouldn't even place it in the top 100, that's how much great, great film is out there) but like... how do I trust your opinion if we have no actual framework for understanding what makes a great piece of film or television?
Breaking Bad is another case where many viewers think the main character, Walter White, is the hero when he clearly is not.
My favorite example is the red pill becoming a metaphor about accepting primal masculinity when it's literally an estrogen pill.
Same vein as people who complain that Goodfellas or the Godfather, or Wolf of Wallstreet, glorified being in the mob/finance. Did you not finish the movie???
Separate but related--The idiot kid in White Lotus season 2 trying to talk shit about the Godfather being a sexist fantasy for misogynistic men was when I knew he was going to get punked.
You’re right and I think part of it is because he’s beautiful. If you’re handsome enough, everyone, including the viewer, will forgive the obvious and simply not see the rest. Another theme of the whole series, for me, is that beauty is sometimes enough in and of itself.
I'd wager a large chunk of the people who've used this meme have never seen Mad Men at all. They find the exchange, floating in the void, from some other meme template and say, "haha, great comeback, I'm gonna remix this meme for my situation".
Which feels like a microcosm of how culture is consumed and remixed in the modern age in general.
Don is the hero to most people.
Weiner thought he could do a Bruce Springsteen who also is sorely mistaken about people.
At one point my dad actually encouraged me to act like Ari from Entourage at work. You would have to know me to know how specifically disastrous this advice would be for me, but it is also generally disastrous (obviously).
It reminds me of Oliver Stone and his shock to learn that guys wanted to be Gordon “Greed is good” Gekko.
"Americans want to think of themselves as very cool people who float above the fray, when in fact we tend to be obsessive about the world's adulation and embarrassed about the ways our systems are worse, such as in healthcare, crime, and public transit. Our showy indifference is a coping mechanism for being so powerful and unable to solve basic problems other countries solve I don't mean to pick on this guy; I just went looking for a recent use of this image."
Fuck this. Really fuck this.
I have traveled to Europe where most American liberals cement their embarrassment over the state of American vs them... and they are just a bunch of culturally harmonious white people... except in the few cities where they are not as much... and then the city is dirty and covered with graffiti.
We cannot solve problems because we are a mess of tribal cultural conflict that has been driven even further in conflict by the elite ruling class that needs endless validation for their assumed elite status.
We are the third most populated country and the most diverse. If you want to see a model for where we are headed look at Brazil, look at India. Talk about being embarrassed for the crime, healthcare and public transit.
What is the glue holding us together? It used to be Judea-Christian values and free-market principles combined with a functioning democratic political system. ALL of those things are being dismantled by the elites... the establishment... primarily the Democrats today. There is no glue now... only tribal conflict... because tribal conflict deflects from the elites looting the country to an empty sack. Fucking Gavin Newsom is raking in the cash to his personal bank account and yet California crime and homelessness continues to skyrocket. He keeps getting reelected even though he solves nothing. And he solves nothing because he is backed by his cabal of elites that manipulate the stupid seething masses to blame their neighbor for their misery instead of the elites.
Please pick one... a country that values its culture and assimilates the population to be one people that move as one and make decisions for the benefit of the whole (a nationalist focus), or a country that pursues the brain-dead globalist agenda while being at tribal cultural war within and a chaotic mess of unimpressive existence.
Idk. I feel like this is true yet also there's some sort of automatic flexing people do around these critically acclaimed shows where they assume fewer people get it than really do. Sure, I've seen YouTube comments where people idealize Don Draper, but I've never actuallyet someone irl who likes the show who doesn't understand the basic point you are trying to get across here.
Even if the assumption is right, thematic criticism is difficult. It requires some baseline level of cultural or artistic training or sensitivity to understand that dramatic irony creates a deliberate contrast between the way people trade status in a show and the core truth of the characters. I don't know when it clicked for me, but I know it wasn't until I was an adult who had already read a lot of books and studied a lot of philosophy and critical theory, and also tried my hand at creative writing. So watching Mad Men for the first time a year ago, I got it right away, but if I'd watched it in college, who knows?
I don't so much mind the de-contextualized memes, but I think one reason many people seem to grasp the wrong takeaways from these antiheroes is...a lot of people are kind of shitty people. I say this as someone who has a positive outlook on life and tends to think the best of others lol. But really. Part of why I don't get wildly disappointed by most people is that I realize so many people are pretty shallow and/or have really fucked up goals.
So my take is that some people do fawn over Henry Hill or Don Draper or Tony Soprano. But lots of people, myself included, get the show, were touched by the deeper aspects, and now just want to have some fun as fans. These are stories about male fantasies, and the moral brokenness of them. But after having watched the sopranos more times than I wish to admit, I want to joke with my friends about Paulie and his mother or the hilariousness of the phrase “colder than your sister’s tit”, not reflect endlessly about American avarice.
People tend to like anti hereos. A lot of people even want to be the villain. I will be controversial and say that if so many people are taking the "wrong" message from a piece of art, or more accurately what the author intended to convey or what you believe the author intended, then there is something in the art itself which invites this interpretation.
I'd argue that shows like Mad Men glamorize these characters even while condemning them somewhat. That's the key. If Don Draper had been a goofy, vulgar oaf no one would take that interpretation away. Same goes with the Wolf of Wall Street, which was basically porn start to finish. You can't make something seem sexy while claiming to condemn it and then cry foul when people want the sexy thing.
c’mon man -- who among us hasn’t tried to suffocate their own mother?
This is a tangential point but I also find people think certain pieces of media are groundbreaking or astonishingly good or w/e and then I watch them and I'm like... uh, what?
For example, Andor. A friend of mine whose opinion I generally respect a lot finally convinced me to watch Andor, and it was... fine? It looked great, anyway, but I found the characterization to be spotty, motivations to be driven largely by plot (which is of course the case for a lot of narrative fiction but the best narrative fiction makes it seem as though it's being driven by personality) and the analysis and examination of empire vs rebels to be rote and uninspired.
I texted with him and he's... never seen Citizen Kane! Which I did not know. And it's not like Citizen Kane is the best movie ever (I wouldn't even place it in the top 100, that's how much great, great film is out there) but like... how do I trust your opinion if we have no actual framework for understanding what makes a great piece of film or television?