As much as I love Mad Men, I often feel a bit flustered when I try to reconcile my admiration for the show (and those who write so intelligently about it) with a kind of constant and possibly even seething distrust (or maybe even a vague disgust, if that's not too strong a word) I feel for what it respresents as a cultural icon; specifically, a kind of glamourized view of an advertising industry (albeit one in its infancy) that seems so far removed from the brutal machine into which it quickly grew over the three or four subsequent decades. It's like I want to walk into one of the meetings (as if it's actual history and not a fictionalized version of it) and say: "Don't you smug assholes see where all of this is heading? Don't you understand that you are manipulating and destroying people in ways that will reverberate far beyond your own pathetic lives?" Admittedly, one of the great things about the show is that the writers seem to recognize this tension and use it to create a kind of pallor that hovers over the show (along with a wry humor), since we understand where all of this is going much more than the characters themselves, who obviously don't have the benefit of seeing into the future.
Or at least that's what went through my head as I read 'Mister Squishy,' the David Foster Wallace short story (in Oblivion), which is set in 1995 and largely concerns a focus group convened by a 'market-research firm' (employed by a larger advertising agency of course) in order to assess a new brand of snackcake called Felony! that the client wants to introduce to the market. The people who work in this market-research firm, once you peel away the pseudo-scienfitific (but exceedingly complicated) numbers and statistical analysis, are living in what can only be described as hell; they are completely alone, they live in soulless condominiums and dream about having sex with their ugly colleagues. They understand how to manipulate and massage data, they are emotionally and callously violent toward their research subjects. Those who are intelligent are depressed, because they understand that their work is effectively "bullshit" in any kind of larger scale, and they have no hope of ever "making an impact" on anything in their lives. In short: they are utterly trapped.
There is nothing romantic or stylized about DFW's depiction of this world, and it feels much closer to the truth of the present than what we see in Mad Men. It makes the prospect of what marketing and advertising will look like in thirty more years even more terrifying, particularly if we acknowledge that to a certain extent, DFW's version of the way we live now is almost too unbearably sad and painful to consider.
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09/23/2010
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Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine
Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.
Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past
Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.
Video: The Chaos Detective
The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.
Yes, totally, to all of this.
Posted by: Caitlin | 09/23/2010 at 11:41 PM
Thanks, Caitlin.
Posted by: Matthew Gallaway | 09/24/2010 at 07:58 AM