MAD MEN isn’t my all-time favorite TV drama series — which is forever tied between BUFFY and THE WIRE. But it’s pretty good and I’ll be happy to have it back tonight.
And of course as a historical writer I’m delighted by its attention to period detail, remarked upon by just about everyone including me in the matter of clothes and decor.
Clothes, decor, and — oh geez — hairstyles. In 1961 I was the same age as Mad Man character Duck Phillips’s daughter and wearing that same unbecoming shirtwaist and teased and lacquered Mary Tyler Moore hairflip. I nearly cried to see her looking so miserable in those clothes and hair, sometime during (I guess) Season Two. If I had any say in the matter I’d bring the character back for a tiny scene with nice straight hair (maybe with long Juliet Greco style bangs) and a black turtleneck, just to show that having Duck for a dad and those awful styles to wear didn’t totally ruin her life.
Well, you get the idea about how the clothes, hair, and decor thing goes on Mad Men, at least in the overheated, much too personal and slightly embarrassed memories of certain of its constant viewers.
But what I hadn’t thought about was the language thing. Because according to this lovely little piece in today’s Sunday New York Times Magazine, the writers of the show expend sizeable effort on period-correct language, even to consulting the OED, as I do, for possible anachronisms.
Of course (as in some pretty good historical romances), as Times language columnist Ben Zimmer points out, some linguistic anachronisms do find their way into Mad Men. Zimmer cites “Don’s ‘the window of opportu
nity for this apology is closing’ and Roger’s ‘I know you have to be on the same page as him’” — both as late 70s usages.
And I do remember being troubled by that “on the same page” as well as wondering about Joan’s “1960, I am so over you,” which, according to Zimmer, Mad Men creator Matt Weiner has defended by pointing to the Cole Porter song “So in Love” from “Kiss Me, Kate.”
Which lame excuse Zimmer justly and neatly demolishes. Viz: ”Scholars of semantics might disagree, seeing a nuance between Porter’s use of the adverb so, which quantifies the extent to which the character is in love, and the later Generation X-style spin on the word as an intensifier meaning “extremely” or “completely” without any comparison of relative degree.”
(Lovely bit of distinction-making that, don’t you think? Not to speak of use of the word nuance.)
Though I’m still holding out for Peggy’s slightly anachronistic ”I’m in a very good place right now.” Not because I believe that people generally said that in 1963, but because Peggy was high at the time, and I could almost, delightfully, imagine her imagination loosing as she slipped into a spacial metaphor to describe her state of mind. Quite as ours did a million years ago when we said far out and outtasight.
And which is whywhy (even if it isn’t as good a show as Breaking Bad) I’ll be avidly watching Mad Men tonight.
Will you?
