Madness
The truth lies in this office.
The underlying premise of the show Mad Men is that anyone can start over and/or do whatever they want at any time. (Or so the characters think.) One of the lead male characters lives under an assumed identity, and even when he is discovered, and outed, it doesn’t matter; his boss simply quotes a Japanese proverb claiming “A man is whatever room he is in.” It doesn’t matter who a man was…it matters who he is, right now, in this room.
Another character had a baby with no one knowing it, including herself, and promptly gave it up for adoption. The aforementioned male character finds her in the hospital after her absence from work worries him, where he tells her to get back to the office because “This never happened. You’ll be amazed at how much this never happened.” Reinvention, restarts, and rebirth work themselves through the subplots and storylines of each of the characters, and the consequences of their actions are as seemingly superfluous as the marketing copy they produce. They rebrand themselves as if they were one of the products hiring their Madison Avenue advertising firm.
In season two, as the previously aforementioned lead is dining with another of his many extra-marital conquests, he realizes she is as slippery, and reinvented, as he is. He asks how she came to be the agent and manager of one of the highest paid comedians in show business, especially when it is obvious that she actually shouldn’t be (were she not either posing as the comedian’s wife or sister, as the situation warrants). Her response was as Mad Men as any of the employees of the firm; “This is America. Pick a job and then become the person who does it.”
Is America really that wide open? Can we all become anyone we want to be, or anyone we are willing to be? Is it a noble or desirable thing to reinvent ourselves into something totally different, or hide what’s true about ourselves, or even discard the truth, with no regard for who is peripherally affected? When is the reinvention a con, and when is it a resurrection? What would you be…or are you one of the rarities who is actually what they want to be where they want to be it?
Yes. If Lady Gaga can do it, you can too.
I’ve managed to stick with my college discipline and find a career in it. I consider it divine intervention having found a position in my field. BUT… my guitar room is just wasted space if I’m not an 80s rocker playing monster ballads.
Dream: Rock you like a Hurricane
I’ll gladly settle for: Computer Engineer
If you ask yourself the question, “what would I be?”, it is mere reinvention. If you ask “what would Christ make of me?”, it is resurrection…not all in the pub are card carrying orthodox Christians, I realize, but resurrection is a uniquely Christian claim. It doesn’t exist as a popular notion, that’s why some of our skeptic friends never embrace Christianity: “You really expect me to believe that Jesus rose from the dead?” Answer: only if you need to, because you realize reinvention is a crock. Resurrection means I need another to raise me to some other condition/reality. The emphasis is on “need” and “another” here. Look, if I were so good at deciding what I would be, if I were to do it all over again, well then, why didn’t I get it right the first time? That is the appeal of reinvention – I don’t have to get it right. For every screw up, ethical smearing, bloody shameful mess I work myself into…well there is always a new version of me waiting to be engineered. What is unappealing about resurrection is that, although it is lasting, it is beyond our control. To have a master means we have been mastered. But again, if we were competent masters for ourselves, why the desperate need to reinvent now chronicled as a national psyche in a critically acclaimed show?
http://1000milepub.wordpress.com
Do you have twitter? Great stuff by the way…
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Mad men is goood! I encourage all of you to check it out.
I already did:P Great one!
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