Natalie and I got a new toy for Christmas. It is a program called Dragon Dictate. You talk into a headset and it types all the words out for you. In fact I'm using it right now to write this blog. It is amazing what technology can do!
You may be wondering what could you possibly need a dictation program for? Well, Natalie and I do a lot of writing and this program will simplify the writing and save us time. My plan is to write three books this spring. Natalie writes on a daily basis as a ghostwriter for an Iranian refugee. Her contact fled Iran after the 1979 revolution. Natalie goes to her house once a week or every other week and records her stories and writes them out into manuscript form. Natalie's writing these manuscripts for a director who her contact has been working with.
So as you can see this program is going to make our lives much easier! The program is not perfect, but the speed in which it writes makes any corrections a simple click fix, not an elaborate process. It is interesting to note that it profiles your speech pattern to be as accurate as possible.
Thanks for being my first test dummies!
Happy holidays and a wonderful new year!
Troy
(Natalie says hi to!)
European Honeymoon!
St. George May 2012, Hawaii after that???
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
What a way to go!
Don't worry, no one died, but I'm talking about 2010.
Last night Natalie and I went to a Christmas party at a friend's house. They are new friends to us and they are very cool people. Natalie was so cute and she drank a whole bottle of wine. I was DD and we got home safe. She danced through the house like a nymph and giggled for a few hours until she finally settled down to sleep.She mad one memorable comment and I want to share it. She told me "I'm not that Drunk. Aha!" It was so hilarious.
Neither Natalie or myself drink very often, but I've noticed something we have in common, we're both very happy when we're drunk. There's no anger, or frustration, just happiness and laughing.
Earlier this week I was celebrating finishing my college degree. I drank way too much (even for me) and ended up floundering around the house with a goofy smile on my face. At one point I told Natalie that she looked like "Stitch" from Disney's "Lilo and Stitch" and then jumped up and ran into the bedroom. She though that I was running to get the movie, but we don't even own the movie. I just had to pee!
I have a theory about drunk people. If they are happy when they are drunk, they are probably happy with themselves and the life they lead. Sad, angry or frustrated: well, I believe they correspond. So, a simple word to the wise. Before you marry, see your partner drunk at least twice, strictly for scientific purposes. Cheers!
Last night Natalie and I went to a Christmas party at a friend's house. They are new friends to us and they are very cool people. Natalie was so cute and she drank a whole bottle of wine. I was DD and we got home safe. She danced through the house like a nymph and giggled for a few hours until she finally settled down to sleep.She mad one memorable comment and I want to share it. She told me "I'm not that Drunk. Aha!" It was so hilarious.
Neither Natalie or myself drink very often, but I've noticed something we have in common, we're both very happy when we're drunk. There's no anger, or frustration, just happiness and laughing.
Earlier this week I was celebrating finishing my college degree. I drank way too much (even for me) and ended up floundering around the house with a goofy smile on my face. At one point I told Natalie that she looked like "Stitch" from Disney's "Lilo and Stitch" and then jumped up and ran into the bedroom. She though that I was running to get the movie, but we don't even own the movie. I just had to pee!
I have a theory about drunk people. If they are happy when they are drunk, they are probably happy with themselves and the life they lead. Sad, angry or frustrated: well, I believe they correspond. So, a simple word to the wise. Before you marry, see your partner drunk at least twice, strictly for scientific purposes. Cheers!
Our Final Deeds of 2010...
This has been quite the year for me:
I married a lovely woman who lights up my life.
I graduated college after fourteen years of trudging through the vast marshes of academia.
I was fired from my job for something I didn't do.
I played in a major Irish Festival with my band the Humble Hooligans.
I traveled all over the most western part of Europe.
I met some amazing people.
I fought with myself to be a better person.
I became an impromptu art promoter.
I started working in a bar again after all those years away.
I lost a dear friend, my cat Eli.
The only thing I can't know is what lays ahead. I want to do some big things this year. I am writing at least one book, which I will periodically post here. I am touring with the band for the first time. I am going to make new friends and meet new and exciting people. I am going to buy a house (hopefully) and start graduate school and a family...
So what I propose is this on-line toast:
Raise your glasses...
"Here is to the future, to the glorious moments and the sad ones.
To knowing that you can achieve anything you put your mind to.
To holding in your heart the things that remain most dear,
and never compromising your values.
To special moments and memories,
the ones that will stay with you for all time.
This toast is for the uncertainty and spontaneity of life.
Here's to you...
My friends"
Best Wishes in 2011!
Troy
I married a lovely woman who lights up my life.
I graduated college after fourteen years of trudging through the vast marshes of academia.
I was fired from my job for something I didn't do.
I played in a major Irish Festival with my band the Humble Hooligans.
I traveled all over the most western part of Europe.
I met some amazing people.
I fought with myself to be a better person.
I became an impromptu art promoter.
I started working in a bar again after all those years away.
I lost a dear friend, my cat Eli.
The only thing I can't know is what lays ahead. I want to do some big things this year. I am writing at least one book, which I will periodically post here. I am touring with the band for the first time. I am going to make new friends and meet new and exciting people. I am going to buy a house (hopefully) and start graduate school and a family...
So what I propose is this on-line toast:
Raise your glasses...
"Here is to the future, to the glorious moments and the sad ones.
To knowing that you can achieve anything you put your mind to.
To holding in your heart the things that remain most dear,
and never compromising your values.
To special moments and memories,
the ones that will stay with you for all time.
This toast is for the uncertainty and spontaneity of life.
Here's to you...
My friends"
Best Wishes in 2011!
Troy
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The Reflecting Glass
Mary Shelley touched on something very dark and powerful when she penned her famous novel Frankenstein. The story follows the life of a young scientist who finds himself enchanted by the power of science. He delves into the dark recesses of the human mind to create a monster. Victor Frankenstein is disgusted by his creation and the novel follows the battle within himself as “creator”. The most important idea of the novel does not deal with the monster and his human consciousness, but the power that allowed Victor to create a living, breathing, feeling creature. This omnipotence that Victor possesses is at the heart of the novel and the basis of a new line of argument for English Gothic texts. According to Horst Eberhard-Richter, the author of All Mighty: A Study of the God Complex in Western Man, Victor simply follows the path that has been laid out before him. Like many great minds that have emerged since the middle ages, Victor has chosen Science over God and, in his choice, has replaced God with his own Ego. This decision is not a conscious one on the part of Victor, but a subconscious reaction to the circumstances surrounding Western Man since the middle ages. Shelley has created a character whose circumstances bring him to face to face with God, but all he can see is his own reflection. Victor Frankenstein is the penultimate example of the “God Complex” in Western Man. Victor needs to complete the cycle of humanity, reenacting each moment of history since the middle ages, in order to become God. Victor realizes too late that God is the equivalent of loneliness and that the monster is the equivalent of humanity.
There can be no application of the “God Complex” to Victor Frankenstein without understanding how Richter defines the complex. Richter introduces the idea of a young adult who attempts to control all aspects of his life. Richter explains that from an adult’s point of view they cannot understand these emotions, but if the adult sees the issue from a younger perspective of vulnerability, the emotional response seems to make sense, “At a time when, objectively speaking, they are totally dependent on parental care and protection, it throws them into a panic if they feel they can no longer rely on this protection” (Richter 3). It is this feeling of helplessness that drives the young adult to seize control of their life. Richter asserts that the young adult:
. . .is dominated by the conviction that the only way he can compensate for his helplessness and prevent his own destruction is by overcompensation, by becoming omnipotent and omniscient. (Richter 5)
It is not Richter’s goal to psychoanalyze the developmental habits of young adults, however. He applies this metaphor to the process of transitioning out of the middle ages and he likens man’s psychological process as “somewhat akin to those which (he) ha(s) just described as typical of the reactions of certain children” (Richter 5).
Richter suggests that Western Man’s troubles began with Augustine of Hippo. Augustine’s principal theory was that men were not supposed to use reason to get close to God. He argued that God would choose those who would receive salvation and those who would pay for original sin. Richter thinks that, “It was difficult for people to acknowledge their absolute dependency on God when they could not count on receiving His grace” (Richter 5). Given his opinion, he thinks that man was “justified in placing greater reliance on the knowledge he could personally acquire by the exercise of his own intellect” (Richter 5-6). The idea of faith is a hard concept to wholly embrace. Richter believes knowledge that is tangible will supersede any concept of something this is merely conjectured. The argument that men in the Middle Ages felt less protected by God and therefore pursued knowledge to replace him, according to Richter was done out of fear that “rebellion might truly call down on (man’s) head the wrath of God” (Richter 6), that each increase in the “personal power” of man would equally increase the potential for “retribution”. As each step moved man farther from God, an emotional divide developed. Man was not aware that the process of taking more and more of God’s power was dethroning him, but justified their own actions by convincing themselves that they only wanted “a greater awareness of God” (Richter 7).
Richter continues the timeline of development for Western Man when he discusses the Alchemists. He believes that “Alchemy was a blatant manifestation of man’s desire to appropriate all of God’s miraculous powers” (Richter 7). With each step Richter argues that Western man has systematically replaced God with his own reason and knowledge. In the seventeenth century Descartes continues this pattern, “In the philosophy of Descartes we see a particularly clear-cut case of man’s radical reversal of attitude, from passive submission to a role of vigilant domination. The individual ego assumes the place of God” (Richter 12). Descartes has completely removed the need for God in the mind of man and has completely replaced it with his own ego. Richter’s main point is that:
Man’s fear of abandonment by God turned into a fear of losing his absolute certitude, and thereby his ability to exercise intellectual dominion over the surrounding world. (Richter 12)
Subconsciously, through his fear of abandonment, like that of the young adult, man has compensated by denying weakness and developing strength through knowledge. He found himself unable to be a part of a world he could not control, so he created a world in which he was omnipotent. At the moment that man emerged from the Middle Ages, touting his accumulation of knowledge, and into the present he was celebrated, only to be seen for what he was, a coward running from a fear of his helplessness wearing the façade of God (Richter 12-13). Finally, through the Middle Ages, and into the modern era, man has arrived at an image of God, and what he sees is his reflection. Similarly, Victor can only see himself once he has transcended humanity, but before he can become God he must start the cycle of knowledge.
Knowledge is crucial to Victor’s progress and he must find the scholars who came before him. Mary Shelley and Horst Eberhard-Richter discuss the ideas of the Alchemist Cornelius Agrippa, who believed that by discovering how to turn anything into gold he could cure all the ailments of mankind. Young Victor is excited by the works of the Agrippa but is put off by the comments of his father regarding the text. Victor’s father says that Agrippa’s works are “sad trash” and for Victor not to “waste his time upon” them (Shelley 21). Richter approaches Agrippa from a different perspective. He believes that the point of view that Agrippa was writing from during his period was the right one and that his writings were “simply transferred onto modern mathematics” (Richter 14). For Victor to achieve “Godliness” he needs to appropriate the teachings of Agrippa as part of his learning cycle. Victor embodies the learning of the men from the renaissance period as his progression of youth. Richter’s validation was not needed for young Victor as he pursues the text even after his father admonished him. Victor needs to overcome the “confidence in Kabalistic and magical formulas and in rituals of conjuration, which were current at the time of Cornelius Agrippa” (Richter 14) for him to complete this aspect of his training. This objective is easier said than done for Victor who is enamored with natural science and the ideas that Agrippa represents. He is challenging the nature of God because of his insecurities through the application of magic first and then science. Victor even admits that had his father “taken the pains to explain to (him), that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded” that it was entirely plausible that his thoughts would never have taken him to his place of “ruin” (Shelley 21). For Victor to become omnipotent he must challenge magic first, just as medieval man has, so his study of Agrippa is an integral part of his character development.
On Victor’s journey to omnipotence he must attempt to recreate that which came before him. This process is essential to the art of science. Victor, through his studies of Agrippa and Magnus tries to create the “Philosopher’s Stone” and the “elixir of life” (Shelley 22). Richter would say that Victor has “reified nature, turned it into an object of scientific study, thus creating (for himself) a new role: that of the detached intellectual observer” (Richter 7). Victor has to distance himself from nature to examine it from a scientific perspective. He believes his intentions to be noble “wealth was an inferior object; but what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death” (Shelley 22). Victor must reconstruct the past through his search for the “Philosopher’s Stone”. Without this aspect of his journey Victor can never become God. The knowledge that the stone represents is a culmination of all the ideas of the Middle Ages, “The ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ with its unlimited magical powers, reflected the spirit of the age, for it symbolized man’s desire, or rather his compulsion, to appropriate God’s omnipotence: If he was no longer possible to have God, at least it might be possible to become Him.” (Richter 8). Every step Victor takes, every moment of progress, is a moment towards self-reliance and the ability to “possess infinity” and become God (Richter 14). The time spent studying magic only fueled Victor’s desire for tangible knowledge, but fulfilled the necessary step of embracing the renaissance understanding of knowledge with alchemy: “The ego, in a sense, assimilated the whole potential of magic by denying the reality of everything which it had not verified and appropriated by its own intellectual power” (Richter 12). What Victor could not prove with his foray into alchemy he proves with actual biology and chemistry, a version of modern magic.
It must be made clear that, at first, Victor is not consciously seeking to become God. He is acting on his emotions and instincts. Part of the definition of “God Complex” is the perceived loss of trust and or protection of the parent; in Victor’s case it is the loss of his mother. In his book The Gothic Psyche Matthew Brennan elaborates on Victor’s reliance on his mother, “Tracing the stages of Victor Frankenstein’s psychic self-destruction shows how Victor’s stable childhood crumbles and how his misfortune helps cause a neurotic scientific obsession” (Brennan 57). In Brennan’s opinion Victor’s childhood is completely reliant on his mother and it is her death that affects him the most. Victor’s scientific obsession is similar to the one that preceded him in medieval man. The only way that Victor can control his emotions is to “overcompensate” which Richter defined as part of the process. The loss of Victor’s mother was the final aspect to be fulfilled. Victor now has every opportunity to turn away from God and towards reason and knowledge, and he does this willingly to seek protection from his vulnerability.
Victor can see no other option then to commit himself to science and to ignore the world around him, “Two years passed in this manner, during which (he) paid no visit to Geneva, but was engaged heart and soul, in pursuit of some discoveries, which (he) hoped to make” (Shelley 29). Victor abandons mankind and God. He has nothing left but the disconnected view of nature that he pursued earlier in his life. In a misguided attempt to protect himself, Victor has completely cut himself off from humanity, his only chance for his salvation. With this disconnect Victor has also cut himself off from God as the creator of humanity. This drastic severing allows Victor push farther than Western Man has ever dared to go. Not only does Victor have knowledge and the power that comes from that knowledge, but he will possess supreme power over man as a creator. At this point Victor is deliberately usurping God’s power. He has completely mastered the ability to create life “my imagination was too much exulted by my first success to permit me to doubt my ability to give life” (Shelley 31). He has allowed his ego to “turn into the image of God” (Richter 10).
Victor never contemplates the right or wrong of his actions, because in science there is no right or wrong, only results or failures. The only thing Victor considers is what kind of creation he should make. He is too consumed by his own power, the “narcissistic omnipotence”, to understand that with the rejection of the monster he has chosen to isolate himself from humanity. He never stops to consider his creation as a living, thinking being. As a creator he only cares about the power he possesses, not the result of his knowledge. Victor never understands that he justifies replacing faith with knowledge, trying to overcompensate the loss of both a biological and a spiritual parent, leaving him feeling abandoned an unprotected.
Victor’s approach to science is one that continually distances him from God. Richter explains that when God was part of the equation for mankind it was circular. With the inclusion of God everything began and ended in a cyclical pattern, “This circular, closed system was breached the moment the distrustful ego of man began looking beyond the circumscription of revealed truth for answers to his questions” (Richter 9). Victor no longer has a beginning or an end. This idea is so ingrained in Victor’s mind that he can’t separate it from the truth, there must always be a beginning and an ending, yet he perceives everything in scientific terms, when he considers the “improvement which every day takes place in science and mechanics, (he is) encouraged to hope (his) present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success” (Shelley 31). Victor realizes only too late that his creation forces endings in his life, the murder of his younger brother and his wife. In essence, everything for Victor has come full circle, which is not the projected outcome of science.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her essay title “Frankenstein and Devi’s Pterodactyl” argues “Frankenstein’s apparent antagonist is God himself as the Maker of Man” (Spivak 56). Based on Richter’s definition of the “God Complex” this would be inaccurate. Victor doesn’t think that he is becoming God, and Richter confirms this:
“The more God’s power man usurped, the more vehemently and ingeniously he convinced himself that in reality the only reason why he wanted to annex those of God’s powers which were operative in nature was to acquire greater awareness of God himself” (Richter 7).
Victor doesn’t think that God is the antagonist because he doesn’t believe he has achieved the same status as God. Unknowingly he has acquired the power of God yet his narcissism blinds him from the truth.
By using Richter’s definition of the “God Complex” and applying it to Victor Frankenstein there are several things that can be surmised. The first is that in seeking to gain knowledge and understanding of the world, Victor has created a fissure between himself and God. The second is that his inability to find comfort in a parental figure only adds to his sense of loss and insecurity. This feeling of helplessness is where his troubles begin. Thirdly, that Victor must travel the same path as the men that came before him, a coming of age, to wade through magic into science and to completion as a new God. Although Victor does not actively seek Godliness, he achieves it through blindness and persistent drive to gain divine knowledge. Victor’s knowledge is linear, yet the circle that encompasses all natural things in inevitable. Lastly that Victor acknowledges no antagonists other than the monster, and never sees God as his opposite. This ignorance to his power is what limits Victor’s power over the monster and what finally ends his life. Victor Frankenstein did not choose to abandon God. The parallel between Victor and God and the monster and humanity is too great to ignore. When Victor becomes God he sees his creation as a monster, which begs to reason that God sees humanity as a monster. Ironically, Victor was afraid of being left defenseless and alone, yet his journey into the depths of the human psyche and his creation of the monster cause him to realize his greatest fear: To be God is to be alone.
Works Cited
Brennan, Matthew C. The Gothic Psyche: Disintegration and Growth in Nineteenth-
century English Literature. Columbia, SC, USA: Camden House, 1997. Print.
Richter, Horst-Eberhard. All Mighty: A Study of the God Complex in Western Man.
Trans. Jan Van Heurck. Claremont, CA, U.S.A.: Hunter House, 1984. Print.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Frankenstein and Devi's Pterodactyl." Empire and the
Gothic: the Politics of Genre. By Andrew Smith and William Hughes. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Print.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and J. Paul Hunter. Frankenstein: the 1818 Text, Contexts,
Nineteenth-century Responses, Modern Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. Print.
There can be no application of the “God Complex” to Victor Frankenstein without understanding how Richter defines the complex. Richter introduces the idea of a young adult who attempts to control all aspects of his life. Richter explains that from an adult’s point of view they cannot understand these emotions, but if the adult sees the issue from a younger perspective of vulnerability, the emotional response seems to make sense, “At a time when, objectively speaking, they are totally dependent on parental care and protection, it throws them into a panic if they feel they can no longer rely on this protection” (Richter 3). It is this feeling of helplessness that drives the young adult to seize control of their life. Richter asserts that the young adult:
. . .is dominated by the conviction that the only way he can compensate for his helplessness and prevent his own destruction is by overcompensation, by becoming omnipotent and omniscient. (Richter 5)
It is not Richter’s goal to psychoanalyze the developmental habits of young adults, however. He applies this metaphor to the process of transitioning out of the middle ages and he likens man’s psychological process as “somewhat akin to those which (he) ha(s) just described as typical of the reactions of certain children” (Richter 5).
Richter suggests that Western Man’s troubles began with Augustine of Hippo. Augustine’s principal theory was that men were not supposed to use reason to get close to God. He argued that God would choose those who would receive salvation and those who would pay for original sin. Richter thinks that, “It was difficult for people to acknowledge their absolute dependency on God when they could not count on receiving His grace” (Richter 5). Given his opinion, he thinks that man was “justified in placing greater reliance on the knowledge he could personally acquire by the exercise of his own intellect” (Richter 5-6). The idea of faith is a hard concept to wholly embrace. Richter believes knowledge that is tangible will supersede any concept of something this is merely conjectured. The argument that men in the Middle Ages felt less protected by God and therefore pursued knowledge to replace him, according to Richter was done out of fear that “rebellion might truly call down on (man’s) head the wrath of God” (Richter 6), that each increase in the “personal power” of man would equally increase the potential for “retribution”. As each step moved man farther from God, an emotional divide developed. Man was not aware that the process of taking more and more of God’s power was dethroning him, but justified their own actions by convincing themselves that they only wanted “a greater awareness of God” (Richter 7).
Richter continues the timeline of development for Western Man when he discusses the Alchemists. He believes that “Alchemy was a blatant manifestation of man’s desire to appropriate all of God’s miraculous powers” (Richter 7). With each step Richter argues that Western man has systematically replaced God with his own reason and knowledge. In the seventeenth century Descartes continues this pattern, “In the philosophy of Descartes we see a particularly clear-cut case of man’s radical reversal of attitude, from passive submission to a role of vigilant domination. The individual ego assumes the place of God” (Richter 12). Descartes has completely removed the need for God in the mind of man and has completely replaced it with his own ego. Richter’s main point is that:
Man’s fear of abandonment by God turned into a fear of losing his absolute certitude, and thereby his ability to exercise intellectual dominion over the surrounding world. (Richter 12)
Subconsciously, through his fear of abandonment, like that of the young adult, man has compensated by denying weakness and developing strength through knowledge. He found himself unable to be a part of a world he could not control, so he created a world in which he was omnipotent. At the moment that man emerged from the Middle Ages, touting his accumulation of knowledge, and into the present he was celebrated, only to be seen for what he was, a coward running from a fear of his helplessness wearing the façade of God (Richter 12-13). Finally, through the Middle Ages, and into the modern era, man has arrived at an image of God, and what he sees is his reflection. Similarly, Victor can only see himself once he has transcended humanity, but before he can become God he must start the cycle of knowledge.
Knowledge is crucial to Victor’s progress and he must find the scholars who came before him. Mary Shelley and Horst Eberhard-Richter discuss the ideas of the Alchemist Cornelius Agrippa, who believed that by discovering how to turn anything into gold he could cure all the ailments of mankind. Young Victor is excited by the works of the Agrippa but is put off by the comments of his father regarding the text. Victor’s father says that Agrippa’s works are “sad trash” and for Victor not to “waste his time upon” them (Shelley 21). Richter approaches Agrippa from a different perspective. He believes that the point of view that Agrippa was writing from during his period was the right one and that his writings were “simply transferred onto modern mathematics” (Richter 14). For Victor to achieve “Godliness” he needs to appropriate the teachings of Agrippa as part of his learning cycle. Victor embodies the learning of the men from the renaissance period as his progression of youth. Richter’s validation was not needed for young Victor as he pursues the text even after his father admonished him. Victor needs to overcome the “confidence in Kabalistic and magical formulas and in rituals of conjuration, which were current at the time of Cornelius Agrippa” (Richter 14) for him to complete this aspect of his training. This objective is easier said than done for Victor who is enamored with natural science and the ideas that Agrippa represents. He is challenging the nature of God because of his insecurities through the application of magic first and then science. Victor even admits that had his father “taken the pains to explain to (him), that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded” that it was entirely plausible that his thoughts would never have taken him to his place of “ruin” (Shelley 21). For Victor to become omnipotent he must challenge magic first, just as medieval man has, so his study of Agrippa is an integral part of his character development.
On Victor’s journey to omnipotence he must attempt to recreate that which came before him. This process is essential to the art of science. Victor, through his studies of Agrippa and Magnus tries to create the “Philosopher’s Stone” and the “elixir of life” (Shelley 22). Richter would say that Victor has “reified nature, turned it into an object of scientific study, thus creating (for himself) a new role: that of the detached intellectual observer” (Richter 7). Victor has to distance himself from nature to examine it from a scientific perspective. He believes his intentions to be noble “wealth was an inferior object; but what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death” (Shelley 22). Victor must reconstruct the past through his search for the “Philosopher’s Stone”. Without this aspect of his journey Victor can never become God. The knowledge that the stone represents is a culmination of all the ideas of the Middle Ages, “The ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ with its unlimited magical powers, reflected the spirit of the age, for it symbolized man’s desire, or rather his compulsion, to appropriate God’s omnipotence: If he was no longer possible to have God, at least it might be possible to become Him.” (Richter 8). Every step Victor takes, every moment of progress, is a moment towards self-reliance and the ability to “possess infinity” and become God (Richter 14). The time spent studying magic only fueled Victor’s desire for tangible knowledge, but fulfilled the necessary step of embracing the renaissance understanding of knowledge with alchemy: “The ego, in a sense, assimilated the whole potential of magic by denying the reality of everything which it had not verified and appropriated by its own intellectual power” (Richter 12). What Victor could not prove with his foray into alchemy he proves with actual biology and chemistry, a version of modern magic.
It must be made clear that, at first, Victor is not consciously seeking to become God. He is acting on his emotions and instincts. Part of the definition of “God Complex” is the perceived loss of trust and or protection of the parent; in Victor’s case it is the loss of his mother. In his book The Gothic Psyche Matthew Brennan elaborates on Victor’s reliance on his mother, “Tracing the stages of Victor Frankenstein’s psychic self-destruction shows how Victor’s stable childhood crumbles and how his misfortune helps cause a neurotic scientific obsession” (Brennan 57). In Brennan’s opinion Victor’s childhood is completely reliant on his mother and it is her death that affects him the most. Victor’s scientific obsession is similar to the one that preceded him in medieval man. The only way that Victor can control his emotions is to “overcompensate” which Richter defined as part of the process. The loss of Victor’s mother was the final aspect to be fulfilled. Victor now has every opportunity to turn away from God and towards reason and knowledge, and he does this willingly to seek protection from his vulnerability.
Victor can see no other option then to commit himself to science and to ignore the world around him, “Two years passed in this manner, during which (he) paid no visit to Geneva, but was engaged heart and soul, in pursuit of some discoveries, which (he) hoped to make” (Shelley 29). Victor abandons mankind and God. He has nothing left but the disconnected view of nature that he pursued earlier in his life. In a misguided attempt to protect himself, Victor has completely cut himself off from humanity, his only chance for his salvation. With this disconnect Victor has also cut himself off from God as the creator of humanity. This drastic severing allows Victor push farther than Western Man has ever dared to go. Not only does Victor have knowledge and the power that comes from that knowledge, but he will possess supreme power over man as a creator. At this point Victor is deliberately usurping God’s power. He has completely mastered the ability to create life “my imagination was too much exulted by my first success to permit me to doubt my ability to give life” (Shelley 31). He has allowed his ego to “turn into the image of God” (Richter 10).
Victor never contemplates the right or wrong of his actions, because in science there is no right or wrong, only results or failures. The only thing Victor considers is what kind of creation he should make. He is too consumed by his own power, the “narcissistic omnipotence”, to understand that with the rejection of the monster he has chosen to isolate himself from humanity. He never stops to consider his creation as a living, thinking being. As a creator he only cares about the power he possesses, not the result of his knowledge. Victor never understands that he justifies replacing faith with knowledge, trying to overcompensate the loss of both a biological and a spiritual parent, leaving him feeling abandoned an unprotected.
Victor’s approach to science is one that continually distances him from God. Richter explains that when God was part of the equation for mankind it was circular. With the inclusion of God everything began and ended in a cyclical pattern, “This circular, closed system was breached the moment the distrustful ego of man began looking beyond the circumscription of revealed truth for answers to his questions” (Richter 9). Victor no longer has a beginning or an end. This idea is so ingrained in Victor’s mind that he can’t separate it from the truth, there must always be a beginning and an ending, yet he perceives everything in scientific terms, when he considers the “improvement which every day takes place in science and mechanics, (he is) encouraged to hope (his) present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success” (Shelley 31). Victor realizes only too late that his creation forces endings in his life, the murder of his younger brother and his wife. In essence, everything for Victor has come full circle, which is not the projected outcome of science.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her essay title “Frankenstein and Devi’s Pterodactyl” argues “Frankenstein’s apparent antagonist is God himself as the Maker of Man” (Spivak 56). Based on Richter’s definition of the “God Complex” this would be inaccurate. Victor doesn’t think that he is becoming God, and Richter confirms this:
“The more God’s power man usurped, the more vehemently and ingeniously he convinced himself that in reality the only reason why he wanted to annex those of God’s powers which were operative in nature was to acquire greater awareness of God himself” (Richter 7).
Victor doesn’t think that God is the antagonist because he doesn’t believe he has achieved the same status as God. Unknowingly he has acquired the power of God yet his narcissism blinds him from the truth.
By using Richter’s definition of the “God Complex” and applying it to Victor Frankenstein there are several things that can be surmised. The first is that in seeking to gain knowledge and understanding of the world, Victor has created a fissure between himself and God. The second is that his inability to find comfort in a parental figure only adds to his sense of loss and insecurity. This feeling of helplessness is where his troubles begin. Thirdly, that Victor must travel the same path as the men that came before him, a coming of age, to wade through magic into science and to completion as a new God. Although Victor does not actively seek Godliness, he achieves it through blindness and persistent drive to gain divine knowledge. Victor’s knowledge is linear, yet the circle that encompasses all natural things in inevitable. Lastly that Victor acknowledges no antagonists other than the monster, and never sees God as his opposite. This ignorance to his power is what limits Victor’s power over the monster and what finally ends his life. Victor Frankenstein did not choose to abandon God. The parallel between Victor and God and the monster and humanity is too great to ignore. When Victor becomes God he sees his creation as a monster, which begs to reason that God sees humanity as a monster. Ironically, Victor was afraid of being left defenseless and alone, yet his journey into the depths of the human psyche and his creation of the monster cause him to realize his greatest fear: To be God is to be alone.
Works Cited
Brennan, Matthew C. The Gothic Psyche: Disintegration and Growth in Nineteenth-
century English Literature. Columbia, SC, USA: Camden House, 1997. Print.
Richter, Horst-Eberhard. All Mighty: A Study of the God Complex in Western Man.
Trans. Jan Van Heurck. Claremont, CA, U.S.A.: Hunter House, 1984. Print.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Frankenstein and Devi's Pterodactyl." Empire and the
Gothic: the Politics of Genre. By Andrew Smith and William Hughes. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Print.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and J. Paul Hunter. Frankenstein: the 1818 Text, Contexts,
Nineteenth-century Responses, Modern Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. Print.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Delusions of Grandeur
The following is an essay I did for a 20th Century American Literature Class on the television Series MAD MEN. Hope you enjoy!
-Troy
Delusions of Grandeur
The 1950’s: A golden age of modern progress, featuring family values and good, old-fashioned, hard-working people. This is the picture that has been painted for contemporary America. There are several reasons behind the glorification of Post-War America, but only by turning to the past to create a more accurate picture can we make sense of it all. Sloan Wilson’s Man in the Grey Flannel Suit and Matthew Weiner’s MADMEN create a new picture, different from the American ideal that we’ve been fed. Historically the 1950’s were not an easy time. Involvement in a conflict against North Korea, the beginning of the “Cold War”, containment culture and the re-domestication of the American woman are just the beginning for the generation that endured these events. What we see from these two sources is not a glorified picture of the golden fifties, but a hard edged, dog eat dog society of cutthroat businessmen and a cold disdain for their current existence. At the source, in the basement of human emotion, is the true essence of the 1950’s: a disconnect from humanity. Forced to compromise their values and desires, fifties culture purged humanity in exchange for memory loss. The 1950’s were not a golden age to be remembered, but an important lesson to be learned.
MADMEN season one starts in the late 1950’s. The viewer is introduced to a handsome male character in a bar writing on a napkin. His name is Donald Draper. Don Draper is your average account executive, handsome, well spoken, and friendly. Don has a sexual prowess that women find irresistible and he is in charge of a huge cigarette account for his firm. The subplot is staged for this episode, Don needs to come up with an idea for Lucky Strike cigarettes, but the viewer needs more cultural context. At eleven minutes and fifty-five seconds into the episode Don Draper is shown holding his Purple Heart medal. There is no flash back, or even cut to him picking up the medal, all the viewer sees is the Purple Heart medal in his hands, then he puts it back in the box with his name on it: Lt. Donald Francis Draper. The Purple Heart is a glorification of war, just like the contemporary viewpoint of the 1950’s and the viewer’s association to the medal would be an immediate connection to Don Draper the war veteran. This scene is no coincidence. War was a large part of 1950’s mentality. Not just the Korean Conflict, which we now see from a contemporary viewpoint as a war, but WWII that ended in 1945. There is a distinguishable difference. Don Draper went to Korea to fight and during that time it wasn’t even considered a war.
Thomas R. Rath, the protagonist in Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit also has a connection to war. He spent his time in WWII as a paratrooper. The book starts in the mid-1950’s and, Rath dissatisfied with the life he leads. He doesn’t make enough money and he feels like he could have done more with himself coming out of the army when he says, “I really don’t know what I was looking for when I got back from the war, but it seemed as though all I could see was a lot of bright young men in grey flannel suits rushing around New York in a parade to nowhere” (Wilson 272). Tom Rath feels disconnected from the society he knew before he left to fight over seas. It is the idea of disillusionment that both Don and Tom feel that creates separation from what they feel and what people see. Don is also aware of a social disconnect from his war experiences. In the episode “The Marriage of Figaro”, Larry, an old army buddy, recognizes Don Draper. The only problem is that Larry calls Don by the name “Dick Whitman” . Don doesn’t know how to handle the chance meeting and is unable to tell his old friend the truth about his life. It is the moments of displacement, the leading of two lives, one before the war and one after, that is plaguing men like Don and Tom. Rath, like Draper, has a moment of recognition when he meets the elevator man in the United Broadcasting Building. There is a “suppressed flicker of recognition” for Rath, but he puts it out of his mind (Wilson 23). Both Rath and Draper are repressing memories and acquaintances, segregating the aspects of their lives that they are tying to forget.
The idea of a double life is one that both Don and Tom share. They each have a “war” secret that can ruin their careers and, in turn, their lives. These secrets factor into how they make decisions and react to others. In episode twelve of season one titled “Nixon vs. Kennedy”, the viewer finally gets to meet the real Donald Draper, the Lieutenant that Dick Wittman meets in Korea. Several things come to light in this episode, the penultimate as far as season one is concerned. The viewer learns why Donald Draper, the Advertising Man, is running from his name: he was afraid of war and he accidentally killed his commanding officer. The viewer already suspects Dick Whitman (later Don Draper) of hiding from things, and the real Donald Draper attempts to understand why Dick enlisted in the military, “What misconception traveled down the road and made you want to be here? A Movie?” he asks Dick. Dick’s response: “I just wanted to leave” . There is an important question to ask, what man voluntarily seeks war? How bad was Dick’s life to make him volunteer for war? It isn’t until Dick realizes, after the real Donald Draper has been killed, that he needs to become Donald Draper to escape not just war, but the life he lived before he volunteered. Dick switches his dog tags with Lt. Donald Draper’s and assumes a new identity.
Tom Rath also finds an escape from war. While in Italy he finds a young girl named Maria. Tom had one week before his company was scheduled to fly out of Italy for the Pacific, but as time passed his troubles were eased: “There had been forty-nine last days, and the greatest pleasure in the world had been to walk back to her room from the restaurant where he made his telephone calls at eight o’clock in the morning” (Wilson 81). Tom describes his liaison with Maria as “the only good thing that happened to me in the whole war” (Wilson 266). Tom Rath and Dick Whitman both find escape from their wars. Despite the fact that these escapes seem positive, the negative—Tom’s life falling apart if his secret comes to light and Don being found to be a “deserter”, “a fraud and a liar, a criminal even” like his colleague Peter Campbell labels him—far outweighs any perceived benefits that escape could offer them.
A startling similarity between both Tom Rath and Don Draper (Dick Whitman) is the fact that they both inadvertently killed a friend in battle. These actions separate Tom and Don from the majority of the soldiers returning from the war. Although their situations are similar, the aspects of each events are different. Tom spent time with Mahoney, escaping together after being trapped behind enemy lines. They used each other to keep warm, hiding in a hole so they wouldn’t freeze to death (Wilson 73). The connection for Tom is very personal. To recover from the traumatic stress of throwing a live grenade at his comrade and friend takes an enormous psychological wall, one that only people who’ve mistakenly killed a friend can understand. Dick Whitman knew the real Lt. Donald Draper for less than twenty-four hours, but even so, Dick would understand Tom Rath’s “wall”, sadly he is unwilling to share his own experience for fear of being discovered. This fact is what differentiates the war experiences for Tom and Dick. Tom feels that he has nothing to hide. He knows that there were witnesses to his action, but he has replaced those memories with his current life and stress. Don (Dick) can never let anyone inside of his psychological wall for fear that everything he has built will come crumbling down around him. This is why he pays his brother Adam Whitman five thousand dollars to “leave New York and I don’t want to see or hear from you ever again” . Don’s mistake is one he refuses to pay for, eliminating the contributing factors and limiting his exposure, he assumes a new life and builds his wall as high as metaphorically possible. These events are significant because they shape the reaction and responses of our protagonists and lead to a social disconnect on their behalf. There is no one for either man to talk to, and this is the reason that Sloan Wilson gives Tom Rath an inner monologue and why the personal flashbacks of Don Draper (Dick) are crucial to the viewer’s understanding of his character.
War is not the only social issue in the late 1950’s. There is a new movement by men to re-domesticate the women of the era. Both Tom Rath and Don Draper deal with this issue. World War II created a problem for men on the home front. Women took up the jobs that the men left behind to go to war. They worked and kept house, raised their families and cooked the food that they put on the table. After the war women found themselves displaced in the workforce for men to resume their previous jobs. Don’s wife Betty is a good example of a woman who keeps house but wants more. In the episode titled “Shoot” Betty is lured by an advertising company executive to model for their product Coca-Cola , she doesn’t realize that she is the bait for the advertising company to attract her husband. Betty is a woman who wants a modicum of independence, contrasting the normative view that men have of women’s role and obligations. Betty spends most of the episode telling everyone that she “used to be a model, you know” . She feels value in her beauty and thinks that she can “stand apart” from other wives. Don is shocked that Betty wants to go back to work, although Betty is nonchalant about her request, “it will be fun to go back and be ‘that’ girl again” . Ignorant to the fact that she is offered the Coca-Cola modeling offer because her husband is being courted, Betty is deeply hurt when she is pulled from the account. The result is her lying to Don about working, “They were talking about a whole string of other possibilities for me. But honestly I don’t think I want to work anymore” . Betty has a desire to be independent from her husband, and she measures her independence by working outside the home. If she admits failure she will seem weak and lose any chance at independence. Betsy Rath, Tom’s wife also faces the dilemma of re-domestication. She is trying to understand how she fits into the role of wife and mother. For the first time in years Betsy is able to analyze her anger and frustration and it all boils down to two points, “we’re (Tom and Betsy) both just tired out. That’s why nothing seems to be much fun anymore” (Wilson 112). During the 1950’s people were working hard to make ends meet on both ends of the family spectrum. Men were required to earn a good amount of money for the family to move up in the social ranks and the women were required to play house and keep up the appearances of sprezzatura, the idea that everything looks easy even when it’s not.
There was a change in opinion among the wives and mothers who had young children in the 1950’s. They were evolving into a new kind of woman, one who wanted more than just to be a wife or a mother. Tom acknowledges the idea that he and his wife relied too much on the safety net of his grandmother when he states “I think we’ve both always assumed that Grandmother would be waiting to catch us if we tripped” (Wilson 60). His grandmother was their safety net, one of established values and ideas. Betsy has another progressive influence in her sister Alice. Alice advises Betsy not to marry Tom before he leaves for war: “Mark my words . . . If you get married now you’ll regret it. You’re too young. Someday you’ll remember I told you that and wish you had taken my advice. Wait until after the war. A girl your age who marries a man just about to go into the service is crazy” (Wilson 110). Alice is the voice of reason, one usually reserved for the conservative female figure, yet she is also the progressive, wanting her sister Betsy to think of herself as a woman and not just as a bride to be. It is the two opposites fighting for the same land in the evolving woman and Betsy is caught in the middle of the battleground.
Betty Draper is also trying to maintain the picturesque appearance of the flawless wife, beautiful, happy and motherly, yet inside she is struggling with many of the issues that many young women in the 1950’s were facing. In episode nine “Shoot” Betty is laying on the couch in her therapist’s office talking about her mother, “She wanted me to be beautiful so I could find a man” she says “But then what? Just sit around and let it go until you’re in a box?” . Betty is questioning all of the social norms that have been established for women in the era before hers. Her mother sees success as marrying the right man, but Betty wants more. She wants to feel satisfaction in her life through her actions, not just the actions of her husband. This change in perspective that women experienced, stemmed from the freedom they had when their husband were away fighting in the war. When Betty tells Don that she doesn’t want to work he sympathizes with her:
Don: It’s my job to give you what you want.
Betty: You do! Look at all this! I don’t know what I was thinking.
Don: Birdie, you know I don’t care about making my dinner or taking in my
shirts. You have a job. You are mother to those two little people and
you are better at it than anyone else in the world. At least in the top
500.
Betty: (Laugh)
Don: I would have given anything to have had a mother like you.
What Don doesn’t understand is that it is not the role of the “mother” that drives Betty, but her desire to be an “independent woman”.
Another character on MADMEN who is fighting a war is Peggy Olson. Her war doesn’t involve machine guns, but stereotypes of what role a woman should fill. She is breaking the glass ceiling with a sledgehammer and completely rejecting womanhood in the process. Peggy Olson is the new woman who will emerge from the 1950’s as a pioneer in the struggle for women to leave the kitchen. A woman whose goals do not include trying to marry the wealthiest man she can meet. A woman who thinks nothing of her sexuality to please men, rather she uses it to please herself. When Joan confronts Peggy regarding her weight in “Shoot”, Peggy responds with “I’m the first girl to do any writing in this office since the war” Peggy’s first inclination for her own defense is that she is doing something that women don’t do. Joan doesn’t understand this mentality. Joan is of the old school, find a rich man and marry him. Peggy doesn’t want to play pretend, she wants to become successful on her own merit. In the episode titled “The Wheel” the viewer finds that Peggy Olson has been pregnant. She denies her own femininity even when she goes into labor, “I don’t understand” she says as she crumples to the floor . Peggy again rejects motherhood in episode two of the second season named “Flight 1”. Peggy is forced to hold her sister’s son in church and she is uncomfortable and angry . Peggy chooses manhood over womanhood. She is a new example of a woman who fights stereotypical norms, even as she uses denial for her main defense. Later in episode five of season two called “The New Girl” Peggy flashes back to her time spent in the psychiatric hospital after her childbirth, and the viewer sees Don at her beside. This is a critical moment for both Don and Peggy because Don doesn’t understand women and Peggy doesn’t want to be seen as a woman:
Don: “What’s wrong with you?”
Peggy: “I don’t know.”
Don: “What do they want you to do?”
Peggy: “I don’t know.”
Don: “Yes you do. (beat) Do it. (beat) Do whatever they say. Peggy, listen to
me, get out of here and move forward. This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened.”
Peggy did what Don suggested. She dealt with the problem like a man. She dealt with her problem like Don dealt with his, become someone else and never look back. Peggy put womanhood behind her and with it, generations of feminine stereotypes.
The essential idea behind the disconnect from humanity is the complete loss of control. Both Madmen and The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit embody the idea of living on the edge of sanity. Choices that change the outcome of lives are made in split seconds, deals are made and broken in a matter of breaths. The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit emphasizes the nature of the workingman in the 1950’s, As Tom said “a lot of bright young men in grey flannel suits running around New York”. The idea that no man is unique, that everyone is wearing the same suit looking for the same thing, trying to reach the same finish line without loosing hope, is what Wilson wants the reader to understand. The best interpretation of this idea comes in the title sequence of the show. It starts with a man in an office. He is a black shadow with no discernable characteristics, another man without identity. He sets his briefcase down and the office crumbles beneath his feet. He falls past advertisements plastered on the side of high-rise buildings. The credits roll the names of essential actors and producers and the shadow man falls. At one point the shadow man is falling down the enlarged version of a woman’s legs in lace stockings, he is just a small, falling spot, on the side of the enormous advertisement. He falls right up to the camera and the as it fades out to the man sitting peacefully in his chair smoking a cigarette . This is the perfect metaphor for the societal disconnect that men like Don Draper and Tom Rath feel. On the outside is the appearance of cool, calm strength. On the inside an endless void of space to fall through, passing icons of what life has become. Don and Tom each deal with this “freefall” in different ways.
Tom has a calming technique that he uses to get through tough situations. By repeating his three mantras “It doesn’t really matter”, “Here goes nothing” and “It will be interesting to see what happens” he finds that he can relax and approach any problem (Wilson 69). These three thoughts got him through the war and Tom admits that they “still had the power to soothe him” (Wilson 69). Don uses a different technique to escape from his sensation of falling. Don escapes through women. The first woman we meet in MADMEN is not Don’s wife, but his mistress Midge, the artist . He escapes into another life with a woman who can take his mind off the sensation of falling. Unfortunately for Don it isn’t enough and each relationship falls (pun intended) apart. In episode eight of season one, “The Hobo Code”, the viewer sees Don’s escapism in action. Don gets a twenty-five hundred dollar bonus check and tries to whisk Midge away to Paris. She declines and he gives her the money . This is the end of Don’s relationship with Midge, but not the end of Don trying to escape his life by wasting time with women other than his wife. Don gets involved with Rachel Menkin, a Jewish heiress from the department store chain that is a client of his ad agency. Yet again this relationship ends with Don proposing to “run away” with her and she realizes that he is using her for an escape, not for the love she desires from him. She kicks Don out and he is left without a mistress for the time being.
The saving grace for Tom Rath is the strength of his character and that of his wife. He comes clean about his relationship with Maria and following his wife’s advice he advances through the ranks of United Broadcasting by being truthful and honest. Hopkins says to him “We need men like you—I guess we need a few men who keep a sense of proportion” (Wilson 253). By telling the truth and opening up to his closest ally, his wife, Tom is able to realize some of those pre-war dreams and to actually focus on what is important. Don cannot do that because Don’s “foxhole” is too deep to ever crawl out of. Because Don Draper can never be his true self, he will always need a sense of escape no matter where he goes or who he sleeps with.
What we see are two men, broken in different ways, but filling a place in society just the same. They lived their lives without ever talking about the damage that war inflicted on them. They spent time forgetting. They built walls around their hearts and told themselves that they would only focus on the good. Unfortunately the human mind doesn’t work that way and they will have to face their memories at some point. Don, Tom and Peggy have all been to war and they have found ways to repress their emotions, but that repression is only a façade. Tom finds relief in his wife and their mutual trust, but Don and Peggy can try and forget what it means to have been to war and survived, only to return home a damaged person. Even though Peggy’s war is one against social constructs she deals with her battle-scars the same way Don deals with his. The fact that Peggy has to fight against so much illuminates the issues behind women’s rights and the “housewife” mentality. The re-domestication of the American woman after WWII and after Korea was a blow to the evolution of the modern woman. It is the disconnect from humanity that both men and women feel in the 1950’s that creates the animosity towards each other, the disdain for what they have obtained and the desire to increase the status and wealth of their own person. If you asked Don Draper if he would like to forget the 1950’s he will lie to you and tell you that it was “A Golden Age”; inside he has already placed them in his discard file. It’s okay, the world isn’t great and it never was, MADMEN conveys from a contemporary viewpoint and The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit stands as proof, published in 1955, for all who care.
Works Cited
Albert, Lisa and Matthew Weiner. "Nixon vs. Kennedy." Mad Men. AMC. Santa
Monica, CA, 11 Oct. 2007. Television.
Albert, Lisa, and Matthew Weiner. "Flight 1." Mad Men. AMC. Santa Monica, CA, 3
Aug. 2008. Television.
Palmer, Tom, and Matthew Weiner. "Marriage of Figaro." Mad Men. AMC. Santa
Monica, CA, 2 Aug. 2007. Television.
Provenzo, Chris, and Matthew Weiner. "The Hobo Code." Mad Men. AMC. Santa
Monica, CA, 6 Sept. 2007. Television.
Provenzo, Chris, and Matthew Weiner. "Shoot." Mad Men. AMC. Santa Monica, CA, 13
Sept. 2007. Television.
Veith, Robin, and Matthew Weiner. "The New Girl." Mad Men. AMC. Santa Monica,
CA, 24 Aug. 2008. Television.
Weiner, Matthew. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." Mad Men. AMC. Santa Monica, CA, 19
July 2007. Television.
Weiner, Matthew. "5G." Mad Men. AMC. Santa Monica, CA, 16 Aug. 2007. Television.
Weiner, Matthew. "The Wheel." Mad Men. AMC. Santa Monica, CA, 18 Oct. 2007.
Television.
Wilson, Sloan. The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955.
Print.
-Troy
Delusions of Grandeur
The 1950’s: A golden age of modern progress, featuring family values and good, old-fashioned, hard-working people. This is the picture that has been painted for contemporary America. There are several reasons behind the glorification of Post-War America, but only by turning to the past to create a more accurate picture can we make sense of it all. Sloan Wilson’s Man in the Grey Flannel Suit and Matthew Weiner’s MADMEN create a new picture, different from the American ideal that we’ve been fed. Historically the 1950’s were not an easy time. Involvement in a conflict against North Korea, the beginning of the “Cold War”, containment culture and the re-domestication of the American woman are just the beginning for the generation that endured these events. What we see from these two sources is not a glorified picture of the golden fifties, but a hard edged, dog eat dog society of cutthroat businessmen and a cold disdain for their current existence. At the source, in the basement of human emotion, is the true essence of the 1950’s: a disconnect from humanity. Forced to compromise their values and desires, fifties culture purged humanity in exchange for memory loss. The 1950’s were not a golden age to be remembered, but an important lesson to be learned.
MADMEN season one starts in the late 1950’s. The viewer is introduced to a handsome male character in a bar writing on a napkin. His name is Donald Draper. Don Draper is your average account executive, handsome, well spoken, and friendly. Don has a sexual prowess that women find irresistible and he is in charge of a huge cigarette account for his firm. The subplot is staged for this episode, Don needs to come up with an idea for Lucky Strike cigarettes, but the viewer needs more cultural context. At eleven minutes and fifty-five seconds into the episode Don Draper is shown holding his Purple Heart medal. There is no flash back, or even cut to him picking up the medal, all the viewer sees is the Purple Heart medal in his hands, then he puts it back in the box with his name on it: Lt. Donald Francis Draper. The Purple Heart is a glorification of war, just like the contemporary viewpoint of the 1950’s and the viewer’s association to the medal would be an immediate connection to Don Draper the war veteran. This scene is no coincidence. War was a large part of 1950’s mentality. Not just the Korean Conflict, which we now see from a contemporary viewpoint as a war, but WWII that ended in 1945. There is a distinguishable difference. Don Draper went to Korea to fight and during that time it wasn’t even considered a war.
Thomas R. Rath, the protagonist in Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit also has a connection to war. He spent his time in WWII as a paratrooper. The book starts in the mid-1950’s and, Rath dissatisfied with the life he leads. He doesn’t make enough money and he feels like he could have done more with himself coming out of the army when he says, “I really don’t know what I was looking for when I got back from the war, but it seemed as though all I could see was a lot of bright young men in grey flannel suits rushing around New York in a parade to nowhere” (Wilson 272). Tom Rath feels disconnected from the society he knew before he left to fight over seas. It is the idea of disillusionment that both Don and Tom feel that creates separation from what they feel and what people see. Don is also aware of a social disconnect from his war experiences. In the episode “The Marriage of Figaro”, Larry, an old army buddy, recognizes Don Draper. The only problem is that Larry calls Don by the name “Dick Whitman” . Don doesn’t know how to handle the chance meeting and is unable to tell his old friend the truth about his life. It is the moments of displacement, the leading of two lives, one before the war and one after, that is plaguing men like Don and Tom. Rath, like Draper, has a moment of recognition when he meets the elevator man in the United Broadcasting Building. There is a “suppressed flicker of recognition” for Rath, but he puts it out of his mind (Wilson 23). Both Rath and Draper are repressing memories and acquaintances, segregating the aspects of their lives that they are tying to forget.
The idea of a double life is one that both Don and Tom share. They each have a “war” secret that can ruin their careers and, in turn, their lives. These secrets factor into how they make decisions and react to others. In episode twelve of season one titled “Nixon vs. Kennedy”, the viewer finally gets to meet the real Donald Draper, the Lieutenant that Dick Wittman meets in Korea. Several things come to light in this episode, the penultimate as far as season one is concerned. The viewer learns why Donald Draper, the Advertising Man, is running from his name: he was afraid of war and he accidentally killed his commanding officer. The viewer already suspects Dick Whitman (later Don Draper) of hiding from things, and the real Donald Draper attempts to understand why Dick enlisted in the military, “What misconception traveled down the road and made you want to be here? A Movie?” he asks Dick. Dick’s response: “I just wanted to leave” . There is an important question to ask, what man voluntarily seeks war? How bad was Dick’s life to make him volunteer for war? It isn’t until Dick realizes, after the real Donald Draper has been killed, that he needs to become Donald Draper to escape not just war, but the life he lived before he volunteered. Dick switches his dog tags with Lt. Donald Draper’s and assumes a new identity.
Tom Rath also finds an escape from war. While in Italy he finds a young girl named Maria. Tom had one week before his company was scheduled to fly out of Italy for the Pacific, but as time passed his troubles were eased: “There had been forty-nine last days, and the greatest pleasure in the world had been to walk back to her room from the restaurant where he made his telephone calls at eight o’clock in the morning” (Wilson 81). Tom describes his liaison with Maria as “the only good thing that happened to me in the whole war” (Wilson 266). Tom Rath and Dick Whitman both find escape from their wars. Despite the fact that these escapes seem positive, the negative—Tom’s life falling apart if his secret comes to light and Don being found to be a “deserter”, “a fraud and a liar, a criminal even” like his colleague Peter Campbell labels him—far outweighs any perceived benefits that escape could offer them.
A startling similarity between both Tom Rath and Don Draper (Dick Whitman) is the fact that they both inadvertently killed a friend in battle. These actions separate Tom and Don from the majority of the soldiers returning from the war. Although their situations are similar, the aspects of each events are different. Tom spent time with Mahoney, escaping together after being trapped behind enemy lines. They used each other to keep warm, hiding in a hole so they wouldn’t freeze to death (Wilson 73). The connection for Tom is very personal. To recover from the traumatic stress of throwing a live grenade at his comrade and friend takes an enormous psychological wall, one that only people who’ve mistakenly killed a friend can understand. Dick Whitman knew the real Lt. Donald Draper for less than twenty-four hours, but even so, Dick would understand Tom Rath’s “wall”, sadly he is unwilling to share his own experience for fear of being discovered. This fact is what differentiates the war experiences for Tom and Dick. Tom feels that he has nothing to hide. He knows that there were witnesses to his action, but he has replaced those memories with his current life and stress. Don (Dick) can never let anyone inside of his psychological wall for fear that everything he has built will come crumbling down around him. This is why he pays his brother Adam Whitman five thousand dollars to “leave New York and I don’t want to see or hear from you ever again” . Don’s mistake is one he refuses to pay for, eliminating the contributing factors and limiting his exposure, he assumes a new life and builds his wall as high as metaphorically possible. These events are significant because they shape the reaction and responses of our protagonists and lead to a social disconnect on their behalf. There is no one for either man to talk to, and this is the reason that Sloan Wilson gives Tom Rath an inner monologue and why the personal flashbacks of Don Draper (Dick) are crucial to the viewer’s understanding of his character.
War is not the only social issue in the late 1950’s. There is a new movement by men to re-domesticate the women of the era. Both Tom Rath and Don Draper deal with this issue. World War II created a problem for men on the home front. Women took up the jobs that the men left behind to go to war. They worked and kept house, raised their families and cooked the food that they put on the table. After the war women found themselves displaced in the workforce for men to resume their previous jobs. Don’s wife Betty is a good example of a woman who keeps house but wants more. In the episode titled “Shoot” Betty is lured by an advertising company executive to model for their product Coca-Cola , she doesn’t realize that she is the bait for the advertising company to attract her husband. Betty is a woman who wants a modicum of independence, contrasting the normative view that men have of women’s role and obligations. Betty spends most of the episode telling everyone that she “used to be a model, you know” . She feels value in her beauty and thinks that she can “stand apart” from other wives. Don is shocked that Betty wants to go back to work, although Betty is nonchalant about her request, “it will be fun to go back and be ‘that’ girl again” . Ignorant to the fact that she is offered the Coca-Cola modeling offer because her husband is being courted, Betty is deeply hurt when she is pulled from the account. The result is her lying to Don about working, “They were talking about a whole string of other possibilities for me. But honestly I don’t think I want to work anymore” . Betty has a desire to be independent from her husband, and she measures her independence by working outside the home. If she admits failure she will seem weak and lose any chance at independence. Betsy Rath, Tom’s wife also faces the dilemma of re-domestication. She is trying to understand how she fits into the role of wife and mother. For the first time in years Betsy is able to analyze her anger and frustration and it all boils down to two points, “we’re (Tom and Betsy) both just tired out. That’s why nothing seems to be much fun anymore” (Wilson 112). During the 1950’s people were working hard to make ends meet on both ends of the family spectrum. Men were required to earn a good amount of money for the family to move up in the social ranks and the women were required to play house and keep up the appearances of sprezzatura, the idea that everything looks easy even when it’s not.
There was a change in opinion among the wives and mothers who had young children in the 1950’s. They were evolving into a new kind of woman, one who wanted more than just to be a wife or a mother. Tom acknowledges the idea that he and his wife relied too much on the safety net of his grandmother when he states “I think we’ve both always assumed that Grandmother would be waiting to catch us if we tripped” (Wilson 60). His grandmother was their safety net, one of established values and ideas. Betsy has another progressive influence in her sister Alice. Alice advises Betsy not to marry Tom before he leaves for war: “Mark my words . . . If you get married now you’ll regret it. You’re too young. Someday you’ll remember I told you that and wish you had taken my advice. Wait until after the war. A girl your age who marries a man just about to go into the service is crazy” (Wilson 110). Alice is the voice of reason, one usually reserved for the conservative female figure, yet she is also the progressive, wanting her sister Betsy to think of herself as a woman and not just as a bride to be. It is the two opposites fighting for the same land in the evolving woman and Betsy is caught in the middle of the battleground.
Betty Draper is also trying to maintain the picturesque appearance of the flawless wife, beautiful, happy and motherly, yet inside she is struggling with many of the issues that many young women in the 1950’s were facing. In episode nine “Shoot” Betty is laying on the couch in her therapist’s office talking about her mother, “She wanted me to be beautiful so I could find a man” she says “But then what? Just sit around and let it go until you’re in a box?” . Betty is questioning all of the social norms that have been established for women in the era before hers. Her mother sees success as marrying the right man, but Betty wants more. She wants to feel satisfaction in her life through her actions, not just the actions of her husband. This change in perspective that women experienced, stemmed from the freedom they had when their husband were away fighting in the war. When Betty tells Don that she doesn’t want to work he sympathizes with her:
Don: It’s my job to give you what you want.
Betty: You do! Look at all this! I don’t know what I was thinking.
Don: Birdie, you know I don’t care about making my dinner or taking in my
shirts. You have a job. You are mother to those two little people and
you are better at it than anyone else in the world. At least in the top
500.
Betty: (Laugh)
Don: I would have given anything to have had a mother like you.
What Don doesn’t understand is that it is not the role of the “mother” that drives Betty, but her desire to be an “independent woman”.
Another character on MADMEN who is fighting a war is Peggy Olson. Her war doesn’t involve machine guns, but stereotypes of what role a woman should fill. She is breaking the glass ceiling with a sledgehammer and completely rejecting womanhood in the process. Peggy Olson is the new woman who will emerge from the 1950’s as a pioneer in the struggle for women to leave the kitchen. A woman whose goals do not include trying to marry the wealthiest man she can meet. A woman who thinks nothing of her sexuality to please men, rather she uses it to please herself. When Joan confronts Peggy regarding her weight in “Shoot”, Peggy responds with “I’m the first girl to do any writing in this office since the war” Peggy’s first inclination for her own defense is that she is doing something that women don’t do. Joan doesn’t understand this mentality. Joan is of the old school, find a rich man and marry him. Peggy doesn’t want to play pretend, she wants to become successful on her own merit. In the episode titled “The Wheel” the viewer finds that Peggy Olson has been pregnant. She denies her own femininity even when she goes into labor, “I don’t understand” she says as she crumples to the floor . Peggy again rejects motherhood in episode two of the second season named “Flight 1”. Peggy is forced to hold her sister’s son in church and she is uncomfortable and angry . Peggy chooses manhood over womanhood. She is a new example of a woman who fights stereotypical norms, even as she uses denial for her main defense. Later in episode five of season two called “The New Girl” Peggy flashes back to her time spent in the psychiatric hospital after her childbirth, and the viewer sees Don at her beside. This is a critical moment for both Don and Peggy because Don doesn’t understand women and Peggy doesn’t want to be seen as a woman:
Don: “What’s wrong with you?”
Peggy: “I don’t know.”
Don: “What do they want you to do?”
Peggy: “I don’t know.”
Don: “Yes you do. (beat) Do it. (beat) Do whatever they say. Peggy, listen to
me, get out of here and move forward. This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened.”
Peggy did what Don suggested. She dealt with the problem like a man. She dealt with her problem like Don dealt with his, become someone else and never look back. Peggy put womanhood behind her and with it, generations of feminine stereotypes.
The essential idea behind the disconnect from humanity is the complete loss of control. Both Madmen and The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit embody the idea of living on the edge of sanity. Choices that change the outcome of lives are made in split seconds, deals are made and broken in a matter of breaths. The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit emphasizes the nature of the workingman in the 1950’s, As Tom said “a lot of bright young men in grey flannel suits running around New York”. The idea that no man is unique, that everyone is wearing the same suit looking for the same thing, trying to reach the same finish line without loosing hope, is what Wilson wants the reader to understand. The best interpretation of this idea comes in the title sequence of the show. It starts with a man in an office. He is a black shadow with no discernable characteristics, another man without identity. He sets his briefcase down and the office crumbles beneath his feet. He falls past advertisements plastered on the side of high-rise buildings. The credits roll the names of essential actors and producers and the shadow man falls. At one point the shadow man is falling down the enlarged version of a woman’s legs in lace stockings, he is just a small, falling spot, on the side of the enormous advertisement. He falls right up to the camera and the as it fades out to the man sitting peacefully in his chair smoking a cigarette . This is the perfect metaphor for the societal disconnect that men like Don Draper and Tom Rath feel. On the outside is the appearance of cool, calm strength. On the inside an endless void of space to fall through, passing icons of what life has become. Don and Tom each deal with this “freefall” in different ways.
Tom has a calming technique that he uses to get through tough situations. By repeating his three mantras “It doesn’t really matter”, “Here goes nothing” and “It will be interesting to see what happens” he finds that he can relax and approach any problem (Wilson 69). These three thoughts got him through the war and Tom admits that they “still had the power to soothe him” (Wilson 69). Don uses a different technique to escape from his sensation of falling. Don escapes through women. The first woman we meet in MADMEN is not Don’s wife, but his mistress Midge, the artist . He escapes into another life with a woman who can take his mind off the sensation of falling. Unfortunately for Don it isn’t enough and each relationship falls (pun intended) apart. In episode eight of season one, “The Hobo Code”, the viewer sees Don’s escapism in action. Don gets a twenty-five hundred dollar bonus check and tries to whisk Midge away to Paris. She declines and he gives her the money . This is the end of Don’s relationship with Midge, but not the end of Don trying to escape his life by wasting time with women other than his wife. Don gets involved with Rachel Menkin, a Jewish heiress from the department store chain that is a client of his ad agency. Yet again this relationship ends with Don proposing to “run away” with her and she realizes that he is using her for an escape, not for the love she desires from him. She kicks Don out and he is left without a mistress for the time being.
The saving grace for Tom Rath is the strength of his character and that of his wife. He comes clean about his relationship with Maria and following his wife’s advice he advances through the ranks of United Broadcasting by being truthful and honest. Hopkins says to him “We need men like you—I guess we need a few men who keep a sense of proportion” (Wilson 253). By telling the truth and opening up to his closest ally, his wife, Tom is able to realize some of those pre-war dreams and to actually focus on what is important. Don cannot do that because Don’s “foxhole” is too deep to ever crawl out of. Because Don Draper can never be his true self, he will always need a sense of escape no matter where he goes or who he sleeps with.
What we see are two men, broken in different ways, but filling a place in society just the same. They lived their lives without ever talking about the damage that war inflicted on them. They spent time forgetting. They built walls around their hearts and told themselves that they would only focus on the good. Unfortunately the human mind doesn’t work that way and they will have to face their memories at some point. Don, Tom and Peggy have all been to war and they have found ways to repress their emotions, but that repression is only a façade. Tom finds relief in his wife and their mutual trust, but Don and Peggy can try and forget what it means to have been to war and survived, only to return home a damaged person. Even though Peggy’s war is one against social constructs she deals with her battle-scars the same way Don deals with his. The fact that Peggy has to fight against so much illuminates the issues behind women’s rights and the “housewife” mentality. The re-domestication of the American woman after WWII and after Korea was a blow to the evolution of the modern woman. It is the disconnect from humanity that both men and women feel in the 1950’s that creates the animosity towards each other, the disdain for what they have obtained and the desire to increase the status and wealth of their own person. If you asked Don Draper if he would like to forget the 1950’s he will lie to you and tell you that it was “A Golden Age”; inside he has already placed them in his discard file. It’s okay, the world isn’t great and it never was, MADMEN conveys from a contemporary viewpoint and The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit stands as proof, published in 1955, for all who care.
Works Cited
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Veith, Robin, and Matthew Weiner. "The New Girl." Mad Men. AMC. Santa Monica,
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Wilson, Sloan. The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955.
Print.
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