"Mad Men" has not been nominated for 16 Emmy Awards, it has appeared in a disc dealer I often go to. I was attracted by the back of that lonely man on the cover. The introduction is only a few sentences, the story of an advertiser on Madison Avenue, New York, in the 1960s. I don't know much about advertising, but time is a reason enough to make me pay. When I was in China in the 1980s, I started to understand the American 60s, first "Gate of Eden", then "Glory and Dream", Kennedy, Ginsburg, Kerouac, Bob Dylan... For a while I have been looking for the song "The Answer Is Gone in the Wind". At that time, there was no computer and no internet, and it was very difficult for me to find it.
I watched the first season intermittently for nearly a week. The Emmy Awards finally settled, "Mad Men" won the best drama series, but I know that it is destined to not be popular and can only circulate silently in a certain circle of circles.
The so-called Mensao, that Sao is hidden behind Mensao.
The protagonist Dan Dreiber has a taste of old-school handsome men such as Gary Grant and Gregory Parker. He wears a cufflink shirt, a three-button suit, a fedora, and a cashmere coat. He is the creative director of an advertising company and is about to become a partner. He has a beautiful wife and children. His lover is an artist and the heir to a department store. It seems that the life that many men dream of is destined to be unhappy. Although he thinks he understands the definition of happiness and has always been plausible: advertising is based on one thing: happiness. Do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car; it is the freedom to stay away from fear; it is a roadside billboard with words that let you rest assured to do what you are doing...
I watched the disc at night, in the sleepless night, everything calmed down, I watched the man's inner struggle. Under his calm appearance, he was always struggling. In a happy life, he is always struggling. It seems that he is only arrogant, with a clear goal and a firm direction. In fact, he can't find a way. The night outside the window was like ink, and occasionally the sound of friction from motor vehicle tires and the asphalt road broke the silence. Only on such nights is it suitable to watch this series. In the 1960s, the leather smell of the old sofa where you had been sitting at home was unknowingly instilled in your heart. The man in the play is you and the friends around you. He wanted to bury the past deeply, but the result was always unsuccessful. He has a wife and two lovers, and his life is prosperous, but he can't talk to anyone.
Don McLean sang, "I once met a girl who sang the blues. I asked her for happy news. She just smiled and turned away..." It
was 1960, the era of change. The undercurrents are just emerging under conservative traditions. Most women still rely on men in the workplace. Blacks can only work as elevator cleaners. Jews are still discriminated against. Homosexuality is still not blatant, and literary and artistic youths have begun to gather together to smoke marijuana; TV The machine has just become popular... and those who we are familiar with from the sixties are coming on stage one after another.
That year, Kennedy defeated Nixon by a narrow margin and entered the White House. He was about to say that famous line in his speech: "Don't ask what your country can do for you, but ask yourself what you can do for your country. "
That year, "On the Road" had been published for 3 years, and Kerouac, who became the "King of the Beats", was still the "running Proust", accompanied by Tokaj white wine. All alone, drunk and dreamy.
That year, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Robert Allen Zimmerman became Bob Dylan. Before long, he would drop out of school and come to Greenwich Village, New York. The legend has not yet been born.
In the last episode of the first season, in a dark conference room, Dan used Kodak’s newly developed roulette slide projector to show customers pictures of family members. “My first writer teacher is a Greek. Teddy, he told me that the deep bond between people and products is nostalgia. Nostalgia, in Greek, means the dull pain of an old wound, a pain in the heart that is more powerful than a memory. This machine is not space. High-tech like a ship, it is a space-time machine that travels back and forth between the past and the present, taking us to a place that evokes pain. This is not called a'wheel', it is called a'carousel', it allows us to use a child's way Came to travel, and went back home again and again, back to the place where we were loved."
He said so quietly, but with tears in the corners of his eyes. A colleague really cried and ran out. At the end of "Glory and Dreams-American Records from 1932 to 1972", William Manchester quoted the last sentence of Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby": "So we turn the bow and go against the trend of the times. Drive to the past without interruption."
But can we go back?
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