Tea at Trianon: Mad Men

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Mad Men

Different views. Share

5 comments:

Brantigny said...: I do not like this program nor do I care for the commercials, which are so over shown it reminds me of a "sham-wow" commercial.

The Show is so full of smoking that MY chest hurts. (In a time where the justified anti-smoking sense abounds it is a good thing to make smoking look glamorous?) Ok we get the point people used to smoke.

Richard; August 19, 2009 at 9:18:00 AM EDT
Julygirl said...: Since it is a parody of the values and cut throat mentality of the era, (nothing has changed except the smoking), we are supposed to view it and wonder, "What's it all about when you sort it out Alfie, are we meant to take more than we give?"; August 19, 2009 at 10:07:00 AM EDT
MadMonarchist said...: I'm a legitimate mad man and I've never been able to get through an episode. No witty 50's dialogue here, just retro greed and lust. It looks like something a commissar in the USSR would show to people to illustrate how evil the capitalist Americans are.; August 19, 2009 at 11:42:00 AM EDT
tubbs said...: Years ago the pornographer Guccione made a sham of a movie called 'Caligula'. There seemed to be a strong undercurrent theme of[see, there's nothing really new about our new vices, and civilization will survive in spite of them].

I see a bit of that in 'Mad Men'. If we pretend that our parents' generation had just as much corruption and debauchery as our own (AND IT DIDN'T), then we can feel a lot less creepy about the age we live in.

And MadMonarchist, I agree - the show comes off like some cheesey marxist propaganda!; August 19, 2009 at 4:21:00 PM EDT
Susan said...: I disagree. As a child of this era, I remember commercials with legitimate doctors promoting Chesterfield cigarettes and then when Kent came out with filtered ones, they advertised them. I love Mad Men--it depicts the mores, etiquette and way of life of that time. They were more careful to hide the vice, and lots of problems were carefully hidden away (mental illness, out of wedlock pregnancy, spousal abuse, etc.) If you think things are worse now, you're wrong--we just display them for everyone to see.; August 20, 2009 at 5:08:00 PM EDT