The adroit juxtaposition of Don's presentation with Joan's aside...
How many of us were raised (taught, instructed, indoctrinated, trained) to tolerate ambiguity or unresolved conflict? If the conductors of our cult-ure promoted anything other than black and white, all or nothing, all good or all bad, all right or all wrong thinking, do you think our cult-ure(s) would survive in the contests against the similarly raised competition?
I've seen every last episode. And just when I thought that Matthew and his monumentally conscious collaborators could not outdo their previous efforts, they knock me in the head with a triple play like this.
Angry feminism is the "feminism" most of us either buy into (out of guilt?) or reject (out of hand). In the world of centerless, immoderate mental polarity most of us take for granted, it's all about "Hanoi Jane" or "hairy legged ragers" or "intellectual dominatrix's" ... and the "overweening" Helen Reddy, the "subversive" Betty Friedan, or the "castration-bent" Alanis Morissette.
Change does not go down easily with those who have been regimented so effectively that the majority of them will sit tight when the wealth accumulators elect to vacuum the pockets or slaughter the sons (and now daughters) of those they trained to make, consume and fight.
I've no idea if Matthew & Company understand all this, but it surely =looks= like they do in episodes like this. The hopeful, achievement- obsessed Cosmo Girls up against the wall, or perhaps more accurately, painted into the corners of their indoctrinated identities as objects accepting the rights of others to use them as they see fit.
The adolescent female of today loathes her mother for giving in. She can afford to. In today's world, the woman are =all= putting out. The dilemmas faced by Peggy, Megan and Joan are Just The Way It Is now.
Is our ardent willingness to sell out and be "all that we can be" abetted by better clarity and conscious resignation? Or are the Peggy's, Megan's and Joan's of today just as "snowed" by their instructors as their mothers and grandmothers were?
In 1966, most of us still believed in a "fairness" that was not yet so obviously a fairytale. It was part of the "glue" of our cult-ure then.
No; I do not expect to be widely understood. And neither, I think, does Matthew. (He knows he needs to make the characters, the plots and the scenery interesting.) But MM's niche success suggests, at least, that there are people out there who are least "fascinated" by The Way it Was (and Still Is?) and this ensemble's nuanced, perfectly articulated packaging of it.
How many of us were raised (taught, instructed, indoctrinated, trained) to tolerate ambiguity or unresolved conflict? If the conductors of our cult-ure promoted anything other than black and white, all or nothing, all good or all bad, all right or all wrong thinking, do you think our cult-ure(s) would survive in the contests against the similarly raised competition?
I've seen every last episode. And just when I thought that Matthew and his monumentally conscious collaborators could not outdo their previous efforts, they knock me in the head with a triple play like this.
Angry feminism is the "feminism" most of us either buy into (out of guilt?) or reject (out of hand). In the world of centerless, immoderate mental polarity most of us take for granted, it's all about "Hanoi Jane" or "hairy legged ragers" or "intellectual dominatrix's" ... and the "overweening" Helen Reddy, the "subversive" Betty Friedan, or the "castration-bent" Alanis Morissette.
Change does not go down easily with those who have been regimented so effectively that the majority of them will sit tight when the wealth accumulators elect to vacuum the pockets or slaughter the sons (and now daughters) of those they trained to make, consume and fight.
I've no idea if Matthew & Company understand all this, but it surely =looks= like they do in episodes like this. The hopeful, achievement- obsessed Cosmo Girls up against the wall, or perhaps more accurately, painted into the corners of their indoctrinated identities as objects accepting the rights of others to use them as they see fit.
The adolescent female of today loathes her mother for giving in. She can afford to. In today's world, the woman are =all= putting out. The dilemmas faced by Peggy, Megan and Joan are Just The Way It Is now.
Is our ardent willingness to sell out and be "all that we can be" abetted by better clarity and conscious resignation? Or are the Peggy's, Megan's and Joan's of today just as "snowed" by their instructors as their mothers and grandmothers were?
In 1966, most of us still believed in a "fairness" that was not yet so obviously a fairytale. It was part of the "glue" of our cult-ure then.
No; I do not expect to be widely understood. And neither, I think, does Matthew. (He knows he needs to make the characters, the plots and the scenery interesting.) But MM's niche success suggests, at least, that there are people out there who are least "fascinated" by The Way it Was (and Still Is?) and this ensemble's nuanced, perfectly articulated packaging of it.