The Lure of Opulent Desolation

[PrettySquareGal]

I don't get when she refers to the people alive in the 50's as people we never knew. What? Everyone alive then is now dead? lol I'm always asking older people about the 50's- leads to geat conversations!

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't get when she refers to the people alive in the 50's as people we never knew. What? Everyone alive then is now dead? lol I'm always asking older people about the 50's- leads to geat conversations!

I suspect that she "never knew them" because she didn't bother to know them. Or, she might be admitting that their experiences were so foreign to her own that she couldn't begin to grasp what sort of lives they'd led -- knowing them without really *knowing* them. Which, either way, is very sad.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I suspect that she "never knew them" because she didn't bother to know them. Or, she might be admitting that their experiences were so foreign to her own that she couldn't begin to grasp what sort of lives they'd led -- knowing them without really *knowing* them. Which, either way, is very sad.

Indeed.

She would have been less sad and presumptuous has she taken ownership of her opinions by using "I" instead of "we." Instead she uses "we" and assumes that she speaks of universal beliefs and agreements on what is or was real.

 

[Foofoogal]

Once upon a time I was naive and thought everyone thought like me. Silly me.
Since there is nothing new under the sun I do think just like now everyone were not clones back then.

If you can't make people believe your outlook and way of life is better, you can at least try to make them unhappy with theirs. Victomology 101

I agree with John in Covina.

As we were making our way across Oklahoma the other day from Dallas to Fort Smith I had a thought.
People truly see thru the eyes of their experiences. Living in or around Houston for some 36 years and now getting out it struck me that I know alot of people who have never even traveled past the city limits of Houston. I am sure many have never even seen pastures or fields or barns or lakes. Really made me sad when I thought of it.
People are generally scared of what they do not know.
Why with the www do people still live all bunched up? After living around Houston and now going back to smaller town living like I lived as a child it is truly messing with my head. I honestly forgot people could be different.
When we went back for the holidays it took about 3 hours to go across Houston with the mad traffic. I cannot believe honestly that we did that for 36 years. Wonder why people are so stressed. No matter how nice a person you are sooner or later it will take a toll. Maybe the author is just struggling and wishing but thinks it is a futile task. After this last year with everything I think most all are wishing for some time machine to go backwards to a more simple time.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Prefaced with: I actually don't like being patronising, but it seems to be necessary here. The lack of basic critical reading abilities displayed here is frankly an indictment of the US educational system (honestly, is it so difficult to refer back to a previous paragraph to understand the statements made in the following paragraph? Apparently it is). There is one poster here that i'm particularly disturbed to see they didn't get it. To read what people who got it think, please read the comments under the article on the NYT website. But then they're east-coast elite, of course. (See what i did there? I used nuance and ironic reference to a stereotype to make a point. Note this for the reading of the NYT article.) I don't hold with the notion that "Americans don't get subtlety" but someone at Purdue once said to me: If a writer wants to be subtle, why aren't they a bit more obvious about it?

There is so much that is wrong with the replies to this thread that it’s almost impossible to deal with them all. I think the best way is an analysis of what the author says, which by the way, agrees with almost every opinion expressed here.

Is it possible that anyone here cannot understand that all of the offensive terms in the following – the ones that have got FLoungers knickers twisted - are not the opinion of the author, but what she found in Yates’s book? She is not saying, for example, that she thinks that women in the 1950s were comparable to infants, that women were sexually repressed. (Although these people no doubt existed, as they do today, and ever shall.) She’s saying that that is what Yates said in his book, and that’s exactly what she expected to find, because of her own preconceptions of the era which are informed by the general opinion. For a very good review of Yates's book, see the December 2008 issue of The Atlantic.

And I devoured Richard Yates’s “Revolutionary Road,” a then largely overlooked book that I found one day among the paperbacks in our local bookstore, snatching it up for what its jacket promised would be “the most evocative portrayal” of suburban “opulent desolation.” (“What in God’s name was the point or the meaning or the purpose of a life like this?” was the sort of gratifying payoff I found within its pages.)

I approached these books, I’ll admit, with a kind of prurient interest, a combination of revulsion and irresistible attraction, thoroughly enjoying the sad and sordid sexual repression, the infantilization of women, the cookie-cutter conformity imposed upon men. I couldn’t get enough of the miserable domestic underbelly of life in the period we like to call “the Fifties,” an era that spans the late ’40s to the mid-’60s. Some of the fascination was a kind of exoticism. More, however, came from the fact that, I found, in our era of “soccer moms,” “surrendered wives” and “new traditionalism,” the look and sound of the opulent desolation was eerily familiar.

Next we get to the meat of what the author is trying to say. Why is it that people have such a skewed, bad image of the 1950s, particularly vis a vis women’s issues? She’s saying that Mad Men and its ilk are consciously saying that the 1950s (an “unhappy past”, according to these shows) were “characterized by every possible form of bigotry”. Note, she is not saying that’s what she thinks. She’s saying that this is how these shows and movies portray the era.

I soon had a steady stream of new material to feed my craving for Lucky Strike- and martini-scented domestic disturbances. The films “Far From Heaven” and “The Hours.” The TV series “Mad Men.” And now, of course, “Revolutionary Road,” the movie, repackaging what USA Today recently called “the savagery of post-war domesticity” for the Oscars.

Why is there such a desire, even a hunger, to recreate images from such an unhappy past? A past characterized by every possible form of bigotry? A past, furthermore, that people like the “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner and the directors of “Revolutionary Road,” “Far From Heaven” and “The Hours” can’t possibly remember, having been born, like me, in the 1960s?

“Part of the show is trying to figure out,” Weiner told The Times’s Alex Witchel last June, “what is the deal with my parents. Am I them? Because you know you are.”

And lastly to the other series of paragraphs that have caused much anger here.

How we seem to love and hate those men and women we never knew. What we would give to know their secrets: how Dad managed to come home at 5 p.m. to read the paper or watch TV while Mom fixed dinner and bathed the kids. How Mom turned up at school, every day, unrumpled, coiffed, unflappable. And more to the point: how they managed to afford the lives that they led, on one salary, without hocking their homes to pay for college, without worrying about being bankrupted by medical bills.

She’s not saying that no-one knows or knew anyone who was living in suburbia in the 1950s. By “men and women we never knew” she’s saying that these people are idealized myths, that – except for a very few – never existed and were never the norm.

How we make them pay now, when we breathe them back into life. Our cultural representations of them are punishing. We defile the putative purity of the housewives — those doe-eyed, frivolous, almost simple-minded depressives — by assigning them drunken, cheating, no-good mates. We discredit the memory of the organization men by filling them with self-loathing and despair. Each gender invites its downfall, and fully deserves the comeuppance that history, we know, will ultimately deal it.

That’s where the pleasure comes in. No matter how lost we are, no matter how confused, no matter how foolish we feel, we can judge ourselves the winners.

Why can’t people understand that she is unequivocally not saying that these are her opinions? She is drawing on the portrayals of female characters in all the books, movies and TV programs she is using as material for her Op Ed. Is there anyone here who actually likes the wife of the main character in Mad Men? This description could have her photograph next to it. Vacuous, cardboard cut-out (cookie cutter), spineless, weak, grasping, mindless. Were any women like this? Surely, just like today. Most? Surely not, just like today. Hence a ridiculous stereotype - like the men all out having affairs, heavy drinking and abusive.

I must admit she is hampered in the last sentence (and the article generally) by not having a good English word for vosotros (second person plural familiar "you"; you all, y’all, not necessarily including me) or nosotros. This closes what is actually quite a nice and very well written piece. She sets up the problem (why do we (nosotros) portray the 50s as horrific, particularly for women), shows some examples of how we do this (those doe-eyed, frivolous, almost simple-minded depressives) and tries to explain why we might wish to cultivate this image of an era (so that we can convince ourselves that our lives are much better now and we should just get on with it).

She is not a journalist, unfortunately. Were she one she would not have attempted to be so subtle, nuance and ironic. She would understand that a goodly number of readers just aren't prepared in terms of use of the language, to understand this technique. The only opinion she expressed in this piece was that the common perception of suburban life in the 50s is, in her opinion, false: It wasn't nearly as bad for most housewives as is generally accepted form the silly shows and movies she uses. Not a thing that people here have found offensive was the opinion of the author.

Say, weren't we discussing why newspapers aren't selling?

If the disturbing reading ability displayed by the respondents to this thread are anything to go by, I don't wonder that people don't buy papers. They would be in a constant tizzy about their own misreadings.

bk

 

[LizzieMaine]

She sets up the problem (why do we (nosotros) portray the 50s as horrific, particularly for women), shows some examples of how we do this (those doe-eyed, frivolous, almost simple-minded depressives) and tries to explain why we might wish to cultivate this image of an era (so that we can convince ourselves that our lives are much better now and we should just get on with it).

Which is pretty much what I said in my first response. And me with just a high school education.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I had intended to reference your response as the one that got it. Sorry for my oversight, Lizzie.

bk

 

[PrettySquareGal]

Prefaced with: I actually don't like being patronising, but it seems to be necessary here. The lack of basic critical reading abilities displayed here is frankly an indictment of the US educational system (honestly, is it so difficult to refer back to a previous paragraph to understand the statements made in the following paragraph? Apparently it is). There is one poster here that i'm particularly disturbed to see they didn't get it.

bk

Who is that?

 

[PrettySquareGal]

She’s not saying that no-one knows or knew anyone who was living in suburbia in the 1950s. By “men and women we never knew” she’s saying that these people are idealized myths, that – except for a very few – never existed and were never the norm.bk

No, she did not say that. You read that into it. She said:

"How we seem to love and hate those men and women we never knew. What we would give to know their secrets: how Dad managed to come home at 5 p.m. to read the paper or watch TV while Mom fixed dinner and bathed the kids. How Mom turned up at school, every day, unrumpled, coiffed, unflappable. And more to the point: how they managed to afford the lives that they led, on one salary, without hocking their homes to pay for college, without worrying about being bankrupted by medical bills."

Baron, those people did and still do exist. It's not an impossible way to be, nor is it impossible that people were living like that.

Why can’t people understand that she is unequivocally not saying that these are her opinions? She is drawing on the portrayals of female characters in all the books, movies and TV programs she is using as material for her Op Ed.

I got that, and that is part of my problem with this piece. It's the same old tired cliche bashing of a time and way of life didn't exist, simply because she is critiquing her limited exposure to pop culture fictions instead of addressing realities.

The only opinion she expressed in this piece was that the common perception of suburban life in the 50s is, in her opinion, false: It wasn't nearly as bad for most housewives as is generally accepted form the silly shows and movies she uses. Not a thing that people here have found offensive was the opinion of the author.

And that's where I differ again. I don't see the portrayal of the 50's June Cleavers as misogynistic and stifling. I know I'm *supposed* to if I am to be perceived as a liberated and educated east coast elitist, but I don't.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I have to agree with the Baron: only Lizzie's response struck me as on the mark.

The reason I've stayed out of this thread until now is that I really liked Warner's article (actually, I generally like them), and I didn't want to fight the crowd. Everyone seemed to be reacting completely over the top, and missing her essential point, which is about how later generations are interpreting, and re-interpeting, the fifties through their own filters and experience.

For the record, I was born in 1955, so I recall some things from the earliest 60s. And my experience wasn't Revoltionary Road or Mad Men (though I did know some NYC ad execs who fit the profile). My parents ran a struggling commercial photography business as partners while raising two little kids, and there was no suburban ennui on display in our house. (And the only reason we could afford a house at that time was because of a big insurance windfall after being burned out of our apartment in a classic old-wiring-Christmas-light-begun fire on Xmas Day 1959.)

My mom had been a sergeant in the Marines in WWII, and she was definitely NOT from the Donna Reed school of housewifery. And my dad didn't lord it over her or act like a Mad Men prince of the city: they were equal partners in everything. In fact, his authority was unquestioned only on photographic issues - she was actually the top dog in most important decisions. Oh, and there was no boozing or adultery, either: these we hardworking children of the Depression and WWII.

My point is: all those common stereotypes about the late 50s/early 60s aren't the full story. But watching how they persist, and are continually interpreted, is pretty darn interesting...

 

[Paisley]

Maybe part of the problem is that people didn't expect to see an article like this in a newspaper. Or, indeed, it could be that some people read it too quickly.

I found the article murky, but I agree that the author was talking about an ideal, which exists only in the mind. Possibly, that's the reason we can't know the 50s people she is speaking of.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I really like the views that differ than mine- it's why I posted this on a forum and asked for people to chime in. I don't like the sanctimonious comments and could do without them. They do more to discredit your argument, at least in my eyes, Baron, than to promote your views to a higher plane.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

Direct quotes I want to address:

"Why is there such a desire, even a hunger, to recreate images from such an unhappy past?"

She doesn't say a fictionalized unhappy past- she presents it as fact.

"We keep alive a secret dream of “a model of routine and order and organization and competence,” a life “where women kept house, raised kids and kept their eyebrows looking really good,” as the writer Lonnae O’Neal Parker once described it in The Washington Post Magazine. But that order and routine and competence in our frenetic world proves forever elusive, a cruel ideal we can never reach."

I disagree with her presentation of what is fact.

 

[Foofoogal]

Once upon a time I was naive and thought everyone thought like me. Silly me.
Since there is nothing new under the sun I do think just like now everyone were not clones back then.

I got it. I just wasn't that into it. I to be honest couldn't even follow her writing. Too many twists and turns. I have been in lala land lately after a move, Christmas, life etc. I started to say I like hearing Lizzies perspective and I think I was thinking that when I mentioned clones above.
What do I know. I have been a housewife all my years mostly. [huh]


Thank you Baron. I will read more slowly next time.

 

[Foofoogal]

which is about how later generations are interpreting, and re-interpeting, the fifties through their own filters and experience.

Isn't this the jest of what I tried to say in my posting?

Maybe the net is dumbing me down. maybe I will read a good book today.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

My point is: all those common stereotypes about the late 50s/early 60s aren't the full story. But watching how they persist, and are continually interpreted, is pretty darn interesting...

RIGHT. The stereotypes are not the full story. But the act of oversimplifying and vilifying a perception of something which then becomes nothing like what it really was (and that is what the author is talking about, no? That Mad Men, for example, is not really the way life was [and I have it on DVD and agree with the author that there is a need to demonize the "good old days" to expose them as fraud]) does not take away from what really was. In other words, some really did and do live like a 50's housewife. It's not fake or impossible. That is what I've been disagreeing with.

And I acknowledge that I misread some of what she wrote but not because, as Baron would so like to believe, that I am an American dolt.

Anyway, who else has an opinion??

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I just read this Op-Ed in the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/opinion/30warner.html?_r=2

I am very irked by this commentary. The author uses the following to describe the fifties:

"sad and sordid sexual repression, the infantilization of women, the cookie-cutter conformity"

"an unhappy past. A past characterized by every possible form of bigotry?"

"a cruel ideal we can never reach."

"housewives — those doe-eyed, frivolous, almost simple-minded depressives"

She ends this piece of schlock with: "No matter how lost we are, no matter how confused, no matter how foolish we feel, we can judge ourselves the winners. "

Discuss......

Baron- I agree that here I incorrectly attributed these sentiments to the author and not books and shows on which she is commenting.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Direct quotes I want to address:

"Why is there such a desire, even a hunger, to recreate images from such an unhappy past?"

She doesn't say a fictionalized unhappy past- she presents it as fact.

"We keep alive a secret dream of “a model of routine and order and organization and competence,” a life “where women kept house, raised kids and kept their eyebrows looking really good,” as the writer Lonnae O’Neal Parker once described it in The Washington Post Magazine. But that order and routine and competence in our frenetic world proves forever elusive, a cruel ideal we can never reach."

I disagree with her presentation of what is fact.

I think maybe what O'Neal, the writer being quoted in the article, might have been suggesting is the way that life appeared to the kids of the time -- I haven't read the Post Magazine article cited, but that might seem to fit the context here. To a kid, all there is is surface -- and I think a lot of these modern takes on pre-sixties life are stuck in a kid's perspective. But for some people, that childhood perspective becomes a fixation, and they figure they can never live up to that ideal.

For example, the whole "how did they do it on one income, own a house, send kids to college, etc?" thing that keeps coming up. Well, if all one did was stick to the images of the 50s one picked as a kid from movies and TV, one might never have heard of the GI Bill, which basically created the modern middle class in the US -- most of those postwar homes were bought thru nothing-down VA loans, not savings out of a single income. And one might not realize that most Americans *didn't* send their kids to college in the '50s. And one might not realize that most Americans didn't live in suburbia and weren't upper middle class. In otherwords, one would only see a narrow, surface image without having any grasp of the cultural complexities that were left out of that image.

But being unable to live up to that image, they do the only thing they can to feel better about their own lives -- they go as far as possible to the opposite extreme and demonize it. If you suggest that all those suburban houses were filled with bigots, drunks, sexists, and Miltown-popping depressives such as you see on "Mad Men," our modern age looks so much better in comparison.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

But being unable to live up to that image, they do the only thing they can to feel better about their own lives -- they go as far as possible to the opposite extreme and demonize it. If you suggest that all those suburban houses were filled with bigots, drunks, sexists, and Miltown-popping depressives such as you see on "Mad Men," our modern age looks so much better in comparison.

I get that, I do, but that method of putting others down to feel better is a perfect example of the ills of today as others have mentioned. Instead of asking "what can we learn from the past to make today better" the method of the Mad Men writers et al is to demonize that which some perceive as desirable but unattainable. I wish the author would have addressed and focused on that instead.

I understand that the author does not own all of the negative stereotypes of the past, and that she is analyzing why they exist. I disagree that a manufactured stereotype necessarily fictionalizes the model on which it is based, and she seems to be of that belief. That is what angers me. But I acknowledge maybe I am misreading it.

(Lizzie, I always enjoy your comments and thoughts, and the diplomatic way you present them!)

 

[LizzieMaine]

I get that, I do, but that method of putting others down to feel better is a perfect example of the ills of today as others have mentioned. Instead of asking "what can we learn from the past to make today better" the method of the Mad Men writers et al is to demonize that which some perceive as desirable but unattainable. I wish the author would have addressed and focused on that instead.

I understand that the author does not own all of the negative stereotypes of the past, and that she is analyzing why they exist. I disagree that a manufactured stereotype necessarily fictionalizes the model on which it is based, and she seems to be of that belief. That is what angers me. But I acknowledge maybe I am misreading it.

(Lizzie, I always enjoy your comments and thoughts, and the diplomatic way you present them!)

I think the problem is that we live in a culture that's become so used to polarization, that it's completely unable to acknowledge shades of grey. There is the one side of an argument, and the opposite side, and there is absolutely no shading in between -- either the fifties were a sunny suburban paradise, or they were a booze-soaked oppressive, conformist hell. Either everybody was happy, or everybody was miserable. There's no room for the middle, and as in any argument, it's the middle where the truth lies.