In an old episode of Mad Men (from its first season) Don Draper meets his younger brother. He hasn’t seen him in maybe 15 years, and has meanwhile started a new life under an assumed identity. One brother comes across as sincere and emotional, the other emits zero emotion and speaks with utter indifference. Guess who is the successful marketing executive and who is the janitor who lives in a cheap rental room. That emotional suppression comes very handy in the incessant verbal ping-pong the ad men practice exchanging wisecracks on all sorts of issues. Repressed emotions also help them maintain a credible façade as they cheat on their frustrated wives. Oh, the price of civilization…
P.S. A few episodes later, I am left with one lingering sensation – the emotional distance between the characters is just staggering. One of the young writers complains that his newly acquired wife is just another stranger - as they all are to one another. To be unable to reach out emotionally to another human being – this must be a truly unusual and severe punishment. This emotional deficit creates ubiquitous and incessant jostling for power and status, and thus a very treacherous and hostile social (and office) milieu - assumed by game theory to be most natural and ubiquitous. Of course, Tocqueville foresaw it all when he wrote: “not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.” On the other hand, there seems to be a mismatch between the spirit of the costume drama and the Zeitgeist of the time as reflected in the style of the objects and ads from 1960. Who knows what those people truly thought and felt...
