Our 'Mad Men' Times

NY Times arts reporter Dave Itzoff interviewed "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner about the end of Season 4. The entire piece is worth a read. This portion jumped out at me:

Itzoff: Are you able to enjoy the culture of 2010, or are you always on the lookout for stories for your show?

Weiner: "No, no, no. First of all, half the stuff I tell you comes from right now. And one of the great things about the show is that people share their stories with me, and “I just say, That’s mine.” [laughs] My job as an artist is to channel the feelings I have about society right now, these are the things I’m feeling about our isolation, about our ambiguous relationship with materialism, about failure, about our declining self-esteem. About our attitude towards change and technology. These are things I’m feeling every day, that I put into the show."

"The other aspects of things that are going on in entertainment right now are frustrating to me. I’ve been very disappointed with whatever has happened to the business model that has made the movies so incredibly unattractive to me. I’m so starved ... But it’s been a bummer. It’s a bummer to see movie after movie where so many talented people get together and so much money is spent, and they’re just bland, lifeless, familiar, fake. I’m not a superhero, it’s not one of my interests. It’s O.K. for it to be a fraction of the entertainment that’s out there, but it can’t be everything. And I have four little boys so I’m seeing everything. And they’re tired of going to the movies."

Itzoff: That’s a sad commentary.

Sad, indeed. So it's just not me. Moreover, Weiner's observation about our societal decline in self-esteem is intriguing. If true, then it helps to explain the wave of irrationality pervading our body politic today. The sense of fear brought on by economic adversity and cultural change (which Obama embodies) and the alienation from authority figures (including even the good incumbent politicians) are not unlike the low-esteem issues suffered by a patient. Anyway, it's at least worth pondering in our Mad Men times.