Acephalous

Mad Men: Is the awesomeness of white men really "For Immediate Release"?

The majority of people watch Mad Men wrong. What do I mean? A translation of last night’s episode, “For Immediate Release,” from their perspective should suffice:

With the exception of Matt Zoller Seitz and a few others, the majority of responses to this episode have focused on how “satisfying” it was to see Don Draper behaving like Draper again. Meaning the majority of the people writing those responses are still watching the show primarily to experience the thrill of being a powerful white man. The episode, directed by the always excellent Jennifer Getzinger, undermines this reading at nearly every turn. Consider when Sterling announces that he’s landed SCDP a chance at Chevy after Don brushed off Jaguar:

Pete Campbell upbraids Draper, saying “Don’t act like you had a plan, you’re Tarzan, swinging from vine to vine,” creating an image that would seem to correspond with the “appealing” white male narrative above. Draper isn’t just any powerful white man — he’s the walking-talking embodiment of early 20th Century theories of white male supremacy. Like Tarzan, he’s an orphan who cultivates the talents required to survive in a hostile and alien society; and like Tarzan, when he finds himself among “normal” people again, these talents appear superhuman to them. To become king of the apes he had to become more than just a man. In this particular context, Campbell’s insult almost reads like a compliment; however, this isn’t the first time this season we’ve encountered an ostensibly superior white man in a society of apes:

For the second time in two weeks, the show demands we consider the hubris of a white man in the society “unworthy” of his talents. The reference to Tarzan in “For Immediate Release” only seems ambiguous if we conveniently forget that Draper’s mildly obsessed with a film whose premise is that no man — not even a white one on a world mad with apes — is beyond reproach. Campbell’s insult holds these two visions of white male supremacy in tension: Draper can only continue to feel superior if he deliberately forgets what he learned watching Planet of the Apes.

Those critics who found this episode a “return to form” fail to realize that they’re taking comfort in a momentary resurgence of white male privilege — a momentary return to that Golden Age “when things just made sense” that conservatives reference every time a woman, person of color, or anyone under the age of forty-five decides to have an opinion. Wasn’t it grand when self-made men like Draper could impose their will on the world?

The problem with finding “satisfaction” in this episode, then, is that it requires us to ignore the same things Draper does. Note how the medium shot of Campbell upbraiding him is composed: Draper, representing the old guard, is in the foreground, but he’s a face without a brain and out of focus;  Campbell, Ken Cosgrove and Joan Harris, representing the generation after Draper’s, occupy the midground; and in the background is an unfocused Michael Ginsberg and sundry, representatives of the new generation. Although no one actually occupies the center of the frame, the dominant element seems to be the irate Campbell, as he’s on the receiving end of Draper and Cosgrove’s stares. But then there’s Joan Harris — the color of whose dress seems out of place and whose eyes meet no one and nothing — there’s Joan Harris on whose back alone the company survived. What does she have to say about Draper’s “return to form”?

Exactly. She doesn’t belong in the story white men tell themselves about how awesome they are — but she does belong to the one currently being told by Mad Men. If only more of the people watching it realized that.

Mad Men: "Collaborators" in the Secret, Sacred Curb Dances of Suburban Love

(Of course this is yet another one of those visual rhetoric posts. Can you not see all the pictures?)

The title of the episode, "The Collaborators," is so obviously meant to be evocative that it almost sinks beneath its own freight. The episode's foremost "collaboration" occurs between Don Draper and his upstairs neighbor, Sylvia Rosen, who are acting out the transparent stratagems of Updike's titular Couples (1968). Though Updike's novel covers the time addressed in earlier seasons, its particular combination of adultry and war is relevant here:

This pattern, of quarrel and reunion, of revulsion and surrender, was repeated three or four times that winter, while airplanes collided over Turkey, and coups transpired in Iraq and Togo[.] (161)

Simply put, there's something about having sex while the radio describes some new front in the Tet Offensive makes The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit feel more like The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. (And we well know how accurate that novel is.) Consider the first time Don and Sylvia play "collaborators." The scene begins with a point-of-view shot from Don's perspective as the elevator door opens on Sylvia and her husband, Dr. Arnold Rosen, arguing over money:

It's significant that even though she's shot in profile here, Don's able to see her entire face. He can see more of her than she can of him; he exists only in her peripheral vision, if at all, whereas he can observe her from two angles. He's not spying on her, but he is paying attention to their private matter. When Dr. Rosen enters the elevator, she throws Don the most meaningful glance she can in the half-second that she has:

The director of this episode, some clown by the name of Jon Hamm, uses this medium close-up to great effect. Remember that close-ups are meant to suggest intimacy, whereas medium shots are designed to give some sense of body language. In terms of scale, this medium close-up provides intimate access to her face as she shoots Don a plea, while simultaneously allowing enough frame to depict the familiarity of Dr. Rosen's body language. He's distant from her (emotionally) but doesn't know it (physically); she's distant from Don (physically) but acutely feels it (emotionally); and Don's somewhere back there on the elevator, but the camera's not aligned with his perspective anymore so his feelings are absent from this shot. (If it were his perspective, the eyeline match wouldn't be slightly frame-left.)

But not from the scene. This is the first example of the "collaboration" between the two, so it should come as no surprise that after Dr. Rosen enters the elevator, Don remembers he's forgotten his cigarette:

The medium shot is perfunctory, because its main purpose is to capture Don's exaggerated gesture. The fact that the gesture's exaggerated is important, or would be if Dr. Rosen were paying attention. (Which he seems not to be.) But Don puts on a show just in case and zips back up the elevator:

To Dr. Rosen's apartment, where Sylvia awaits. Whether she knew he was also playing this game at this point is unclear. That she wanted it to be one of the days he did goes without saying, but her attractiveness here isn't a function of being "made up" so much as being natural. Which reminds Don of something:

If you click you can see the subtle hint of a thinking zoom that makes the reverse from the shot above more significant. Instead of reversing back to the door as Don enters it, the audience is presented with another point-of-view shot from Don's perspective:

Instead of entering Sylvia Rosen's apartment to continue playing "collaborations," the camera reverses into Don's memory. Note how the same subtle zoom works in two different ways here: the first begins with a close-up and moves into a closer-up, and because the perspective belongs to the audience, it believes that it is "getting inside Don's head." And it is, as evidenced by the second zoom, which moves from a medium into a closer medium and is clearly from a perspective within the diegetic space:

Young Don's. The subtle zoom here is a young boy staring at a prostitute into whose house his pregnant stepmother has brought him. There is a lot to untangle here, but the main point is the very subtle way in which the memory of young Don's time in the bordello is coloring what's about to happen between elder Don and Sylvia Rosen. Because remember what Sylvia and her husband were arguing about earlier? In case you forgot, here's how her encounter with elder Don ends:

They're not playing "collaborators" anymore: the movement between his memory and the present moment makes it clear that, in Don's mind, they're playing "prostitute." And they're doing so while being informed of yet another U.S. setback in Vietnam because of the Tet Offensive, which itself followed on the heels of the Koreans taking the USS Pueblo. Death and violence are not visible on screen, but their presence is pervasive. As, for example, is the case with Peter and his game of "collaboration," which begins innocently enough:

Combined, these two images strongly suggest that wives are about to swapped, but 1968 is not yet the 1970s in suburbia, so this should be nothing more than a dinner party. Which it seems to be until one of the wives stops by Pete Campbell's apartment in the city:

Yet again, the woman is playing "collaborator," and clearly enjoying her role in what she believes to be their affair. However, after sex, she tries to talk to Pete about the covert eperations they will undertake: cars parked near rather than next to mailboxes or on the street rather than in the driveway—the secret, sacred curb dances of suburban love. The reclining long shot of her as she snaps on her special lingerie seems to indicate attraction, as this is a clearly attractive, nearly naked woman offering to play her part:

Pete looks at her and wishes she were a prostitute. So he just starts playing "prostitute" anyway. He walks up to her and invades her space, but instead of an intimate close-up of the sort that would be appropriate, given they've just been intimate, Pete looks at her, gently touches her hair and says

That we can't see his face as he delivers this blow isn't a surprise. After all, only one person can play "prostitute" at a time. Sylvia and this woman are both forced into the role of playing prostitute by someone they considered their collaborator, but while the outcome of Don's mid-course game-change is merely violence on the radio, the off-screen violence this woman suffers is more personal:

In terms of scale and angle, this shot nearly mirrors the one above it, in that both register the prolongation of a moment of pain in a medium close-up. The first pain, in the panel above this one, is psychological, in that she's merely be made to feel like a whore; the second pain is also psychological, in that she has lost both her first collaborator, her husband, and must run to her second lost collaborator, Pete. But the second pain is also physical, because her first collaborator beat the shit out of her. But he did so off-screen, leaving Pete and Trudie to deal with the repercussions of violence.

And this is the key to the episode: the deaths and violence that happen off-screen are beginning to intrude into the lives of these characters. Such things have happened before on Mad Men, but they seem to be coming at an accelerated pace. Why? Because the game is changing, as are the players, but the game's not merely evolving from one into another, as it seemed previously; now the rules of the game are being changed such that it's the bottom of the third inning, the batter asks the umpire if he can take two free throws instead trying to hit that wicked curve again and is being given the go-ahead.

SEK and Attewell, LG&M podcast-style, on Game of Thrones: "Dark Wings, Dark Words" (S03E02)

Or, another installment of "SEK yet again looks at everything that isn't his webcam, while Race for the Iron Throne's Attewell just looks composed, only this time SEK also looks like a Soderberghian Smurf." (He's not doing himself any favors here.) This podcast discusses, among other things, gender and violence, sex and manipulation, time travel, Batman, and Attewell's amazing ability to corral SEK's dithering into almost topical blather. (Also, the punchline to that pointless joke SEK made can be found here. It may make its way into an argument eventually, but that day is not today.) Enjoy!

Download Kaufman and Attewell discussing "Dark Wings, Dark Words" here.

Our discussion of the premiere (S03E01) and a link to download it can be found here.

All LG&M podcasts can be found and subscribed to here.

Mad Men: One foot in "The Doorway"

(Yes, yes, this is yet another one of those visual rhetoric posts.)

Midway through Don Draper's life journey, he strayed from the path and found himself in a dark wood:

I know that doesn't look much like a dark wood—and the idea that Draper somehow just started his midlife crisis is rather far-fetched—but this is what writer Matthew Weiner and director Scott Hornbacher wanted the audience to be looking at while Draper read the opening lines of the infamous beach book that is Dante's Inferno. Of note is the fact that Don is just beginning the book, and the only evidence that he's finished it is that, when asked by its owner, he replies "It made me think of you." Which means that in all likelihood he didn't read it, and so what follows has less to do with Dante's actual poem and more with what it stands for in this scene, i.e. an epic midlife crisis written in terza rima that no man in recorded history has ever read on a beach. The juxtaposition of Dante's meditative lines and Megan's taut stomach signals the insincerity of Draper's reading. The last time the audience directly occupied Don's head, after all, is when he composed his anti-tobacco letter, an effective but utterly insincere and ultimately petulant rebuke to a suitor who'd already rejected him. But he's trying, for whatever reason and however insincerely, to come to terms with the state of his soul.

While on an all-expense paid trip to Hawaii. How well is it going for him? He attends the Sheraton's approximation of a luau:

And seems unsatisfied with it:

Catching him in a medium close-up with a fuzzy couple in the foreground and fuzzier G.I. in the background is significant because the camera is calling attention to Don in a crowd—a crowd comprised of happy people busy enjoying this simulation of a traditional Hawaiian festival in a way that he can't. It's not because he's unmoored from culture or that he doesn't want to enjoy the proceedings; he feels the absence of something acute here, which ironically enough presents itself, visually, as being the only sole subject in focus. His pain is more real than the joy of the fuzzy faceless crowd to which he belongs—but thinks himself better than. Love, after all, is a feeling invented by guys like him to sell nylons. The folks at this luau are just stupid enough to feel it. So what does someone who can't muster fake emotions at a simulated celebration of nothing in particular do?

He drinks. But he doesn't just drink anywhere, no, he drinks immediately before a painting of what is, presumably, an actual version of same ceremony he just witnessed. It's still mediated, only this time by art instead of commerce; and it's still unsatisfying, because he's not even looking at it. It clearly exists, dominating the central area of the frame as it does, but it almost seems to be shaming him, almost as if he can't make eye-contact with it without being reminded of his inability to feel the emotions he evokes in others via mediations like this one. Don seems to have lost the ability to feel anything other than drunk, and with this anhedonia comes an inability to even appreciate artifice for its own sake, a skill that's not merely critical to his profession, but the one that sets him apart from others in it. (But more on that later.)

As those of you who've been reading these for a while no doubt already noticed, this shot is extremely unbalanced. Don occupies frame-left in a way that begs for something to occupy frame-right to balance it out, and who better to occupy it than a fellow military man? They bond over military issue lighters and the groom-to-be joins Don for a drink, thereby balancing out the shot in a way that suggests that Don's balancing himself out:

Only no. Even when the groom-to-be joins him, his blacked-out best man tilts the frame in the other direction, with a compositional element on the right that vainly demands a similar one on the left. The reasons for this are complicated: like Don, Private First Class Dinkins has tangled up war and marriage in an unconventional way. P.F.C. Dinkins wants to ensure that his wife acquires American citizenship before he returns to Vietnam and (possibly) meets a terrible end; in short, he's  using his war as an excuse to legitimize her identity, as opposed to Don, who used his war to acquire an illegitimate identity. Who is Dick Whitman to commune with such a soldier, much less the woman marrying him to acquire, through legal means, an identity?

He's the man to give her away, that's who he is. I'm not even going to try to unravel the ironies evident in this shot here. I'm not going to point out that he abandoned his wife all night to give another woman away in marriage; or that Dick Whitman is helping a Mexican immigrant acquire an identity he doesn't have; or that the painting Draper and Dinkins decided to do this before is of a wedding ceremony that failed to move Draper in the least; or any of the other ironies compounded in this simple long shot of some people getting married on the beach. Instead, I'm going to point out that Don is no more moved here than he will be later, when he sees this image again through one of Megan's photographs:

Don's inability to be moved by this image of himself being unmoved during a ceremony that replicates, in life, the subject of a painting that also failed to move him is even more significant because of how it's being displayed:

That's a Kodak Carousel, which as you remember from "The Wheel," is a machine that produces nostalgia, that "twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone." Except here, Don feels no twinge. Despite his old wounds, some of the most significant of which come from this exact same sort of intermingling of love and war and identity, Don feels no pain. His moving and dramatic speech in "The Wheel" betrays him, as this episode isn't about Dantean self-reflection so much as fleeing. What is Don fleeing?

Nothing.

The nothing that he can't seem to escape but which has incapacitated him. When he pitches to Sheraton near the end of the episode, he's a hollow shell of the man who sold Kodak on selling not just memories, but the emotions they necessarily evoke; because whatever necessity tied him to his emotions has been severed by something. What?

Nothing, as in, the Big Nothing.

Don's struggle to understand Lane's suicide, which initially manifested itself as guilt-by-hallucination, has been replaced with nothing. Neither life nor its many imitations, be they painted or projected, can move him, because he's nothing so much as a member of the title of the show whose time-slot Mad Men took: The Walking Dead. In the Sheraton pitch, he desperately tries to make art imitate life in a meaningful fashion. Here's his bedroom floor the night before:

Here's his pitch:

As the Sheraton executives bluntly inform Don, this guy? The one who made the footprints? He's dead. From their perspective—and this is, literally, from their perspective—this man who walked into the ocean believes he has nothing to live for. Don's examination of this board after they leave is heartbreaking in its cluelessness:

He simply doesn't see it. He feels it—or more accurately, he doesn't—but he doesn't know what it isn't is. He doesn't know what's missing. The medium close-up here emphasizes that instead of the emotional response he had to his Kodak pitch, Don's intellectualizing everything. He's thinking instead of feeling, and the result is unambiguously inappropriate art accompanying suicidal copy. When he tells Dr. Rosen earlier in the episode that he doesn't want to compare what he does, advertising, to what Dr. Rosen does, doctoring, it's partly because you have to want to live to care enough to save someone else's life.

Don clearly doesn't.

About which more tomorrow.

All images in this post are used for educational purposes and are the exclusive property of Lionsgate Entertainment and AMC Network Entertainment.

Mad Men: Now, where were we exactly?

To celebrate what’s going to be a very Mad Men week at Lawyers, Guns & Money—at least two posts by me and a podcast starring an illustrious cast of thousands—I thought it’d be good to remind everyone where we left off. (And by “everyone” I probably mean “me,” as I need to pick up threads I’ve forgotten about in the intervening months.) So here’s where we left off (plus a little coda) according to Yours Truly:

Mad Men: "It's not your tooth that's rotten," it's "The Phantom."

(Clearly another installment in this never-ending series.)

My previous post, on "The Wheel," discussed in great detail the relationship of Don Draper to his past via the fading photographs of him and Betty and the children. "Nostalgia," Draper says,"literally means pain from an old wound." The "twinge" Don describes to the Kodak Eastman people is tinged with sadness—the life projected on the wall is one his actions have destroyed—but it is also a pain that's tempered by the knowledge that it can be compartmentalized. The Kodak Carousel is more than a projector: the titular wheel effectively functions as a container for captured moments that can be opened and reexperienced at a whim or it can be a simple storage device for memories a person wants to know are safely preserved. This second person doesn't necessarily want to reexperience their lives one twinge at a time, but the thought of being unable to do so could cause a pain unmitigated by memory. This would be a powerful pain, a constant reminder of itself by virtue of its absence. In "The Wheel," Don feels remorse for transforming the family projected on the wall into something that evokes no more than the twinge of memory. He claims that twinge is "more powerful than memory alone," but clearly it isn't.

In the fifth season finale, "The Phantom," directed, like "The Wheel," by Matt Weiner, the problem with Don's definition of nostalgia is immediately challenged by, of all things, a toothache:

But his toothache isn't an ordinary toothache. As his dentist informs him later in the episode, his tooth had formed an abscess, which means that its core has become rotten and the tooth must be pulled. It's an absence that can only be treated by the creation of a larger controllable absence. Early in "The Phantom," the abscess functions as a physical manifestation of the guilt Don feels about his complicity in the suicide of Lane Pryce in "Commission and Fees." Weiner signals as much in the form of the phantom that accompanies Don's pain:

The reverse from Don's swollen jaw and tired eyes to Adam's calm and open face connects the pain to its source: Lane's the second person who came to Don for help and, after being turned away, committed suicide. Don can feel a "twinge" of nostalgia for the family he fathered under his assumed identity, but his feelings for his younger brother, Adam Whitman, are complicated by the fact that he tried to store them in a wheel he knew he'd never attach to a Carousel. Adam had been stored and compartmentalized, incapable of causing a "twinge," at least unil Lane's suicide forces Don to remember his complicity in Adam's. In keeping with the carousel as a central image, Don's abscessed tooth is the equivalent of being forced to watch Adam meet his end a la

Once he questions his role in Lane's death, Don is incapable of thinking about his life in the neatly compartmentalized way to which he'd become accustomed. He can't drink away the pain of his abscessed tooth any more than he can stop seeing his brother's phantom. When does Adam phantom's disappear? When Don goes to the dentist, which he only does after realizing that he's dangerously close to losing someone else:

Megan petitions her miserable husband to score her an audition on one of his commercials, but he refuses, telling her that it's "better to be somebody's discovery than somebody's wife." He later returns home to find her sprawled on the couch, too drunk to stand:

For the first time, he realizes that she's veering dangerously close to being "somebody's discovery," only that person would be more like Pete Campbell:

And it wouldn't be Megan he'd discovered, only her body.  Don recognizes in Megan what he missed in the days before Adam and Lane killed themselves: the spoken desire to find and maintain a place in the world. He'd denied that to Adam and undermined Lane of his, but now he is confronted by his wife, who insists that if he doesn't help her, she's only valuable for one thing:

And that would be sex. "Isn't that what you want?" she asks him, and the look on his face is one of intense grief intermingling with physical pain:

Here the physical pain of the tooth and the psychological pain of the guilt collapse into a single close-up on the face of a man who has finally decided what he wants. He wants to go to the dentist:

But not just any dentist—his abscess can only be treated by the phantom of his suicided brother, and unlike earlier in the episode, when Adam stood calm and composed on the elevator, this Adam clearly bears the scars of his untimely end. Don's not just remembering here, he's facing the very memory he's denied himself access to for nearly five years. The payoff is still a hole where a tooth should have been, only instead of it being a festering sore it's just a hole. He can manage the hole, as he does by conceding to Megan's wishes in order to make sure he doesn't find himself with another.

There's clearly more to be discussed vis-a-vis holes and memories in this episode—Pete's paramour, Beth, will be using electroshock therapy to create a Pete-shaped hole in her memory—but for now all I'll say about that situation is that it seems at odds with an episode that deals with repression in such a psychoanalytic fashion. Lane's suicides heralds the return of the repressed, which takes the forms an Adam and an abscess, and Don deals with both of them in a manner that speaks to increased psychological health. Beth, however, removes the need for any sort of reintegration by obliterating the organ that records and reshapes memories. She is, by the episode's end, less of herself than she was at its opening. I'm not sure what to make of that, but I'll put it out there and see whether you can't do something with it.

Mad Men: Nostalgia, forestalled, and "The Wheel"

(Being the first of many of these I'll be producing this summer.)

With summer here and only some online teaching duties to attend to—meaning that I can put the 2½ hours I don't have to commute to and from campus to better use—I've decided to address short scenes from something compelling on a daily basis. This is the first such post, and as the title suggests, I'm not exactly working out of my comfort zone yet. (That will change.)

Before I can discuss Mad Men's fifth season finale, "The Phantom," in any detail, I need to look back to its first season finale, "The Wheel," because it contains a scene that subtends the most pivotal moment in "The Phantom." If you recall, in the first season Don's position in the firm is that of a star employee: trusted, but always expected to perform; necessary, but not irreplaceable. Or it was, before he reimagined Kodak's "Projector of Poorly Framed Unprofessional Photographs" into a "Carousel" that transformed photographic imperfection into a dead letter office overstuffed with reclaimable memories. Only Matt Weiner, pulling double-duty as both writer and director here, doesn't seem to believe the power of Don's pitch, despite its seemingly self-evident efficacy. (That link will take you to the entire scene, in case you want to compare my reading of its constituent parts to the amalgamated whole.) On what am I basing my claim that Weiner's trying to undermine Draper's ostensibly successful pitch? 

Glad you asked. Let's start with the context. In "The Wheel," Betty's discovered incontrovertible proof of one of Don's many infidelities, and Don's decided not to spend Thanksgiving with the in-laws because he recognizes, rightfully, that his family is falling apart. His situation makes the substance of his appeal to Eastman Kodak all the more difficult to deliver, because it consists of images of his formerly happy family interacting in a manner they never will again. In short: Draper pushes the "nostalgia" angle because, at this point, his family consists of the memories he has of what they'll never be again. He's lost the right to say that's "his" wife or "his" children being projected on the wall, but he has to sell the fact that, by virtue of Eastman Kodak's marvelous new technology, they can always be "his" again, on celluloid if not in life. To wit:

Weiner begins with a long shot, center on Don, with his colleagues flanked to his right and his customers to his left. ("Duck," the firm's intermediary with the clients, is positioned appropriately enough between the Eastman Kodak cartel and Don.) It's a well-balanced shot, with the windows frame-left balanced by the painting frame-right, not to mention the diegetic lights emenating both from behind and above Don that signal (in case you somehow missed it) that he'll be the focal point of this scene. All of which is only to say that this scenes screams of hierarchy—of a controlled environment in which professionals will do what professionals will do. Of course, in this case, what professionals do is manipulate impressionable clients by appealing to the inherent sentimentality of the American people, which is why Don opens with technology, but moves on to:

That "rare occasion," that moment that must be captured. Note that although the shot's scale remains the same, Draper's now directly addressing the Eastman Kodak people. He wants them to know that this stylish man in this stylish office—who is back-lit, shot center-frame, and equipoised by the set's compositional elements—that this stylish man in this stylish office wants to help them with their "rare occasions."

Which are, as the meanings in this meeting begin to pile up, both commercial and personal. The pun on "flash" signals the game Draper's playing: he wants them to associate the fleetingness of a camera's flash with the technological fancies of the modern consumer, who may buy an Eastman Kodak Carousel on a whim, but who need to connect with it on a level more personal than commercial. Because the "flash," after all, lasts but an imperceptible instant; but the photographs it produces, and the carousel that houses them, can make the impermanent permanent. (Only without killing it like lepidopterologist.) His appeal, to this point, is that there are "rare occasions" that "can be engaged on the level beyond flash," or put differently, consumers can acquire

"[a] sentimental bond with the product," because the product is merely a vehicle designed to capture and preserve the "flash" of "rare occasions." (And which, I should add, isn't unlike the one Weiner encourages the audience to form with Don by switching to the medium shot.)  Now, I'm fully aware that I'm twisting Draper's words around here, but that's the point: his words aren't solely designed to communicate in this scene, because even a kid in a cardboard box could communicate these words to this audience and be understood. Draper's pitch is deliberately evocative—his words are meant to resonate with his audience, emotionally, such that even when the Eastman Kodak people replay them in their minds, their memory of the substance of the pitch will be shot through with the effect of Don's emotional appeal.

The irony, of course, is that the emotions Don infuses his pitch with are fabricated for effect:

Weiner reverses to a medium close-up so the audience can see the effect Don's appeals are having, but he also keeps Don in frame, just to be sure that no one forgets who's conducting the orchestra. If he left Don out of this shot, the framing would've been cleaner, but the scene would've lost its gravity—by which I mean that in this scene, the camera orbits Don, almost as if the power of his rhetoric has a gravitational effect:

As I was saying, the camera turns back to Don, repositioning itself in a location that emphasizes his domination of this scene. When Weiner jump-cuts to a medium on Don, his physical presence, in conjunction with the diegetic lighting behind him, draws the audience's attention to frame-right. At the same time, however, the radiant light from the curtains and the red popping off Sal's sweater pulls the audience's eyes frame-left:

What's the result? An empty center. I know there's a woman back there, but actual women aren't really significant at this moment, which is all about the significance of remembered women. The basic logic, which I'm by no means endorsing, works like this: women are an itch, pleasant until they require scratching, and they will require scratching. But even after the cause of the itch, women, vanishes via divorce or other unpleasantness, the itch itself remains, which is why men need calamine lotion for their souls. It relieves the itch without requiring the return of its source, which would be women. Such is nostalgia in this slightly off-putting analogy. Point being: for the moment the camera's calling attention to Sal on the left and Don on the right and the fact that there's something missing in the middle which neither man seems to notice (or is deliberately ignoring).

"[D]eeper bond," as with "rare occasion" and "flash" before it, works on the level of language; and the medium shot of the Eastman Kodak people is identical in framing and scale to the one above, so there's no need to go into detail. Especially when it's followed by this:

The Giant Head of Don Draper, shot in close-up so as to call attention to its frontality, declares that, like calamine lotion, nostalgia is "delicate but potent." How potent is it? Weiner answers that question two ways. First, on the narrative level, it seems that nostalgia's capable of making a philandering man long for the days when he stared at his wife as if she were a stranger—which she is at this point, for the most part, and there's the rub. Don's in a redoubled-blind here: he loathes Betty, but must pretend to love her for the Eastman Kodak people; but as he's pretending to love her, he genuinely feels the nostalgia he thinks the Carousel will mass-produce; but because he's in the middle of a pitch, he has to hide the fact that his appeals to nostalgia are working on him as powerfully as they are on everyone else, which leads to this:

Note the difference between the close-up on Draper's face and the random angles and framings in the images projected on the wall. Those images, drawn from his life, contain the messiness of life—the moments when unplanned happiness is possible, when the emotional memories Don hopes to sell to ordinary Americans occur in unbridled and unpredictable forms. Because that's what Don's selling here: the mass-production of a "twinge in your heart [that's] far more powerful than memory alone."

And Don should know, because despite Weiner's aggressively static reverses to the close-up on Draper's face (which signal repression as stolidly as one can on film), it's clear that Don's trying, but failing, not to buy his own shtick here. The contrast between the tightly framed shots of Don's face and the loosely framed snapshots being projected on the wall are indicative of a man whose attempt to transform the mess of his life into something worth selling. The concentration implied by the repetitiveness of the reverses suggests that this transformation requires every advertising bone in his body, from the clenched toes of his flat feet to the practiced muscles lining his lying face:

From left to right, that's the first half of the sequence, and I think it's fairly obvious that Weiner wanted to contrast the mannered quality of Don's performance to the sloppy compositions that represent his life. That empty center in the shot about the calamine lotion? It represents, compositionally, the same disconnect seen in this sequence: there's no center for Draper to hold here because he's transforming his life into an advertising campaign. Once the pitch begins, he's not selling his life—he's selling an Eastman Kodak Carousel.

Which, given the quality of his relationship with Betty at this point, is an exchange he makes with few reservations. That those reservations appear, to whatever extent you think they do, as he views the product he's selling them through, is the fundamental irony of the scene. It's almost as if the sequence above captures a moment of letting go—the routinization of cherished memories from a once cherished life. 

The fact that he's slightly off-center in the close-ups above supports this reading: by virtue of its size, his face clearly dominates the frame; but compositionally, it's pegged far enough to the left to cause the audience to wonder what's going to occupy that empty space on the right. That nothing ever does is the point: Weiner's created in the audience a desire to see something balance the composition on those close-ups, but he confounds those expectations by leaving it unbalanced, which leaves the audience feeling like something's missing—something obvious, on the tip of its collective brain, something just about there, but not now, not ever, because whatever it was, it's been lost.

There's more to be said here about that contrast and the contradictions that arise from it, but for the moment I'll leave that up to you to discuss, should you so desire, in the comments. My main interest is how this scene corresponds with the similar one at the conculsion of "The Phantom." By which I mean: I don't think it's a coincidence that Weiner's directed two season finales that involve Don "interacting" with his wife via a projector. He's saying something about memory being mediated, inevitably if not by necessity, which on a series like Mad Men is a question of critical importance. (After all, if Don's relation to his life is mediated by a sheen of old stock projected on a wall, where does that leave the audience?)

Mad Men: Hands and hands and hands in "Commissions and Fees"

(The complete collection of my visual rhetoric posts can be found here.)

As with the previous Mad Men post, I'll begin here with the title ("Commissions and Fees") as it structures the underlying irony of the entire episode. As Lane Pryce explains to the partners early in the episode, the difference between commissions and fees boils down to be erratically paid fifteen percent based on a finished campaign (commissions) or regularly paid with the possibility of a one or two percent bump based on the success of the campaign (fee). The fee system fails to offer the potential rewards of the commission, but the steadiness of the payouts appeals to an orderly man like Pryce. That Campbell follows Pryce's explanation with the news that Dunlop contacted him and wants to work with Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce enhances the appeal of the fee system because it suggests the possibility of a synergistic structure: land the car company and the manufacturer of its tires follows. The neatness of this risk-averse business model entices Pryce because it provides for reliable growth in an industry predicated on the whims of a hypothetical entity Pryce is incapable of understanding: the American consumer. 

Put differently: a person who craves order in the world would prefer fees to commissions based on temperament alone; but a person who (1) works in an industry based on a muddy understanding of the psychological and sociological motivations of the American consumer and (2) relies on unpredictable flashes of insight from mercurial ciphers would consider fees to be a means of imposing order on the world. Which means that Pryce is as quick to encourage the adoption of a fee structure as Draper is to dismiss it. Director Christopher Manley captures their differences in a pair of medium shots designed to draw attention to their hands:

As Pryce explains the difference between fees and commissions his hands are turned inward in a gesture reminiscent of an artist molding a block of clay. He is a gentleman gathering the messiness of the world and bringing order to it. But when Manley reverses to Draper rejecting the fee structure:

The depth of feeling from which his dismissal originates is present both in the tone of his voice and his inversion of Pryce's gesture. Draper's hands tear apart and toss aside the orderly world Pryce just produced for the partners. These gestures represent in minature the manner in which the episode pits the risk-seeking, commission-loving Draper against the risk-averse, fee-loving Pryce. But there's another reason they're significant:

They're made with hands. Bear with me here:

Mad Men: Who owns "The Other Woman"?

Most of what I read about the latest Mad Men ("The Other Woman") focused on Joan's decision to accept Pete's indecent proposal—and rightly so—but the title of the episode basically demands the audience answer the question "Who's the woman, and who's the other one?" As far as I can tell, the consensus seems to be that it's Joan, who unlike Megan and Peggy lacks a defined role in Don's life, but that strikes me as only significant in this episode and inconsonant with developments in the series as whole. Moreover, the final minutes of the episode indicate that while Peggy's role in Don's life may have been circumscribed by their working relationship in recent episodes, it bears remembering that, before Megan, Peggy and Don regularly confided in each other about things like the ramifications of unplanned pregnancies. In short, I'd argue that over the course of five seasons, Peggy's been Don's perpetual "other woman," and I think the structure of the episode bears this out.

But first things first, let me remind you of a moment from the first episode of the first season. Don criticizes Peggy for allowing Pete to enter his office and steal research from his trash, to which Peggy responds thus:

Don removes her hand, criticizing her again for attempting to manipulate him with her feminine wiles, then he comforts her:

From the beginning, Don's seen in Peggy a potential unrelated to notion that woman are sexual objects designed for male consumption—and she's the only female he hasn't fathered that he seems to feel this way about. She's exceptional in that she'll always be "the other woman," the one he doesn't desire for reasons that can't be reduced to the fact that she's not conventionally attractive. Don's occasionally paternal, occasionally fraternal affection for Peggy seems grounded in the recognition that she, like him, doesn't belong in the social circles of the advertising world, as well as it's corollary: that she, like him, can produce better copy because they're of this world instead of in it.

The last five minutes of "The Other Woman" seem to bear this out. Keeping in mind that closing an episode is akin to owning it—the final moments will be the lasting impression left on the audience irrespective of the events they capstone—it stands to reason that for all the attention paid to the means by which Joan attained a partnership, "The Other Woman" belongs to Peggy. The celebration that accompanies landing the Jaguar account—which should, if Joan's actions are the centerpiece of the episode, be front and center—is pushed off-frame as Peggy confronts Don in the hall. Here's Don about to join in the festivities:

When he stops to talk to Peggy, director Phil Abraham cuts right in a manner that eliminates the celebration from the frame:

As the conversation continues, the sequence of shots and reverse-shots diminish the significance of the celebration which now only exists in the diegetic space as background noise. It acquires a status not unlike the act it celebrates: the partners know what Joan did and every time they look at her (or think of Jaguar) the knowledge that they prostituted her will reemerge like half-heard chatter at a party they barely recall attending—not unlike an off-frame celebration represented on-screen by noise leaking through glass walls.

But let me back up: Joan's sacrifice is rendered so insignificant that the celebration of its fruit doesn't merit screen time. Not only doesn't it merit screen time, but even when it should be visible it isn't:

When Abraham reverses back to Don, Peggy's head largely obstructs the audience's view of it. Even if it's partially visible on the right of the frame, it still plays second-fiddle to an unfocused shot of the back of Peggy's head. As the conversation continues, Abraham shifts from these medium shots of Don to medium close-ups of the both of them:

The sounds of celebration can still be heard, but they're distant and indistinct compared to this conversation. The framing alone suggests its thematic significance, but just in case the audience missed it, Abraham moves the conversation to Don's office:

Peggy follows him in and this reminds me of something from that first episode:

Different offices, but Peggy's posture, her position relative to Don and the impersonal scale of the long shot are strikingly similar. Moreover, as in "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," what begins as a cold sequence between professionals quickly evolves into a series of mutual recognitions. What they recognize has changed—what had been potential in the former has been realized by the latter, such that Peggy's departure now constitutes an actual loss instead of a hypothetical one—but so too has the dynamic between them. As in the first episode, Peggy offers Don her hand:

Only this time he doesn't reject it. He really doesn't reject it:

Whereas in the earlier episode Don clearly dominated the frame, in this one he only appears to. He occupies more space and is afforded frontality—if only by virtue of being the only one in the shot with a head—but his posture's that of a supplicant. The man who once upbraided her for touching his hand in an unprofessional manner is now a partner in a firm that whores out cherished employees for profit. He's kissing the ring because he knows his is now the morally inferior party. 

The remainder of the episode follows Peggy into her familiar office, down that familiar hall and in front of that familiar elevator, only this time the parting glance isn't from Pete, it's from Joan:

And instead of returning it, Peggy just steps into the elevator:

If Joan can't even own the episode in which she sells herself to make partner, how likely is it that the partnership she entered will work?

Games of Thrones: Embiggening Men in "Blackwater"

The latest Mad Men ("The Other Woman") presented me with more to think about than I can currently wrap my head around, but so too did the latest Games of Thrones ("Blackwater"), albeit it for very different reasons. So instead of delving into "The Other Woman" or drowning in the sudden narratological shift in "Blackwater," I'll focus on a fine point about shot construction in Game of Thrones. Before I do, however, I should note that I'm by no means endorsing the more problematic elements of the show—the racial politics foremost among them—because those strike me as endemic to sword-and-sorcery as a genre, so anything I write about them will inevitably be general and uninteresting to a fault.

If you want a re-cap of the episode itself, I recommend Alyssa's, but for my purpose all you need to know is that 1) the great Peter Dinklage plays Tyrion Lannister and 2) he commands an army that's on the brink of being besieged. Tyrion, in the lingo of the show, is a "halfman," and Dinklage's height presents difficulties for directors—if they shoot a close-up or medium close-up of him in conversation, his wit and intelligence will be diminished by the fact that his head's surrounded by a sea of crotches. The typical solutions to this problem are two-fold: have everyone he converses with sit down while doing so (as Thomas McCarthy did extensively in The Station Agent) or shoot him in extremely shallow focus so he's surrounded by a sea of fuzzy crotches. In "Blackwater," director Neil Marshall eschews both techniques, employing instead an exceedingly stylized compositional mode that would look ostentatious in almost any other context. To wit:

The low angle of framing appears natural because Dinklage is the central compositional element in the shot, and because his height has been elevated by the fact that he's on the stairs. Moreover, the position of his head relative to the top of the frame is a conventional position for heads to occupy on film. That is to say, although he's no taller here than he ever is, Marshall frames him in a manner that diminishes the significance of his height—visually, Tyrion functions as a "man" in this shot, a fact that's emphasized by having him look down on Sandor Clegane, a "man" who earlier boasted not only of his love of killing but his size relative to that of another soldier. The subsequent point-of-view shot cements the impression:

Afraid of the fire that Tyrion unleashed against the attacking force, Clegane returns to inform his king and his commander that he'll no longer be taking part in the battle. Marshall emphasizes his loss of social capital by shooting him from this high angle. Tyrion may be a "halfman," but in the eyes of all watching, Clegane is perceived as half the "man" he was. When the camera reverses, another clever element of Marshall's blocking and framing becomes evident:

By situating Tyrion half-way down the staircase, he avoids the infantalizing effect of the sea-of-crotches shot. Tyrion doesn't look like a child about to wrap his arms around his mother's leg—he looks like a man who's half-way down a staircase berating an underling. Note again the position of his head relative to the upper reaches of the frame, as Marshall appears to be doing all in his power to prevent the camera from robbing Tyrion of his.

As the scene continues, Marshall's intent becomes ever more apparent and ever more effective. For example, Clegane and Joffrey Lannister are both afforded medium shots with natural head-placement:

The difference in the angles of framing is merely indicative of their respective social standing—although Joffrey will receive a similar treatment when he abandons his defense of the wall at the behest of his mother—but more significant for my purpose is that these are conventional medium shots. However, when Marshall reverses to Tyrion:

He switches to a close-up that can't even contain the entirety of his head in frame. Tyrion is bigger than the shot, so to speak, such that at this moment the audience's knowledge of his height is only theoretical. That is to say, we know that he's a "halfman," but his presence on screen is militating against that knowledge. Directors use these techniques to manipulate their audience on a non-intellectual level—think of the rousing effect a bit of non-diegetic music can have on an otherwise mundane scene—which means that the cumulative effect of Marshall's shot selection here is emotional. Tyrion is enlarged by the manner in which Marshall shot Dinklage. Don't believe me? Look at him two minutes later:

His head's now effectively even with those of the soldiers behind him. How did that happen? I'm not entirely sure, but that's not the point: as Tyrion prepares to lead his troops to battle to the cry of "Halfman," Marshall manages to render the epithet inaccurate. 

The Ballad of Peter and Peggy, Redux, in "A Little Kiss"

(It goes without saying that this is another one of those posts.)

Poor self-defeating Pete, trying his best to become the very Draper whose misery's invisible to him. Remember when Pete had hope, and director John Slattery hammered the possibility of it home via reverse shots? How Pete saw Peggy longing for him:

Returned her implicit, medium long offer in kind:

And was returned in kind:

And again:

And again, an almost final invitaiton?

Of course, between them in each reverse shot is the not-insignificant–and increasingly significant, given the racial aspects entering the series in future episodes–glass door separating the firm from the world it claims to represent. As I wrote in the post linked above:

The viewer is looking at Peter looking at Peggy in the first medium close up in the scene.  (There is a slight unreality to this point of view shot: it zooms in on the pair in a way only cameras can.  The zooming seems to act as a cinematic proxy for attention or concentration.)  Slattery made sure the nearly invisible wall separating them remained visible, which creates a tension between the intimacy of the close up and the reality of the glass walls separating them.  That he chooses a more intimate when these two are in different rooms is, for obvious reasons, significant.  She sees him peering at her and, by its positioning, the camera acknowledges the bond that will remain despite the increasing distance between them: the baby they had together.

But now Peter's a father, only not of Peggy's baby, but of his own. Who's screen presence exists as such:

See the baby? The one he had so he could be more like Draper? It's sitting there, frame central, hovering invisible in that tacky chair he should've had the decency to replace if he'd had any sense of style. He's becoming Draper–disappearing into the life he mistakenly believed he wanted. No children to greet him, just cold dinner and a warm shot of whisky. Don't believe me? Let's rewrind to the first season and remind you of a similarly framed shot:

In this case, however, Betty's lying about going to the community center to watch them film the pool–she's off to watch pretty things die, as per the episode's title, for"Sport." But there's something more than sport to her deliberations. She wants to savor the experience of watching something die. First she feeds the children, then she does the laundry:

Then the camera acknowledges that she's had an idea and zooms into a close-up to reiterate that fact:

Note the joy on her face. Knowing that her idea is one that–whatever joy it might bring her, society would disapprove of, she ponders her decision for a moment:

Moments are fleeting:

Her decision has been made. Cut to exterior:

Relief. Betty's just a central figure staring at the sky in wonderment at all God's creations:

Look at those birds? The fact that they're incapable of being centrally staged only emphasizes their freedom. The frame can't constrain them! They're free! If only Betty had an equivalently symbolic emblem of relinquishing societal constraints:

She does. Her feelings of entrapment are nothing a healthy dose of nicotine can't cure. Except why has she shifted stage-left? She had occupied the central portion of the screen, but now it's as if she's making room for something else. Whatever could that be?

Of course, she being an American, the only thing she can do with her symbol of freedom is shoot it with ... another symbol of her freedom. I wasn't able to capture her aiming the gun, which is why the space on the right side of the frame had to be cleared, but that's why it was. Oddly, her cigarette still occupies the central portion of the frame, as if, like the nicotine it delivers into her blood, is calming her down, making her transgressive violence possible. Can't be sure. However, visually speaking, the indication is that Draper's created/creating a sociopath, and the implication is that Peter's following a similar path. He began his morning commutes in "A Little Kiss," you'll remember, alone and engrossed in a paper:

 

His loneliness is highlighted by both the empty chair beside him and the man with the solitaire board across from him. By episode's end, things seem a bit different, though:

Wonder why that might be? Couldn't have anything to do with, say, this:

Nothing at all there. Not between Peggy and Pete. Not with a viable baby hanging out right there in a carriage. 

This Mad Men video won't execute itself, so guess who needs a technical editor?

I could've done this no problem on my now defunct computer, but on this new one, with these new programs, I'm basically incapable of doing anything that doesn't transform the Windows equivalent of this:

In a giant red X which resembles, well:

And when I see that, I basically see this:

And because I don't have a team of dirty Italians to help me take him down, I wonder whether I haven't acquired myself a video editor capable of making this short–and I must say inspired cultural connection–and teaching me how to make it work like it ought to. Because right now it looks like this:

 

Smooth up the transitions, make the words hit their marks, and we'll have ourselves a brand new meme, all the way back from olden times, before anyone was aware of Internet traditions. Eventually, I'll be competent again, but I need a little help with the hefty lifting–or, if you're a former student, my continued commitment to my open door policy. So technically, you'd earn nothing but good will, but karma's karma, no?

Filming the sausage being made is very, very expensive, my friends.

My promised follow up post about Peter's sad descent into the trappings of Draper's life is nearly half-complete, but I wanted to address something that's come up in the comments first, because I encounter variations of it every time I teach. Uncle Ebeneezer
March 27, 2012 wrote

On a tangent–a friend of mine read your post and remarked that they doubt that THAT much thought really goes into it. I disagree, but I’m sure you must hear that sort of sentiment all the time and I’m just curious how you usually respond.

He's correct in that I encounter this all the time–frequently as a back-handed compliment about me putting more thought into the show than the people who made it–but it's usually the person doing the slapping that has no clue what they're talking example. For example, in an interview I can't relocate, Christopher Nolan was discussing the logistics of using an IMAX camera to capture Christian Bale hanging off of a skyscraper in Hong Kong. The joke of it was that between the helicopter, its pilot, safety equipment, those equipped to use it, Nolan and Bale's salaries, the insurance policy on Bale, the rental cost of the IMAX camera and its crew, every single syllable was costing Warner Brothers $300,000, "so if everyone would quit fucking cursing they could fucking film this fucking shot for under three million dollars."

And that's pre-production. So do I occasionally hazard into a situation in which I over-read some last minute practicality? No doubt. But should the wizards with the duct tape see my analysis and note that I missed their wizardry, don't you think they'd be proud that they'd done their job so well I couldn't imagine it having been done differently? But if your friends are still unconvinced–and if my students are any indication, many of them will be, send them to the "full credits" listing of a show like Mad Men. John Rogers—friend of the blog and showrunner of Leverage—can add to any of the many things I’ve forgotten, but keep in mind that all of the following people must be paid, eat, have their equipment plugged in and powered up, etc., and remember as your friend’s scrolling down that very, very long list, there are a number of unusual positions, such as:

1. hair stylist/background hair stylist
2. hair stylist/key hair stylist
3. hair department head
4. special effects makup artist
5. on-set dresser
6. art department coordinator
7. greensman
8. set decoration buyer
9. second assistant camera “a” cameria/ second assistant camera “b” camera
10. best boy rigging electrician
11. genny operator
12. post-post production assistant coordinator
13. colorist dailies
14. final colorist

I’ve chosen that list a little randomly, but it’s also a little representative of the collaborate work involved in any significant production. Odd as it may seem, the burden of proof that something isn’t in a particular scene should fall to the casual viewer, who thinks television is magic and all you need is a camera, some costumes, and a few pretty pictures to make it work. Granted, that’s true of some reality television — it wear its cheap production for all to see — but for quality, scripted television, each minute of which costs thousands to film, there’s a reason why certain mediocre actors are come to be called “character actors” as they age. It’s not that Benjamin Bratt — and I’m not picking on him — is a good actor, but there’s a reason why people want to work with him. To my knowledge, he’s polite, shows up on time, knows his lines, and is forgo having a potentially short or taller stand-in sit for him in the rehearsals and run-throughs. (That’s anecdotal evidence, but I trust the source, and if I’m wrong, there are a million others I could substitute for him.) Point being:

Shooting quality film/television is very expensive, so it’s all planned out in advance, then modified, script-color-change-by-script-color-change, then ideally handed to actors who behave professionally. In short, the implicit answer to why there aren’t more great television shows is sort of the same as why they aren’t more perfect storms.

 

Mad Men: Sally and Don in "A Little Kiss"

(It goes without saying that this is another one of those posts.)

First of all, let me begin with what I won't be talking about: race. It's clearly going to be an abiding issue this season–it bookends "A Little Kiss," first as an insensitive tragedy, later as an almost unmangeable farce–but the majority of what comes between these allusions to the Civil Rights movement concerns the demise of almost every relationship in the lives of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce's employees. For example, here's the sole appearance of the former Mrs. Draper:

It occurs during the "Previously on Mad Men" introduction, not within the body of the show itself. The current Mrs. Francis exists in this episode as a function of her children, whose own screen time is limited to the first fifteen minutes of the episode–their appearance is significant, however, and as good a place as any to begin looking at "A Little Kiss." Let's start with Sally:

She's alone and miserable in a bed that's not her own. The audience doesn't know that, so she merely seems like a child who should have, but hasn't, overcome her night terrors. (The therapy she began last season apparently either failed to take, was never followed up on, or became monopolized by Betty's problems to the extent that the therapist thought she could help Sally more by working through Betty's issues. Too soon to tell.) As I've remarked on multiple occasions–and even diagrammed–hallways are extremely significant on Mad Men, suggestive of the fact that these are shiftless people who are neither entirely sure where they're from anymore (Draper) or that they're trying to own the space between their amorphous origins and designated destinations. But as this episode makes clear on three occasions, this is nothing more than a convenient lie. Here is Draper owning a hallway in "The Suitcase":

Here's Sally, half asleep in an unfamiliar apartment, "owning" hers:

I don't think I need to draw all over this shot to demonstrate that, like the one above it, there's an operative symmetry to Jennifer Getzinger's direction–nor do I think it's unobvious that Getzinger directed both "The Suitcase" and "A Little Kiss." But in "A Little Kiss" Getzinger undermines the symmetry from "The Suitcase" by having Sally saunter down the hall without occupying the central area of the screen. She doesn't own this hall–she's exploring it. When she finally (and mistakenly) believes she's found her bearings:

She finds the bathroom door locked. Because it's not the bathroom door:

It's her father's bedroom, and despite Sally and Don being neatly framed between the door jambs, they still don't occupy the central area of the screen. Technically, nothing does, but scan down and the audience can see what Sally shortly will, only not from her perspective yet–the small of Megan's back and the curve of her hips. Something is coming between Draper and the only woman he loves unconditionally, and Sally can see that something's ass:

This is one of the rare moments in the episode when the audience is allowed into the head of a character, and I don't think it's a coincidence that it's Sally's head into which we're allowed entrance. I have a feeling–something more like an inchoate theory–that ten years from now this show will be remembered as having belonged to Sally, but I'll share that when I can muster up more evidence. For the moment the real matter of significance is that Sally perceives Megan as the single greatest impediment to developing the relationship she so desperately desires with her father. She recognizes, without truly understanding it, that there's a disconnect, and Getzinger highlights this not merely by showing the a vulnerably half-naked Megan, but by indicating that Sally can't tell whether it's the woman in the bedroom or the bedroom door that's frustrating her:

That door jamb is the visual equivalent of a poetic enjambment, uniting two lines in manner that foregrounds the fact that they ought not be united. A quick example from W.B. Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium":

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress [...]

The enjambed "unless" functions as a redirected thought dangling off the edge of an unthinkable abyss–the moment when an "aged" Yeats decides unequivocably that this is "no country for old men," but despite the apparent abruptness of his decision, the tranistion from the enjambed "unless" and the "soul" which opens the next line creates a hope for some sort of continuity. Just read it aloud: "unless/Soul clap its hand and sing." Possibility abides despite the apparent disconnect. Unlike many other moments in this episode, the ostensible disconnect between this daughter and this father seems surmountable. She just doesn't know it yet.*

But she should: Draper concludes this conversation with an offer to cook her one of his patented witching hour omelets, a process which began when the dark was deep and the shadows long and ended right about here:

The implied elapse of time is clearly significant, as the two characters occupying the central frame have obviously been awake and ostensibly been conversing for quite some time. But their centrality isn't the item of significance in this frame: in the lower left corner of the shot is the footstool on which Draper will be sitting at the height of his humiliation, which will, of course, be brought about by:

The woman wearing the gawdy yellow top who's not only occupying the center of the screen, but is doing so by visually dividing Sally and Don. Sally's point-of-view shot earlier set this up, and it leads to a shot in which her worst fears are being realized. Getzinger cuts to Sally:

Although seemingly happy, it's what she's not that's significant: she's not sharing the frame with her father anymore. She's alone and off-center–and there's a good reason that the shot's off-kiltered. Look at what she sees:

Her father and Megan are one side of a walled-in nook, she and her siblings on the other. Moreover, whereas Megan and her attention-grabbing shirt are inching closer to a central position, Sally's almost being pushed off-frame. Don's not consciously aware of what he's losing, but losing her he is. Because this is such a long episode, I'll save my thoughts about Peter and Peggy and Joan for another post, but before I do, I just want to follow up on the significance of the aforementioned table. Here's Don at his "surprise" birthday party:

The nook is now off-camera and Don's literally dominating the shot: even the color of his shirt sets him apart from the dark dresses and suits of his guests. But with the footstool now center-stage, Draper is at his emptiest. He is alone and all eyes are upon him, uncomfortably astride a piece of furniture designed for feet, and he's miserable. He'll sleep alone tonight because he realizes that whatever it is he has with Megan, it's not enough–and the more she tries to convince him otherwise, the further he pushes her away.

*Before you ask: I can't believe I just wrote that much about a door jamb either.

Scott Eric Kaufman's Visual Rhetoric Compendium (as of 5/06/13)

Films:

• Batman Begins (classic horror) - Christopher Nolan 
• Blow-Up (I) - Michelangelo Antonioni 
• Blow-Up (II)- Michelangelo Antonioni
• The Dark Knight (I) - Christopher Nolan
• The Dark Knight (II) - Christopher Nolan
• Fellowship of the Ring (conventions of high fantasy) - Peter Jackson
• Fight Club - David Fincher
• Fight Club (II) - David Fincher
• Fight Club (III) - David Fincher
• Ghost World - Terry Zwigof
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - Hayao Miyazaki
• Superman - Richard Donner
• Superman Returns - Bryan Singer
• 30 Days of Night - David Slade

Television Shows:

• Avatar: The Last Airbender - "The Ember Island Players" 
• Breaking Bad - "Buyout" I (Naturalism)
• Breaking Bad - "Buyout" II (Realism)
• Breaking Bad - "Say My Name"
• Breaking Bad - "Gliding Over All," Said the Fly to the Money Pile
• Breaking Bad - "Gliding Over All" the Invisible Lines and Immaterial Connections
• Breaking Bad - "Gliding Over All" Until You're Not
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer - "Hush"
• Doctor Who - "Time of Angels"
• Doctor Who - "Time of Angels" - Buckling the Frame
• Doctor Who - "The Eleventh Hour"
• Doctor Who - "Amy's Choice"
• Doctor Who - "Vincent and the Doctor" 
• Doctor Who - "The Pandorica Opens"
• Doctor Who - "The Big Bang"
• Doctor Who - "The Impossible Astronaut"
• Game of Thrones - Embiggening Men in "Blackwater"
• Game of Thrones - "Winter Is Coming" for Poor Will
• Game of Thrones - "Winter Is Coming" for Bran
• Game of Thrones - "Winter Is Coming" for Catelyn Stark and Jon Snow
• Game of Thrones - "Winter Is Coming" for Will and Bran
• Game of Thrones - "Lord Snow," you're no bigger than a half-man
• Game of Thrones - Everyone is alone, everyone is surrounded in "The Wolf and the Lion"
• Game of Thrones - How circular is "A Golden Crown"?
• Game of Thrones - Table-setting and brain-burning in "You Win or You Die"
• Game of Thrones - Learning to use "The Pointy End"
• Game of Thrones - Swords! Swords! Swords! in "Baelor"
• Game of Thrones - "Valar Dohaeris," Indeed. But who? Where? To what end?
• Hannibal - The frail horror of shallow focus
• Leverage - "The Van Gogh Job"
• Louie - "Daddy's Girlfriend II"
• Mad Men - "Don and Sally in 'A Little Kiss'"
• Mad Men - "The Ballad of Peggy and Pete, Redux, in 'A Little Kiss'"
• Mad Men - "The Grown-Ups"
• Mad Men - "Shut the Door.  Have a seat."
• Mad Men (I) - "The Rejected"
• Mad Men (II) - "The Rejected"
• Mad Men (I) - "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"
• Mad Men (II) - "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"
• Mad Men (I) - "The Suitcase"
• Mad Men (II) - "The Suitcase"
• Mad Men - Who owns "The Other Woman"?
• Mad Men - Hands and hands and hands in "Commissions and Fees"
• Mad Men - Nostalgia, forestalled, and "The Wheel"
• Mad Men - "It's not the tooth that's rotten," it's "The Phantom"
• Mad Men - One foot in "The Doorway"
• Mad Men - "Collaborators" in the Secret, Sacred Curb Dances of Suburban Love
• Mad Men - Is the Awesomeness of White Men really "For Immediate Release"?
• The Walking Dead - "Days Gone Bye"

Comics:

• American Born Chinese - Gene Luen Yang
• Blankets - Craig Thompson
• Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
• Ghost World - Daniel Clowes
• Kick-Ass (I) - Mark Millar
• Kick-Ass (II) - Mark Millar
• Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth - Warren Ellis
• 30 Days of Night - Steve Niles
• The Walking Dead (word-specific panels)
• The Walking Dead (picture-specific panels) - Robert Kirkman
• War is Boring - David Axe
• Watchmen (panel construction) (I) - Alan Moore
• Watchmen (panel construction) (II) - Alan Moore
• Watchmen (responsible film criticism) - Anthony Lane
• Watchmen (unfilmable film filmed) - Zak Snyder vs. Alan Moore
• Watchmen (students as murderers) - Alan Moore
• Watchmen (Dr. Manhattan as a figure of the reader) - Alan Moore

 Themes:

• On Poorly Executed Claustrophobia in Film and Television
• On Effectively Executed Claustrophobia in Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot

Scott Eric Kaufman's Visual Rhetoric Compendium Now Easier than Ever to Find!

It's a permanent fixture in the right sidebar now, and I'll continue to update it regularly. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a terrible cold to attend to. (Stupid midterms wreaking havoc with stupid students' stupid immune systems ...)

Scott Eric Kaufman's Visual Rhetoric Compendium (as of 11/28/2011)

(For the record, many more [and all future] updates can be found here.)

By request, below are the links to all of the visual rhetoric exegeses (a.k.a. McCloud or Bordwell-inspired "lecture notes") I've produced in the past few years.  I would say I'm surprised there aren't more of them, but then I remember 1) how labor-intensive they are to compose and 2) the number of drafts I've deemed insufficient for public consumption that linger unfinished in assorted folders.  So here goes:

Films:

• Batman Begins (classic horror) - Christopher Nolan 
• Blow-Up (I) - Michelangelo Antonioni 
• Blow-Up (II)- Michelangelo Antonioni
• The Dark Knight (I) - Christopher Nolan
• The Dark Knight (II) - Christopher Nolan
• Fight Club - David Fincher
• Fight Club (II) - David Fincher
• Fight Club (III) - David Fincher
• Ghost World - Terry Zwigof
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - Hayao Miyazaki
• Superman - Richard Donner
• Superman Returns - Bryan Singer
• 30 Days of Night - David Slade

Television Shows:

• Avatar: The Last Airbender - "The Ember Island Players"
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer - "Hush"
• Doctor Who - "Time of Angels"
• Doctor Who - "Time of Angels" - Buckling the Frame
• Doctor Who - "The Eleventh Hour"
• Doctor Who - "The Pandorica Opens"
• Leverage - "The Van Gogh Job"
• Mad Men - "The Grown-Ups"
• Mad Men - "Shut the Door.  Have a seat."
• Mad Men (I) - "The Rejected"
• Mad Men (II) - "The Rejected"
• Mad Men (I) - "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"
• Mad Men (II) - "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"
• Mad Men (I) - "The Suitcase"
• Mad Men (II) - "The Suitcase"
• The Walking Dead - "Days Gone Bye"

Comics:

• American Born Chinese - Gene Luen Yang
• Blankets - Craig Thompson
• Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
• Ghost World - Daniel Clowes
• Kick-Ass (I) - Mark Millar
• Kick-Ass (II) - Mark Millar
• Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth - Warren Ellis
• 30 Days of Night - Steve Niles
• The Walking Dead (word-specific panels)
• The Walking Dead (picture-specific panels) - Robert Kirkman
• Watchmen (panel construction) (I) - Alan Moore
• Watchmen (panel construction) (II) - Alan Moore
• Watchmen (responsible film criticism) - Anthony Lane
• Watchmen (unfilmable film filmed) - Zak Snyder vs. Alan Moore
• Watchmen (students as murderers) - Alan Moore
• Watchmen (Dr. Manhattan as a figure of the reader) - Alan Moore

 Themes:

• On Poorly Executed Claustrophobia in Film and Television
• On Effectively Executed Claustrophobia in Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot

Playing "Pete Campbell" in the South

By which I mean, of course, pretending that one is Pete Campbell in "The Fog" and discovering a trend long after it began trending and figuring out how to exploit it.   Because I haven't been back to or through Lousiana in over two years, yesterday I was taken aback by the different advertising environment that confronted me on the trip from Houston, TX to Natchez, MS.  First, the signage now works according to the general principle:

• if it's not for a gas station, it's for a fast food place
• if it's not for a fast food place, it's for a bail bondsman
• if it's not for a bail bondsman, it's for a strip club
• if it's not for a strip club, it's for THE LAST ADULT ENTERTAINMENT STORE FOR 70 MILES (as the one sign I remember exactly read).

Those are, it seems, the only growth industries along the Texas to Louisiana stretch of the I-10 corridor ... except I also happened to be listening to the Saints game on an AM station from New Orleans, and the commercials played during it were of an entirely different variety.  You had:

• a waste disposal company with the slogan "our business stinks, but it's picking up"
• a scrap recycling center that bragged that it's been in the recycling business since 1917
• a paint company that boasted that it not only sells 1,000 different shades of green, but that its paints are environmentally friendly
• a restaurant that noted that it was still purchasing its shrimp from green-friendly, local producers despite the BP spill

I don't want to draw any general conclusions about the advertising environs, but if we assume that, like Campbell, these people know what they're doing, Louisiana has become an incredibly strange place: everyone's fat and in jail or going to be for crimes committed at or near a strip club, but they're all committed environmentalists. 

That last bit's the kicker: I was listening to a football game on an AM station when I was being bombarded with advertising designed to appeal to people who care about the environment.  I knew the oil spill had changed the minds of many people I'd grown up with — Facebook's handy for tracking such trends — but I hadn't realized how profoundly the environmental disaster had impacted their consciousness.  Especially considering that AM radio is some of the lowest hanging fruit in the advertising world ...

Please make with your congratulations, already.

I failed to notice that I wrote my 2,000th post a week back ... which means that since February of 2005 I have sat down and composed something I thought unawful enough to share with the world at least 2,000 times.  Talk about quantifying a life ...

Mad Men: Picking up "The [wrong] Suitcase"

In the first post about "The Suitcase," I concerned myself with the way Getzinger's camera conspired with blocking to frame the characters oppressively, and I want to build on that at the beginning of this one, but need to backtrack a bit first.  In that post I noted that Getzinger switches to a medium shot and opens up an abyss beneath Draper that terminates in his office.  I was spectacularly wrong.  At the beginning of the episode, Draper's office sits atop an abyss, as the shot after the aforelinked one clearly demonstrates:

The abyss does open up, but Draper escapes it by hanging a hard left into his office.  That his office is all that saves him from falling is significant when the state of life outside of it is considered.  I may be reading too much into this, but note that the wall at the end of the hall is dark, much like the bottom of a hole.  If this dynamic is operative (instead of merely interpretative), that would put Draper's office at the "top" of the abyss and the end of the hall at its "bottom."  Why would this be significant?  Because after emerging from the restroom (after a series of encounters I wish I had time and space to write about), Peggy observes the lowliest of the firm's creative team at that bottom: