Mad Men's Monolith, The Melody of Heartache (Kyle Chandler/Homefront), Sex & Character

Eternal Male/Female Difference Revealed: The recent telephone conversation between Megan and Don, when he finally tells her that he has been given a leave from the firm he helped build from ashes highlights a universal male/female communication challenge that life partners who are intimate and committed face, understand, and work through. Megan cannot understand why Don did not love and trust her enough to tell her the truth. Don could not tell Megan the truth because he felt if he did she would no longer see him as potent and strong and would stop loving and desiring him.

Taking Stock of Who We Really Are Involves Pain: Why isn't Don going elsewhere? Why is he accepting horrific, disrespectful treatment? Sterling and Cooper was a launching pad for him, and his life's blood went into Sterling and Cooper and Draper. He has been able to do brilliant work because of innate ability to combine art and manipulation, as well as the love of the woman who had been the wife of the man whose identity he had stolen --- the first love he has ever known from anyone. Perhaps Don will be able to build on this, and work toward becoming a true person. Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

"A man’s attempt to find himself in a woman, rather than simply seeing Woman in a woman, necessarily presupposes a neglect of her empirical person, which regards Woman as a completely dependent possession and does not consider her inner life at all. This is where the parallel between the cruelty of eroticism and the cruelty of sexuality becomes complete. Love is Murder." -Sex & Character (1906) by Otto Weininger



As Mad Men is (slowly) wrapping up, it’s looking more and more at whatever the future is going to bring, and much like that huge IBM computer, the future is a looming, loud presence that will, inevitably, displace them entirely. The monolith is a memento mori. Really, that’s what “The Monolith” is about underneath it all. The characters are pushing toward the things that will let them move past the failed versions of themselves, past all of the wrong versions of events, toward something right. Deep down, I think that Matt Weiner and his writers don’t want to punish these characters or even have them see a real comeuppance. That comeuppance came last season, for the most part, and now, they’re heading into a new era, one that may bring new consciousness or a dream of men who’d dare walk on the moon. Source: www.avclub.com

But it is 1969, the year that is often cited as the one when the cultural landscape dramatically shifted in America, and Roth’s novel was a big part of that. The thing about Portnoy’s Complaint is that, unlike some books we’ve seen Don reading, like Dante’s Inferno, there isn’t an obvious meaning to Don’s choice of reading, unless you want to get into the mommy/sex issues that both Don and Roth’s most famous character have.

It’s difficult to find an allegory in Don opening up Portnoy’s, but a book about a descent into hell, that’s something we can understand: women, to Portnoy, are the root of all pleasure and all pain.
Source: flavorwire.com


Jeff and Ginger ending their romance - "Man, This Joint is Jumping", "Szabo's Travels", and "Appleknocker To Wed Tomatohawker" inspired this very short 'Homefront' story by Tracey Diane Miller, "The Melody of Heartache" (2005): "Jeff Metcalf wasn't always the most sensitive guy in the world but his Achilles heel was his intense and unquestioned love for Ginger. Sometimes the depths of that love scared him. Sometimes he felt as if something were tugging at his gut. And so began the melody of heartache, swelling into a full blown overture of pain. It was a melody that had been introduced by that first note that echoed within the young couple during a fateful day in Hollywood park months ago. Jeff had become a casualty in the war of the broken-hearted."

Kyle Chandler: -"I look at those celebrity magazines and I'm jealous. There are pictures of late-night partying at nightclubs and I wonder who's taking care of the kids. I'm boring compared to those people. And my beautiful wife, Kathryn, and I will be coming to Los Angeles, seeing friends we haven't seen in a while and be two adults in the city of Hollywood, living it up while the kids are at home kicking back."

"Of course, my wife has to be there. The person you say goodnight to last is the one you want to say thank you to last." But the fact is, Chandler admits, "I wouldn't trade anything for what I've got right now. I appreciate everything in my life. Every time I turn on TV and see how difficult things are for some people, I'm just grateful for what I've got. I wouldn't trade my life for anyone's." Source: www.creators.com

"Schopenhauer (author of “Metaphysics of the Love of the Sexes”) had very little appreciation of a higher kind of eroticism, and only really appreciated sexuality. Schopenhauer’s face showed little kindness and a great deal of cruelty (from which he himself must have suffered most terribly: one does not devise an ethic of compassion if one is very compassionate. The most compassionate individuals are those who most resent their own compassion: Kant and Nietzsche). But it may already be indicated at this point that only those who have a strong tendency toward compassion are capable of a fervent eroticism. Those who “couldn’t care less” are incapable of love and they have no appreciation of a supra-sexual relationship. True love, like true compassion, is modest. Rather, beauty itself is a projection, or emanation, of the desire to love. Therefore, the beauty of Woman is not something different from love, not an object to which love is directed. The beauty of Woman is the love of Man. Love and beauty are not two different facts, but one and the same. Just as ugliness derives from hate, beauty derives from love. Beauty is something untouchable, inviolable, which cannot be mixed with other things. Love is modest because, by loving, I place myself below others. Love makes the individual most forgetful of his pride. Therefore compassion is related to love, which is why only those who know compassion know love. In compassion I am the giver, in love I am the beggar. Love is the most modest of all requests, because it begs for the most, the highest." -"Sex & Character" (1906) by Otto Weininger