Hands, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, Knees and Toes

Well! This sure feels weird. Haven't been in this position in a long, long time. Blogging on my "PB," personal blog, that is. But I am not, thankfully, on my "hands and knees," like, say all of the desperate and lonely and dangerously repressed employees of Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Price, that fictional Manhattan start-up ad agency that occupies the fourth season of AMC's critically-acclaimed adult drama Mad Men.

But yes, of course, it's an immensely weird position for me to be writing about said people finding themselves in a bitterly familiar position, not in the least because I'm choosing to jump back into the game awkwardly, toward the tail-end of my favorite show's fourth season, and with little in the way of convincing rationale other than "I feel like it," or perhaps, more apropos, "It felt right."

This feeling of rightness, however, is very different from the feeling of "Everything's going to be okay," or "Everything's fine," or the the "thumbs up" symbols that are deployed by various characters (ok, specifially, Don, Don, and Roger, respectively -- although of course Betty and Henry motherfucking Francis and Joan get their own variations) in this increasingly tense, harrowing, emotionally riveting eleventh episode, "Hands and Knees."

Indeed, whereas I feel geniuenely glad to be writing here again -- motivated to write again about something I've seen up on a screen -- if just a tad unsure about my pacing and footing (more of a general direction thing, itself a familiar feeling), the sad, wounded and greiving souls on Mad Men are only doing what Don did in episode 1, season 1, as my friend Rosy Minded Fuzzball was so quick and correct to point out -- that is, selling themselves a set of commercial taglines of reassurance, soothing acceptance and managability, all of them entirely false, of course, given how eminently FUCKED the firm is at this juncture, thanks to various overlapping conflicts and conflicts-of-interest.

But really, the ultimate irony is that, at least for the men of SCDP, the whole goal at this point is to keep the rickety, sinking ship of the firm afloat using whatever frantic, bucket or hand-draining method they've got (although it could of course be argued that Don's ultimate goal is self-preservation, but the firm's basically an intergal part of that, so, I rest my case). It shouldn't and cannot be an easy goal, to be certain, but it shouldn't have ever come to the dire straights that its in right now -- to the point at which basically only a miraculous, highly unlikely Hail Mary by Roger is the last hope.

That being said, Lane is all-but checked out as a character. I think that his literal crumpling to his father's will is a sign that family is and will always be the most important thing in his life. As poisionous as it is for his own self-worth and self-respect, its still seems to be better than work, and offers more possibilities for redemption. So maybe I should retract my statement, or at least revise it -- Not all the men at SCDP are ultimately concerned with the firm's survival -- or maybe they are, and Lane doesn't count, since he's such a pushover...

Still, it was nice to see the lately-strangely successful and even, dare I say it, noble Pete Campbell back to his slithery old bitchface ways, especially when dishing about Don on the couch to his pregnant, propping himself as the model of honesty when A) Discussing his fellow partner and former boss's situation in cryptic terms to his wife, but not-so cryptic as to convey the fact that he was digustingly displeased with someone B) for said someone's lack of honesty when in fact C) it was the speaker himself, the entitled little rich bastard Campbell who committed perhaps the ultimate act of dishonest betrayal, and has managed to escape the consequences of his actions entirely only thanks to the patient discrection of his colleague/collaborator/victim, Peggy Olson, the mother of his bastard son. (Although it should certainly be noted that Peggy's discretion was eminently selfish and immoral in its own right, and that in truth, the only truly innocent victim is the little boy that was born of their deliciously sordid union).

ALL OF THAT BEING SAID, I think, looking at the clock hands at this hour, that's time to get to the real point of this post, which is a compilation, what we in the biz call a "listicle," of all of the instances this show's title applied to, literal, metaphorical or otherwise. And, this being an episode all about the power (or lack thereof) of the palms to make things happen, of course I'm going to stretch the theme as far as I can. Comment if you want to add more, and I'll be happy to join them to the following list.

ALL THE INSTANCES OF CHARACTERS ON THEIR "HANDS AND KNEES" in "HANDS AND KNEES"

1. Don literally has his hands on knees when he thinks he's having a heart attack after seeing the two men mulling around outside his apartment. He also presumably is on his hands and knees when puking into the bathroom shortly thereafter.

2. Lane Price literally on his hands and knees when his bitterly-old codger of a Father whacks him in the face with his (the father's) cane, drawing blood, then process to crush Lane's knuckles with his toe, all of which finally has the effect of convincing Lane (who had up-until that point been doing well on a personal growth level, not only dating across color lines as we so clearly saw in this episode [although that too seemed to be more of a kinky fetish, in retrospect, than real genuine emotional connection, given how easily he caved and elected to leave his African American girlfriend behind] but also business-wise, occupying a more confident and senior position within the firm) to finally return to England to kowtow and make amends with the assuredly vindictive Mrs. Price.

3. Roger begging Lee Garner Jr. first not to close the Lucky Strike account, then to avoid withdrawing it for at least 30 days, to which Lee finally consents.

4. Don begging basically everyone (WELL wait, specifically and notably just Pete and the three women who now know his secret [identity]: Betty Draper Francis [like how her surname is finally being buzzed into Don's office?], Faye Miller [his new squeeze], and to far-lesser extent, Megan [his witless secretary]*) to keep it on the D/L while the G-Men are rolling around.

5. Believe Pete Campbell made a line to the effect of him chasing North American Aviation hand-over-foot for the past three years when he was arguing with Don about the proposed coverup.

6. Pete Campbell lying during the partner's meeting to cover up for Don, telling the partners that he begged North American Aviation to accept his apologies about mixing up the made-up general's name on the documents, but that they were inconsolable.

7. Roger yelling at Pete, lambasting him for failing to wait on NAA hand and foot, or, in his colorful language, "giving them a handjob."

8. Think that Trudy felt her and Pete's kid turn over, kick with his feet, probably on his hands and needs inside the womb...

9. Could read into Joan's conspicuous refusal to get on her hands and knees and pray about her abortion, though she did sort of immediately beg Roger to take care of it. Yet, at the same time, we have no proof that she went through with it, especially following the shamefully awkward encounter with the 32 year old mother of the 17 year old girl getting the abortion in the waiting room of the clinic. Note that that woman had trouble using her hands to get stuff out of her purse and pick up the magazine (flashbacks to Betty, S1, anyone?)

10. The bunnies, namely Lane's "Chocolate Bunny," doing the famous serving-dip by bending at the knees.

11. Don getting blown in a cab by Bethany, presumably on her hands and knees...oh wait, that was two episodes ago, sorrys.

* At this point, most of the women Don has fucked (or, to be fairer, carried on longer-term affairs with) know his secret, or at least that he has one, including Rachel Menken, Betty Draper Francis, Bobby, Faye. Conspicuously, in this season, several know his secret whom he's not fucked, including the dearly-departed Anna ("The Real Mrs.") Draper's niece, Stephanie, and of course, Meghan, on whom the episode closed to the tune of the Beatles "Do You Want to Know a Secret."

What this means is anyone's guess. Rosy Minded thinks its zeitgeisty inspiration. At first I thought/feared it was Don eyeing Megan as a liberating, revitalizing fuck, following his close encounter with Uncle Sam, but of course I quickly dismissed that as none-too-subtle. Now, I'm thinking the look that crossed his face was one of renewed concern knowing that (especially after Faye just departed the room with his secret in tow) his secret, or the knowledge that he has something to hide, is getting a bit-too widely disseminated. Ah well, guess we'll find out. Or won't we?

Focused on the family

The strange alignment of the American pop culture zodiac got just a little stranger for me over the past two days, and not only because I saw Lynch's classic Eraserhead for the first time late last night.

Indeed, earlier in the Memorial Day evening, in a move made largely to please my girlfriend, but at least partially for the purpose of satisfying my own curiosity, I consented to watch my first full episode, and the season five premiere, of the bona-fide TLC reality show phenomena John & Kate Plus 8. For the unacquainted, this is a program that the creators describe, in pseudo-documentary lingo, as profiling "a day in the life" of a contemporary American suburban couple raising eight kids, a set of twins and their younger sextuplet siblings.

I say "bona-fide" and "phenomena" because I've increasingly observed this program dominating the TV screens and conversational topics of collegiate-age young women like my significant other. The ratings figures alone would seem to support my experience, but of course, significant critical attention and tabloid speculation has been lavished on the show as well.

The furor surrounding the show, or rather, the furor surrounding the state of Jon and Kate's marriage has apparently mounted to such an extent that it was played as the central theme of the new season premiere. Shown in a documentary style format, Kate's attempts to mostly single-handedly plan and carry out the sextuplet's 5th birthday celebration were impeded by the appearance of paparazzi, which she (and the editing) portrayed as a kind of group of vaguely threatening bogeymen.

Liberally interspersed within this mini-narrative was scenes of the real one, that of Jon and Kate confessing mostly separately to the camera crew, as opposed to earlier seasons where they were apparently filmed together on the same couch. The conspicuously distraught parents espoused their contentious feelings about each other, numerous reports of infidelity (mostly directed at Jon), their family's growing fame, and their full-time careers as reality-show subjects, agreeing on only the most vague and obvious of commitments- selfless love for and care of their brood. The obnoxious question posed by a member by the crew, "What does the future hold?" was greeted with mutual pauses, shrugs and thinly-veiled threats of divorce. Oh, what a terrible turn of events for the idyllic modern fertility experiment!

Sarcasm aside, my initial reaction was one I am sure many other viewers felt- that of sadness and regret for having caught the kids up in this whole voyeuristic mess. It's barely cynical to expect that they will have their own individual reality shows a few years down the road, when they've developed their own disorders and drug habits.

Even if Jon and Kate don't split up (and the money's saying they won't, as therapy would be a logical ongoing plot point, and two separate "VH1 Love" contest-style shows are unlikely to play nearly as well with audiences) there remains the fact that their home-movies belong to a fucking television company, their offspring's childhoods syndicated, a-la- The Truman Show, as the entertainment of millions of other households around the country and the world. Growing up in suburban America and coming out "well-adjusted" is challenging enough as it is; growing up in a national fish tank has got to provoke some severe existential angst.

But one can't go down this train of thought for very long without putting themselves in the young parents shoes, and conceding that their options were as sparse as their family was large. Clearly, the Jon and Kate could use all the revenue and manpower that that the show provides. And clearly, once they made the decision to allow their family to be televised at all, there was no going back. Anticipating the wild success of the show was not something that anyone could have been expected to do, but there has to be that certain acknowledgment that filming a subject inexorably changes it, and in no small way.

Yes, Jon and Kate consciously made a momentous decision- one that would benefit them greatly on paper, but would have an incalculable cost on their souls. As such, I think there is still time for them to emerge as heroes. If they can somehow regain control of the reality-TV apparatus that has presently swallowed them up, I believe they can craft a more emotionally reasonable situation, one that necessarily increases their family's level of privacy.

But to endlessly scrutinize and speculate on the state of the Gosselin family is to miss the more interesting point, that of what the show means for America. Or rather, what it means as America, as a primary vessel of entertainment for so many in this entertainment-saturated place and age.

For me, this is the ultimate irony, because the basic premise of the show depends instrumentally upon the collectively short-term memory of modern American TV-viewers. As James Poniewozik writes in the May 18 issue of TIME Magazine, "Big families used to be a staple of TV: Eight Is Enough, The Brady Bunch, The Waltons, The Partridge Family. When American families with three or more children were common, these clans weren't outlandish. They were like you, just more so. Lately, TV families have gotten smaller, just like viewers' families." Jon & Kate wouldn't be nearly so successful if the show had debuted alongside all its similar, older predecessors, at a time when most American families were big and struggling to make ends meet.

At the same time, however, both private and televised American families have grown more multi-cultural. Jon's ethnic background includes Korean, Irish and French, and his kids reflect, in varying degrees, a mix of both his and Kate's "Pennsylvania Dutch" physical features.

Most crucially, in a socio-cultural shift in attitudes that would have literally been impossible forty years ago, the show indicates that Americans have seemingly implicitly accepted the biotechnological wonder of human artificial insemination. Procreation by sexual intercourse alone is not to be missed, apparently. The most articulate objections to Jon and Kate are not that they decided to try for kids using artificial insemination, nor that they carried all the embryos to term. Rather, the objections are that they are acting irresponsibly now that they have the kids. And yet, the show wouldn't be compelling if there were any less kids in the family. Biotechnology has thus become doubly profitable, earning revenue not only for doctors but for entertainment producers. Either way, in this case, It's not the means, but the ends that American viewers are concerned with. It is an ends that, as I alluded to before, ironically ignores all beginnings- of life, of family, of TV families.

All of this leads me back to Eraserhead, perhaps the strongest case for abortion ever made in a film. It is nearly impossible to view the alternatively tragically and comically mutated infant in the film as anything but a mistake- of its parents, of God, of life itself. And where Jon & Kate is perfectly content to gloss over the biotechnological developments that created the situation, Eraserhead appears to implicate the increasing industrialization of society with the deformation of human beings and human relations. In a way, despite its date, it is much more forward looking than Jon & Kate, predicting what is now a common dissolution of the American family over child-rearing responsibilities and marital fidelity, now entirely separable from fertility.

Henry Spencer and Jon Gosselin share more than just an obvious dislike for their wives and their domestic situations. Both men are out of real jobs, on perpetual vacations in their respective surrealistic prisons of heavy machinery and glaring cameras, wanting nothing more than to internalize, to retreat into their own self-absorbed, anachronistic fantasies. Mary X and Kate are both emotional basket-cases, wracked with motherhood responsibilities they neither fully accepted nor rejected, misdirecting their anger and frustration at their equally-guilty male partners.

Eraserhead, though, was designed to be dark and troubling. It is unclear what the pleasure in Jon & Kate really is- or more precisely, where it stops- somewhere in the murky arena between the parents genuine desire for their kids well-being and the sordid reality of entertainment economics, i.e. controversy is more valuable than peace and harmony.

If one feels pangs of regret or guilt or experiences any lasting emotional trouble from Jon & Kate, then the day's news regarding California's Prop 8 is certainly food for thought. Why is it acceptable for a young heterosexual American couple to bend the laws of nature to satisfy their desire to have children, resulting a set of twins and a set of sextuplets, when the attempts of homosexuals to marry and adopt are outlawed? Put it another way- whose family is more fucked up, the fictional mutated one in Eraserhead, the "real" one in Jon & Kate, or the hypothetical queer one that exists in American voters' minds? Again, America, or American pop-culture, is often quite a paradox. Let's just hope, like the lyrics of the Who, that in your case, whatever it is, "The Kids Are Alright."