April 28, 2008
Greek is okay; Latin is RIGHT OUT.
Posted by Roberta Lipp under Mad Men Mad | Tags: Peggy Olson, The Wheel, Don Draper, Indian Summer, Matthew Weiner, Relax-a-Cizor, copywriting, Rejuvenator, Kodak, pitch, everyman, Jackson Pollock |Don, easing into the Kodak pitch:
…in Greek, nostalgia literally means the pain from an old wound.
Peggy, stiffly entering the Rejuvenator team presentation:
Women lose weight so they’ll feel good about themselves. Healthier, more attractive.
Rejuvenate has a Latin root which literally means the return of youth.
The Rejuvenator give you the flush and glow, not only that you might have after hours of exercise, but certainly as a young girl.
Isn’t it nice to feel that way whenever you want.
Combined with a sensible diet…
the Rejuvenator.
Youll love the way it makes you feel.
Don’s response:
First of all, no Latin. You sound like a valedictorian.
The scene of Peggy’s presentation is endlessly fascinating, line by line, moment by moment (as is well, every scene in this series). Don and the guys force Peggy to be tough and manly, but there is a gentle quality as well; this is by no means a hazing. Peggy herself is dressing more and more like the German marketing researcher, and holds it together well, but there is such a feminine, even girlish quality to her.
As for the Greek versus Latin… is it just another writer’s trick (not Don and Peggy, but Weiner and co.) that is simply music with words, that we are not meant to notice? Is it one more way to compare Peggy and Don?
Are the two moments (and references to ancient languages at the opening of a presentation) unrelated? Please note they both say ‘literally’, so I’m gonna go with No. Are we saying that the same rules don’t apply to Don that apply to Peggy (which is fair; after all, you teach your students to color within the lines, while you yourself can Pollock all over the place). Peggy did present it like a valedictorian… more uppity than Peggy has a right to be. This echoes her date, just a few scenes earlier. Don presents anecdotally. An everyman. And maybe there’s your theme.
April 28, 2008 at 9:59 pm
I noticed that, and I just thought, tsk. But you are finding something more in it.
Peggy’s phrasing is awkward: “has a Latin root which means,” and it adds nothing. She’s selling the product name she chose.
Don’s phrasing is smooth, and he’s selling a notion; notice, he says, that you have longing. Notice you have a wound. The product is the cure. So the meaning adds something.
April 28, 2008 at 11:42 pm
As Don is presenting anecdotally, he is introducing a character, Teddy, who is Greek and almost more of an invisible authority on nostalgia. Peggy sounds like she looked up rejuvenate in the dictionary.
April 29, 2008 at 7:51 am
I also think that Don is picking up on the snobbish side of Peggy that we saw on her date and that could very well distance her from clients and colleagues.
April 29, 2008 at 8:01 am
I would place a third etymoligical moment in this context …
Babylon, when Rachel defines “utopia” from the Greek.
In sequence:
- Rachel uses the device (illustrating her education) at lunch during the time of their courtship
- Peggy uses the same device (less effectively, albeit correctly) and Don rejects its use. Not her delivery, but the device itself, “No Latin.” Did he think Rachel sounded like a valedictorian?
Did Rachel make him feel insecure when she did it? Possibly. More likely, he was taken with this method of demonstrating knowledge. And possibly when he heard Peggy use the same technique, he rejected out of hand because it seemed a pale reflection of his new woman (”She’s no Rachel”).
- Two months later Don’s reworked the device in a way that highlights his strengths (anecdotal, everyman, etc.), to superb effect.
I don’t think we hear Don quoting Teddy if he doesn’t first see Rachel’s lips say “utopos”.
April 29, 2008 at 8:17 am
Going with what Max said, when Don introduced the character of Teddy, he’s also setting up a story which culminates in the story of a man coming home. Which reminds me of The Iliad, another Greek story about a man finding his way home.
Peggy is lecturing when she talks about the Latin root of rejuvenate.
A story will always draw people in (if well-told). A lecture always puts one person above the other.
April 29, 2008 at 8:30 am
I think Don’s inspired by Harry’s own story about Lescaux and his own photography. Harry is educated but he also is making a larger point about how something affected him and Don was drawn in and moved despite himself.
I wouldn’t say any of this is necessarily conscious nor would I call Don’s process copying. It’s just the roundabout, magpie way that inspiration works. And in his presentation, Don is sharing himself much in the way that Harry shared with him. About the hand prints in Lescaux, Harry says “…like someone reaching through the stone right to us, saying I was here.” Harry is revealing something about himself in as open a way as he can (his longing for recognition and his acknowledgment that he didn’t have what it takes to be an artist, which Ouch, you know?)
And when Don defines nostalgia, he says Teddy told him that it was “the pain from an old wound,” while the pictures he shows are of him and his family. So where’s the wound? The power of his presentation is that he was saying something other than what the client felt; in other words, everyone thought they were responding to this man’s pictures about a happy family, they were really picking up on the unspoken message of “the wound”, the longing to share warmth and love with their families. “A place where we know we are loved” — few of these guys know they’re loved at home. But few of them (if other MM men are any indication) have real intimacy with their wives and children–and it hurts them. And Don right away used that Greek word to create a little buffer so that he could talk about this in a way that was genuine without being overly sentimental. I mean, the thing about that speech is that the modern jaded audience was equally moved. It was real and not at all manipulative bc Don was really revealing himself, obliquely but honestly.
April 29, 2008 at 8:41 am
When I wrote about Babylon, I pointed out that both Betty and Rachel, in the same episode, reference their excellent college educations, and in that very same episode, Midge “educates” Don by taking him to the Gaslight, and showing him a side of the world he hasn’t seen. Don longs for these educated women; part of what he gets out of these relationships is education by osmosis.
If anyone but Don had scolded Peggy that way (Pete, Freddy, even Ken) I’d have said it was sexism—women not being allowed to be smarter than men—but, although Don is sexist, that’s not a quality in women that threatens him. He’s just very sensitive to the nuance of how people speak and whether or not they’re making a connection. The episode (Indian Summer) in which Don bans Latin is the same episode in which Don gives Peggy really good advice about writing (”think about it…deeply…”).
The “wound” of nostalgia is looking back at that wedding picture, that New Year’s Eve party, and knowing you were happy then and are not as happy now. Everyone knows that intuitively, I think.
April 29, 2008 at 8:55 am
Even if that part isn’t obvious, that he is not as happy now, the wound is still, ‘we’ll never have that moment back.
By the way we had a new commenter on here who brought up the Rachel/Greek connection, but wordpress snarked her. I emailed her to come back and post it again, but the comments have already evolved past her comment.
So Mellifera, welcome to the Basket, and come back and say something else; your thoughts are valuable.
April 29, 2008 at 9:18 am
So true, Roberta. Showing your old family photos in a context of “nostalgia” is inherently relatable.
I don’t think that either Rachel or Peggy necessarily “inspired” the pitch, per se. Just that opening strategy.
The biggest inspiration we can discern is clearly his late-night talk with Harry. What was interesting is that when Harry brings up the hand print, Don says “signature of the artist”, but Harry has a different interpretation. Which leads Don to the time machine angle.
Notice that when Harry begins his narrative about the paintings (”The bison get all the attention …”), the camera’s on Don, because that’s what’s important - Don absorbing this story and letting the metaphor sink in.
This is
April 30, 2008 at 10:53 am
Dan! I think your post got cut off. Please to repost.
Deb: the nightclub is called the Gaslight? Interesting! I like that Don (and a lot of the men) may be sexist but still appreciate Peggy’s talent regardless.
I read a spoiler about Peggy’s baby and it looks like my theory about her giving it up was 100% wrong.
April 30, 2008 at 11:14 am
REALLY!!! Where’s that spoiler at?
April 30, 2008 at 11:18 am
TwOP.
Oh, and check your email. There’s a surprise!
April 30, 2008 at 12:29 pm
No cut-off … didn’t realize my aborted final thought was still dangling.
April 30, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Basket of kisses ladies: Please check your gmail.
April 30, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Both Auselio of TV Guide and Kristen of EOnline spoilered about Peggy possibly keeping her baby…sort of…think back to the conversation we had about Jack Nicholson…
Topic: As always, you all have made some really good points. Regarding Teddy the Greek, I wondered if this was just a rhetorical device or if Don really knew someone who schooled him that way. I never put the two together about Rachel’s Greek and Peggy’s Latin. But as someone upthread noted, Don (and Rachel) used anecdotes to underscore their point, whereas Peggy’s was more like the dictionary definition. In any kind of speech, whether it’s a conversation or a presentation, I think anecdotes are always more potent. They help you relate to the speaker more easily, because they involve you in their story.
I think Greek is also a little more accessible to lay people than Latin is. People are in fraternities and sororities, they shop at Alpha Beta supermarkets, there’s Alpha and Omega in the Bible, there’s an iota of truth to something…Latin is the language of law. It’s esoteric and dry. It doesn’t really touch people on an every day basis in the same way that Greek does. Plus, Greek words seem easier to pronounce…?
April 30, 2008 at 5:12 pm
I remember, Hullaballoo. But I guess I didn’t GET IT get it. Ya know? Sigh.
You know who can check the whole “nostalgia” speech IF ONLY THEY’D CHECK THEIR EMAIL? Some ladies who write this blog about an advertising agency in the early 60s. Maybe you know said ladies. They’ve been known to post here.
April 30, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Hull, I’ve never heard of Alpha Beta supermarkets. I’m going to have to bookmark Kristen, my news reader doesn’t pick her up for some reason.
Eme, some ladies have day jobs that occasionally get really demanding, and one of us is a single mother. So, y’know, life. We got the email it was just too big a deal to read through. We’re so there as soon as we can, and we really thank you.
April 30, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Gah. I’m so provincial sometimes…Alpha Beta was probably a Southern California chain. I’m not even sure they exist any more. But I do remember them from when I was a kid in the 1970s and 80s. I think it was a running joke in the Revenge of the Nerds movies–Alpha Beta Pi=Alpha Beta Pie.
Both Kristen and Auselio hint that Peggy moves back home to live with her mother and sister, and the sister assumes parental control of PeteSpawn. I don’t know how reliable their spoilering is, but it certainly adds a new dimension to the story. And Weiner has always said that you can’t really get to know someone unless you see them in their home environment, so…who knows?
I read this morning that Maggie Siff’s going to be a regular on a new show on the F/X network (Sons of Anarchy I think? About a biker gang?), which debuts this fall. That means they go into production very soon, if they haven’t already. I wonder if that means she won’t be back as Rachel in Season 2, or if that’s going to limit that character in some way? I hope not. Don needs someone to haunt him, and nobody does it better than she does.
April 30, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Teddy is real, I think. I don’t remember the episode, but Betty definitely makes a reference to Teddy at one point … gosh, just can’t recall the circumstances … was it when Don was courting her … didn’t he bring her a fur coat?
Betty’s relating a story to someone, and mentions Teddy by name.
April 30, 2008 at 9:34 pm
You’re right Dan, it’s Shoot; Betty tells the story of how she met Don, and it was at a photo shoot for fur coats.
April 30, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Yeah I meant to mention a hundred comments ago, that it is a lovely nugget that Don’s segue into his nostalgia rap involves the job through which he met Betty.
I don’t recall her mentioning Teddy, but maybe he came up at a different moment.
April 30, 2008 at 10:19 pm
I don’t doubt that Teddy existed, I just wondered if they actually had the etymological conversation about “nostalgia.” I can imagine an old school ad guy taking the young Don under his wing, teaching him the ropes, suggesting that tapping people’s memory of past happiness is the surest way to sell them, but did he and Don get into the origins of the word, or was that just a rhetorical device that Don picked up from Rachel and Peggy?
May 1, 2008 at 5:23 am
[...] up any information until it’s like public anyway, but I wrote her last night after reading Hullabaloo’s comment. I figure, let me try again. getting. some information. out of my friend. I’ve bugged her [...]
May 1, 2008 at 6:47 am
Good. I just wanted to make sure you got it. Sorry I was pushy. Read it at your leisure.
May 1, 2008 at 8:31 am
Hull, that’s a good question. One can imagine a Greek being very proud of his heritage, and showing off his linguistic knowledge to a young smartass. It could go either way, but I doubt he’d have spun into a digression about Teddy and fur and all if it wasn’t true.
Eme, no apology necessary.
May 2, 2008 at 9:11 am
Okay, hullabaloo, I have read every Kristin column going back two weeks, I don’t know what you read but it’s not there.
May 2, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Wow, Deb, do I feel like a fool…But doing a little web research, it looks like that bit has been removed from Kristin’s column. If you check the google news items for April 28, they refer to that sliver of info. Here’s the link:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&um=1&tab=wn&scoring=n&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22mad+men%22&sa=N&start=10
Also, here’s the Ausiello tidbit that suggests the same thing:
http://www.tvguide.com/Ask-Ausiello/mad-men/080423-17
May 2, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Phew, I knew I wasn’t the only one who read that. TWOP lists the exact quote (along with a link to the page with the missing information) as it appeared on Kristin’s site:
http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=3157791&view=findpost&p=10188840
As I said in my original post, I wasn’t sure about the reliability of their spoilers. That it’s been removed could only mean one of two things, I think. 1) Either there was no truth to the rumor whatsoever, in which case I would think Kristin (and Ausiello) would issue an apology/update/explanation for reporting the information in the first place; or 2) it’s absolutely true, and she retracted it because she’s received some sort of gag order…?
May 2, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Okay, I posted another link to TWOP (Mad Men Forum, Spoilers, p. 9, Post #127) that reported the direct quote from Kristin’s site, but I think it got spammed.
It looks like Kristin was asked to remove the information. I suppose this is because either there’s no truth to the rumor whatsoever, in which case I would think that she (and Ausiello, for that matter) would issue a retraction/update/explanation/apology. OR it is absolutely true, but she received some sort of gag order…perhaps in exchange for better or more scoopage closer to the series premiere?
May 2, 2008 at 4:42 pm
I suspect gag order. I had actually seen the Ausiello bit and didn’t put two and two together. So thanks.