Did any of you write to soldiers in the first Iraq war? My class were all required to write a letter, I believe in the 6th grade, and I was the only one to receive a letter back. We actually kept in touch for about a year and I still have the letters. He was probably 21 or 22, was married with a baby. He seemed so old at the time. I sometimes wonder how he is.
@Penny: I wrote to a guy whose mom used to babysit me. He was stationed in Bahrain and was so lonely he was looking up literally everyone he knew from his childhood. We lost touch at one point, and I've spent a lot of the intervening years worrying about him.
Yay for Ms. Spanier for writing to soldiers. It's probably the brightest spot in their day and gives them something to smile about. But am I the only one who got the vibe that she's disappointed that her children are all female? Maybe she doesn't mean it that way, but "I only have four girls" sounds like she's let down in some way.
@queen_caribbean: No, you're not the only one who got that.
Kudos to her, but the composition of the military has changed since 1944, and now some soldiers are even female! and could also use some encouragement, I'm sure.
*sigh*
@queen_caribbean: That's exactly what I came here to post! "Only" four girls? I know she's a product of her time, but I think she could turn on her TV every once in a while and keep up. As though women don't serve in the military and might be in need of letters too?
How cute would it be if those little girls grew up, fell in love, and lived happily ever after? Can we PLEASE make this a love story? Also, I am secretly hoping that someone will write to me one day: when I was in high school, I sent a message in a bottle while on a cruise--it was tossed into the Gulf Stream so it SHOULD have traveled pretty far. I also wrote the message in three languages. Here's hoping!
My grandparents actually DO fit into the 50s stereotypes. Not that they are 2-dimensional, which a lot of people on here refute, but that they behaved in the way that they were conditioned to, acting out the roles that they were taught were normal and appropriate.
My grandfather suffered from PTSD, but of course because of his generation he went his whole life without being treated. He was a tough-love, gruff sort of man who clearly loved my mom and my sister and I (and my grandmother!), but just simply didn't express his feelings very openly. My grandmother, similarly, behaves very 'ladylike' and is shocked about how women act these days.
the problem is that the baby boomers remember the 50's as being stricter because they were kids then, and since everything in society seems to be aimed for the baby boomers (insert sigh here). the 60's was their coming of age, hence the comparison.
ask anyone who is in their early to mid 70's now about what the 50's were really like and you'll get a completely different story. folks in their 70's now came of age in the 50's in high school and college. teens could drink legally then. in bars. in public. all the early beatniks of the 50's? baby boomers didn't invent smoking weed or doing drugs...the jazz cats of the 50's did. most if not all of the ideals of the 60's had their roots in the 50's. but, y'know, it's easy to paint the entire decade it as strict and reserved when the kids at woodstock were running around with little red wagons watching howdy doody in the 50's.
I had something like this reaction when I finally actually sat down and saw all 234 episodes of Leave It To Beaver (it was shortly before I named myself JB, if that helps you). Ward Cleaver, cold? He was the planet's biggest softie, and Hugh Beaumont's influence as a minister on the character was evident. I never expected to find that much nuance and humor in it. It was right about then that I knew that in a way, movies like Pleasantville were doing us a disservice (even though I loved it). People were not, and never have been, two-dimensional. They certainly weren't just like us, which is the other mistake people make about history, but they weren't thin and wooden and drawn to order as some sort of methodology for thinking about ourselves in the future.
Moreover, my grandfathers both came of age in the fifties, and one of them was so affected by his war experiences and the tragic death of his first child that he drank himself to death--took longer than he planned, I'm sure--and the other, in his dotage, is prone to telling my husband only stories of the Pacific theater, still so fresh and disturbing that he thinks I should be shielded from them. It's possible that only now that we have large numbers of young people coming back from the Middle East with similar experiences will we really understand what it's like to go on with life in these United States after spending five, six, seven years at war. They deserve better from us than assumptions, and so do our forebears.
God, i love love letters (writing and receiving). And not just the mushy intimate ones also funny and sexy kind. Shame it's a dying mode of communication (no emails and texts don't count).
I mean think about it save for thank you letters and maybe cover letters, when in this day and age do you really need to handwrite a letter (no email, no microsoft word).
This is actually one of my major problems with Mad Men, and the reason I haven't been able to get in to it. I feel like they DO portray men as one dimensional. Don Draper has feelings, but they aren't about the fact that he's constantly cheating on his wife. Everyone is so "good old boy, women wine and cigars, etc." that you don't get the feeling that any of them have a problem with it. Everything is just such a caricature. Granted, I've only seen the first season, since I wasn't impressed I didn't move on. But my main problem with it is that it seems to be a show of stereotypes.
@laureltreedaphne: Hmm, I disagree. Even Roger, whom I LOATHE, was vulnerable when he had the heart attack. Momentarily, anyway. Harry felt real remorse for cheating on his wife. Pete's main "feeling" seems to be inadequacy (which he unsuccessfully he tries to cover up).
As to Don, there's the last ep of the first season where he fantasizes that his family is home waiting for him and he goes to Thanksgiving with them. Normally I find him fascinating but not particularly sympathetic, but that scene made me feel for him.
I don't know - I think about the shows I really love, like Homicide, or even How I Met Your Mother - and I see more nuance in those characters than I do in the Mad Men characters. But I see what you're saying.
That scene made me feel for him BUT (spoiler below)
All sympathy I had for him was ruined by the fact that he had been willing to abandon his children a few hours earlier. So at that point, I didn't care that he was alone in his big empty house. I guess you are supposed to feel that his family is what he really wants, deep down, but I don't see any real evidence of that.
They all have contradictions and feelings that are not expected. I hate to love Pete, he wants to be loved by his Dad, so he's insecure and an asshole to other people. He seems to have made a connection with Peggy yet he refused to commit to this relationship and focused on the "safe" marriage.
@Maritsa: The scene where he went to see his brother and finally cracked and hugged him was so great to me. And it felt very much like two grown men trying to hide the fact they were overcome by emotion.
@Penny: That's actually one reason I love Numbers. It's really fair to men, and un-smarmily explores masculinity in an all-male household, but never drifts into acceptance of misogyny or sitcom stereotypes. In fact. I find it very self-corrective that way. They don't pretend the issues aren't there, and they don't pretend they can solve them all, but they keep trying.
@laureltreedaphne: I wouldn't say Mad Men was a show of stereotypes. Sure, the characters are recognizable, but hardly flat. If anything, it's the characters themselves who are each trying to fit into what they deem the appropriate archetypes, to achieve perfection... and we, the viewers, get to watch them each fail a little more each week, and rebel against the parameters they set for themselves.
@laureltreedaphne: I feel like he wants to want the perfect family life. As it is I think he only wants the appearance of it, because of what it symbolizes, but he doesn't really want it. If that makes sense!
@laureltreedaphne: there's an aspect of that 'good old boy' thing that masks the fact that a lot of the men were veterans from the korean war and world war 2. plus, men didn't talk about their feelings with other men...that is what bartenders and sometimes wives are for.
One only needs to read Regan's letters to know that men could have feelings in the 50's. Say what you will about the man, he was a good letter writer.
I have a pile of letters from my first serious boyfriend. He even told me he loved me for the first time in a letter that I received the day after he left for school. We dated between the end of high school through our first year of college. He was in TN, I was in CA. I seriously cherish those letters, even though he turned out to be a douche. I've never written letters with a boy again....
09/18/09
I haven't done it because I'm trying to watch my pennies, but it is a very cool project.
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Kudos to her, but the composition of the military has changed since 1944, and now some soldiers are even female! and could also use some encouragement, I'm sure.
*sigh*
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08/27/09
My grandfather suffered from PTSD, but of course because of his generation he went his whole life without being treated. He was a tough-love, gruff sort of man who clearly loved my mom and my sister and I (and my grandmother!), but just simply didn't express his feelings very openly. My grandmother, similarly, behaves very 'ladylike' and is shocked about how women act these days.
I don't know, maybe they are the anomalies...
08/26/09
ask anyone who is in their early to mid 70's now about what the 50's were really like and you'll get a completely different story. folks in their 70's now came of age in the 50's in high school and college. teens could drink legally then. in bars. in public. all the early beatniks of the 50's? baby boomers didn't invent smoking weed or doing drugs...the jazz cats of the 50's did. most if not all of the ideals of the 60's had their roots in the 50's. but, y'know, it's easy to paint the entire decade it as strict and reserved when the kids at woodstock were running around with little red wagons watching howdy doody in the 50's.
08/27/09
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08/26/09
Moreover, my grandfathers both came of age in the fifties, and one of them was so affected by his war experiences and the tragic death of his first child that he drank himself to death--took longer than he planned, I'm sure--and the other, in his dotage, is prone to telling my husband only stories of the Pacific theater, still so fresh and disturbing that he thinks I should be shielded from them. It's possible that only now that we have large numbers of young people coming back from the Middle East with similar experiences will we really understand what it's like to go on with life in these United States after spending five, six, seven years at war. They deserve better from us than assumptions, and so do our forebears.
08/26/09
I mean think about it save for thank you letters and maybe cover letters, when in this day and age do you really need to handwrite a letter (no email, no microsoft word).
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As to Don, there's the last ep of the first season where he fantasizes that his family is home waiting for him and he goes to Thanksgiving with them. Normally I find him fascinating but not particularly sympathetic, but that scene made me feel for him.
08/26/09
I don't know - I think about the shows I really love, like Homicide, or even How I Met Your Mother - and I see more nuance in those characters than I do in the Mad Men characters. But I see what you're saying.
08/26/09
That scene made me feel for him BUT (spoiler below)
All sympathy I had for him was ruined by the fact that he had been willing to abandon his children a few hours earlier. So at that point, I didn't care that he was alone in his big empty house. I guess you are supposed to feel that his family is what he really wants, deep down, but I don't see any real evidence of that.
08/26/09
They all have contradictions and feelings that are not expected. I hate to love Pete, he wants to be loved by his Dad, so he's insecure and an asshole to other people. He seems to have made a connection with Peggy yet he refused to commit to this relationship and focused on the "safe" marriage.
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I love the show.
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08/26/09
I have a pile of letters from my first serious boyfriend. He even told me he loved me for the first time in a letter that I received the day after he left for school. We dated between the end of high school through our first year of college. He was in TN, I was in CA. I seriously cherish those letters, even though he turned out to be a douche. I've never written letters with a boy again....
08/26/09