Moment of 1960s culture shock

[yakalskovich]

So, I have been mainlining 'Mad Men' lately, as I already mentioned before, originally entirely out of the wish to look at Christina Hendricks more.

And of course, I have been expecting the usual sexism, racism, misogyny, chauvinism, blatant consumerism etc. and took notice of it when it cropped up, like an anthropologist taking notice of customs she'd read about in books by anthropologists that visited the same tribe before her. The abominable treatment of Rachel Menken in the first episode -- check. Don Draper checking up on the progress of his wife's psychotherapy by phone, with the doctor matter-of-factly telling the husband the wife's innermost thoughts because he is of course entitled -- check. Savaltore Romano being so deep in the closet he even marries some unsuspecting if charming young woman -- check. The bearded beatnik type's having a black girlfriend being of some kind of shock value, and all other black people just being waiters, liftboys, servants etc. -- check. Big huge gas-guzzling monster cars - check. Drinking and smoking at any time and place, even around kids and during pregnancy -- check.

But today, culture shock got me. Bad. I was all 'OMG FFS they can't possibly do this!!11!!!1!! for the first time since starting to watch the series -- and I am on episode 2-07, 'The Gold Violin'. What happened was this:



Don and Betty Draper took their new Caddy for a spin with the kids, and they had a picnic in this idyllic spot. And when they were done, Don pitched his beer can into the general greenery, and Betty just shook out the blanket they'd all sat on, they packed their cooler and the blanket in the car, kids scrambled in (this thing is the size of the Titanic, more or less) and swanned off.

Leaving all sort of wrappers and plastic and stuff (the white bits in this picture) just lying under that ancient tree in that majorly idyllic spot. That shocked me. It really did. I mean, were these people pigs or what? Didn't they even realise if they ever wanted to have another picnic in the same idyllic spot, they' find their own corroded and disgusting refuse? Let alone anybody else?

I guess that was how people did it in the Sixties. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been an entire British children's TV series a bit later that lived entirely on 'Don't litter!' plus some brilliant musical spoofs.

Especially as essayel and I had talked about the five, seven and nine ways of sorting our rubbish in effect in the different places where we live, the traditional Bavarian beer bottle returning system, and the fact that her county council aims to completely abolish any leftover rubbish by 2015, this stark contrast of that upper middle class family (and I am not blaming America! I am sure people did the same in Gevelsberg, Abergavenny or wherever at that time -- she was around as a toddler, I wasn't yet, but my mum and grandma were and did take drives and have picnics) just dumping their stuff in the very place they'd enjoyed moments before, and driving off, really shocked me badly.

Comments

[marchenland.livejournal.com]

I was in Prague twice, both times in 2000. The 2nd time, during "tourist season" (summer), it was much cleaner than the 1st time, which was the previous Feburary. There wasn't enough time between my visits to represent a cultural shift.

After I had a near-miss with a particularly vile pile of... something during my first visit, and squawked loudly about the health of the dog who created it, my ex-BF who was living there, noted that it wasn't necessarily from a dog, and that he regularly witnessed people popping a squat on the sidewalks. I was not so lucky as to witness that, although public urination was a common thing to see all over the city. Old Town and the castle district was not so bad, but any less-touristy area like near the suicide bridge where I was staying, and near some Soviet-era rocket sculpture, and just some general neighborhoods, it was vile.

His opinion was that the people really just weren't fully up to the level of taking care of stuff like that on their own; he likened it to the assigned seating in movies (something that it starting to happen in the US now, oddly), and said that people just expect the State to take care of them and to tell them where to sit.

He also felt that with the amount of coal burned, the city was just so filthy and depressing during the winter that a malaise hung over the place, and that people didn't really care so much. By contrast, in the summer, people were more upbeat and thus cared more. Cleaning up after the dogs, however, was still a non-starter.

My main US city is New Orleans, which is probably the dirtiest city in the US, and is also considered to be the "most European" in flavor. After my trips overseas, I began to wonder about a connection.

I don't think you'd see this as much in France or Italy; it seems to be a thing related to former Soviet bloc countries. And there's certainly littering even here in Salt Lake, which is about as clean a city as I've ever seen. Nevertheless, I so think there's a subconscious thoughtlessness about what we deserve and who will take care of us in both the Mad Men model and the 2nd World model. I think they come from very different places, but the end result is similar.

[yakalskovich]

That's probably why Berlin, too. East Berlin was of course former Soviet bloc, and West Berlin was on an eternal drip of state subsidies to keep it viable in its island position. People in both were assigned stuff for decades.

That theory might be quite right.