PUL-EEZE: Shows like “Mad Men” and the newly started “Parade’s End” have something we lost. (
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Call it civil unrest.
Loudmouths with full mouths screaming in restaurants. F-bombs tossed around in front of little kids. Cellphone addicts yelling on public transportation. The obesity epidemic. The rise of falling pants. The end of face-to-face conversation. The death of the slow seduction. The celebration of ignorance over education. Slobs in style. Immediate gratification as a necessity. No shame.
Have you noticed that the less civil we become, the more we gravitate to shows that epitomize, glamorize and celebrate civility, manners, codes of conduct and style over, well, everything?
I’m talking about“Downton Abbey,” “Mad Men,” and the newest kid on the block, “Parade’s End.”
Do we secretly long to return to a world in which, (glamorized and fictionalized as it is), people got dressed for work, sporting events, plane trips and even to walk in the woods?
Do we all really want to go back to a time when we understood what the rules were?
Hell no. Failing the permanent collapse of the power grid, we really don’t want to go back to living upright — as opposed to living hunched over our computers.
But there’s no doubt, that on TV at least, the way we were was so much nicer than the way we ar
e.
That said, each of these shows is also about how we got to where we are now — because each takes place on the ledge of seismic changes.
On “Downton Abbey,” the Crawley family is trying to preserve their terribly civilized way of life in the face of world war and its immediate aftermath. Dressing up — even for each other — is not just about fabric, it’s about the fabric of society.
Luckily the Crawleys don’t know that, someday people in sweatpants and wife beaters will be buying candy in their grand salon.
“Parade’s End,” the fantastic new series on HBO starring Rebecca Hall and Benedict Cumberbatch — adapted from the Ford Madox Ford novels — is, like “Downton,” also about Edwardian-era upper-crusters for whom the appearance of civility is all.
In this case, however, Christopher (Cumberbatch) endures the public (but unspoken) promiscuity of his wife and sacrifices his own happiness to preserve civility. It’s that important to him.
Meantime, his wife, the uncivilized-but-civil fashion plate Sylvia (Hall), benefitting from the women’s suffrage movement, embraces the new ways — not to mention every man she meets in wild sex romps. Speaking of wild sex romps and good clothes, fast-forward to the swinging pre-hippie 1960s of “Mad Men.”
Again, we are brought to the edge war — in this case, Vietnam.
The men of “Mad Men,” like “Parade’s” males, mistake the tide of social change — in this case, the civil rights and women’s movements — for a passing inconvenience.
For a few hours a week, we pretend we don’t know that, under all the good manners, lives brutality and fraud. But — damn! — those beautiful veneers make it all look so much more, well, civilized back then.