The most notable DVD release of the week* has to be the first season of Mad Men, which hits the street tomorrow just in time for newbies to get caught up on the AMC series before season two premieres in late July (it’s been available on iTunes for quite some time). I went on YouTube looking for clips from my favorite episodes and found the above fan vid, which focuses on Betty Draper (January Jones), the miserable model-turned-housewife of mysterious ad man Don Draper. I love it, if for no other reason than that it really draws out the way the show takes mid-century cinematic archetypes and weds them to real-seeming, endlessly multi-faceted characterizations.
This clip specifically highlights Mad Men’s Hitchcock allusions: the slate-gray, Madeline Elster-esque suit that Betty wears to therapy; Don’s spying, here symbolized by his employment of a home movie camera like something out of a cross between Peeping Tom and Rear Window; and my favorite, Betty’s fateful encounter with a flock of birds.
Betty is clearly based on the typical Hitchcock blonde-in-peril, a cool, vaguely shallow but anxiety-plagued beauty on the run from some kind of terror. Betty rocks the porcelain face with the furroed bros as well as Grace Kelly or Tippi Hedren, but she’s got virtually nothing tangible to fear (with the possible exception of her husband’s infidelities, but it’s made pretty clear that she’s certainly not the only girl on the block with that thorn in her domestic side) beyond her own sadness. She’s also got nowhere to go but the supermarket, and her only outlets for her tensions are sexual fantasies about door-to-door salesmen and a really weird relationship with the young son of the local single mom. It’s like a hypothetical sequel to North By Northwest, where Cary Grant’s character goes back to his normal work life in Manhattan and Eva Marie Saint’s moves into his suburban split-level and starts taking care of his kids. No wonder Betty drinks during the day.
*Unless you count War Inc, which is notable only because First Look’s ridiculously tight seven week window from theatrical premiere to DVD street date looks, in retrospect, like another in a line of smart moves designed to capitalize on the film’s surprise cult appeal. Of course, the film’s box office potency faded as its release expanded, and if it had done less well in its first weeks, this would look a lot like a dumping, but that’s fodder for another, far more bitter post…
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SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth