Monday, August 18, 2008

You Never See An Interview

Where an artist or a writer says he wants to convey one concrete, non-ambiguous message. It's always nuance and ambiguity that they want to "explore." I just read an interview of Matthew Weiner talking about how he sees Don Draper and the whole show - and of course he mentions ambiguity. I found the profile interesting - the article focused on the Jewish aspects of the show. Mainly the idea of becoming an American success:

"I'm interested in telling the story of what kind of person succeeds in the U.S., and it is the outsider, it is someone who is unattached that we value. To succeed in the U.S., one of the deals is you will have to become a white man, and what that means is you will have to give something huge up, which we've all done willingly, and that is very painful. And that is the story. You can reinvent yourself, it will be tolerated, but you are losing something that you don't think you value, but it's going to hurt you, because you can't escape yourself."

I don't know if I completely agree with his assessment but there is something true, I just not sure the "it" is "White Man."

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