From Memory to History by Jim Cullen

Author:Jim Cullen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Ironically, the most full-throated affirmation of family life—of a sort—comes in the form of an advertisement. Peggy and Don are charged with coming up with a campaign for Burger Chef, a fast-food chain, and of course search for a way to suggest that takeout is the best way to make everybody happy. “Are there people who eat dinner and smile at each other instead of watching TV?” she asks Don during 2014 episode “The Strategy.” “Did you ever do that with your family?” Don’s answer: “I don’t remember.” In their back and forth, Peggy hits on a winning pitch: “What if there was a place where you could go where there was no TV? Where you could break bread, and whoever you were sitting with was family?” The episode ends with Pete, Don, and Peggy enjoying a meal at a Burger Chef, with veteran director Phil Abraham deploying a standard Mad Men technique of moving (in this case in a fluid single shot) from close-up to wide angle to situate the characters in a broader historical context.28 The happiest families, it appears, are the ones you make yourself. That’s a dream that gets pursued, and sometimes achieved, with every generation in which two people unite to form a household. But part of what makes a family a family is that you don’t always get to choose who the members are. This, you might say, is an American dilemma.

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