I find the TV show Mad Men to be eerily appropriate to the analysis of what is happening today in my profession. Don Draper is the perfect image of an academic.
Don’s central organizing quality is that of being terrified. He can’t muster the strength to tell his boss, “You disrespected me in my own house, and that sucks.” He can’t say to his mistress, “I’m jealous and humiliated.” He can’t even dare to tell the wife who is completely dependent on him that he doesn’t want her to work. Instead, he design pathetic, childish revenges that give him an illusion of some completely imaginary power.
This is a guy who makes a very comfortable living, who has tons of free time, who can come and go at work as he pleases, who is very good with words, has charisma, and whose job is to influence people with words. If that doesn’t scream “academic”, I don’t know what does.
Draper’s irrational, all-abiding fear has no explanation. The impostor syndrome, which is also an excuse trotted out eagerly by every terrified academic under the Sun, is a very unconvincing explanation for his abject terror.
So he grew up during the Great Depression, big whoops. I grew up during the bandit wars of the FSU’s 1990s and I’m not trembling in fear all day long. So he feels like an outsider in his professional and social milieu. My accent precludes me from even trying to pretend that I’m not an outsider but I’m not fearful.
It isn’t surprising that the show is so popular. It tells us what we all know: the most creative, intelligent, resourceful people in our society are besieged by nameless terrors. This is why it’s a mistake to expect them to stand up for anything or anybody. Nothing they can do will ever amount to anything but a silly, childish prank.
Clarissa's Blog 
The psychological effects on people of the Depression in the US during the 1930s and growing up in the late USSR/FSU were really different. My Grandparents were not afraid of everything, but they were overly cautious with money even when they had plenty of it. My wife who is about your age and grew up in the late USSR/FSU is cautious with money, but not to the extremes that a lot of Americans who went through the Depression. So I don’t think the two can really be compared. Americans who lived through the depression developed some irrational behavior traits that other people living through more difficult times did not.
LikeLike
I don’t think there is anything that could make me cautious with money. 🙂 🙂
LikeLike
Well, my wife is Kyrgyz not Ukrainian. 8)
LikeLike
“Nothing they can do will ever amount to anything but a silly, childish prank.”
Yup.
LikeLike
Well, Don is an impostor in the most literal meaning of the word. But you’re right that’s not the (main) source of his fear.
There’s a lot I’d love to mention but it comes close to spoiler territory….
I’ll just say the movie Mad Men most reminds me of is Days of Heaven which posits a kind of… determined ootlessness and restlessness as being as much one the founding principles of America as the Bill of Rights.
The other thing MM reminds me of (very oddly) is Ayn Rand (it’s no coincidence that Cooper keeps pestering Don to read her).
LikeLike
Well, it’s good to know there will be revelations about the sources of his fear. I worry that there will be no such revelations forthcoming about my colleagues, though. 🙂
LikeLike
Wait, how far you in the series? You are right that his central organizing quality is that of being terrified.
I want to say something but I don’t want to spoil it for you even by being pithy. OTOH, you might not make it to the end of season 6 because you might feel anvilled. There’s supposed to be another season but truthfully I feel like the last episode of season 6 could have been the end of the series to me.
LikeLike
We are still in the first season. But it is already very enjoyable. I have no idea why i used to see so many screeds denouncing this show on feminist websites. Parts of it are quoted directly from Betty Friedan. Even I don’t agree with her as much as these screen-writers do.
LikeLike
Don Draper is also better dressed than my colleagues. Oh, and you are right about Betty Friedman.
Wait to see what happens with Joan and Peggy!
LikeLike
“he grew up during the Great Depression, big whoops”
My pet theory is that societies are either on the whole optimistic or pessimistic. The US is basically optimistic (or has been until relatively recently) while Russophone cultures tend toward a ‘things are bad and will doubtless get worse” attitude.
More pessimistic cultures (and the individuals living within them) are better able to deal with things going catastrophically wrong. They think to themselves ‘I knew it!’ and somehow carry on while optimitic cultures experience profound trauma.
The Depression (by world standards) wasn’t that horrible, but the people who grew up in it felt subjectively worse than people who go through far worse in cultures where doom and suffering are felt to be inevitable.
In terms of MM, Don’s traumas had a lot of different sources.
LikeLike
“In terms of MM, Don’s traumas had a lot of different sources.”
– Yes, last night we saw an episode that shows the screen-writers going for the psychoanalytic explanation rather than my historical one.
“My pet theory is that societies are either on the whole optimistic or pessimistic. The US is basically optimistic (or has been until relatively recently) while Russophone cultures tend toward a ‘things are bad and will doubtless get worse” attitude. More pessimistic cultures (and the individuals living within them) are better able to deal with things going catastrophically wrong. They think to themselves ‘I knew it!’ and somehow carry on while optimitic cultures experience profound trauma.”
– This is a very interesting theory. I’ve never heard anything like it before.
LikeLike
My pet theory is that societies are either on the whole optimistic or pessimistic. The US is basically optimistic (or has been until relatively recently) while Russophone cultures tend toward a ‘things are bad and will doubtless get worse” attitude. More pessimistic cultures (and the individuals living within them) are better able to deal with things going catastrophically wrong. They think to themselves ‘I knew it!’ and somehow carry on while optimitic cultures experience profound trauma.”
I think the extremely different governments over the last 100yrs explain it quite profoundly. One might have been prone to taking your money but that’s nothing compared to the one that in many instances took your life in a whole variety of ways. Id be pretty freaking pessimistic too if I had to grow up in the soviet union during those years and even now for that matter. The good old US of A is nirvana in comparison.
LikeLike