Mad Men

I've just started watching the first season of Mad Men, a show set in a 1950's Madison Avenue advertising firm. I had been hearing about how popular this show was without paying any attention to it, until now. It is not uncommon for me to not know the theme of a popular show. I didn't see any episodes of 24, Lost, or Weeds. I tend more toward the talent shows via youtube and how their creative editors weave in the tearful drama. And, given that I don't watch any TV here because the kids monopolize it with their British shows, I spend most of my free time reading.

But this show, the first episode of Mad Men, struck a particular nerve for me. It pokes fun at American culture 50-plus years ago when gender discrimination and smoking in the work place was the norm, two topics I've been hardwired to be overly sensitive. I suppose the reason I am so sensitive to it even now is because I see a lot of this here, in Switzerland, in 2010... still... far more than I should.

A joke will be made, followed by an awareness that an American is nearby, and, oh, Americans are litigious, so perhaps we shouldn't joke like this right now. Is it that we're litigious? Or are we just far more aware of how we were held accountable for our discriminating behaviors in the only way that was legally available in the past? To change an unwelcome behavior, one (or a group) must change their tolerance for it.

There is still smoking in the buildings in Switzerland. They have spent a little more money to seclude people in a designated space of the building into a phone booth equipped with a vacuum and a filter. I think Americans might have done this, too, at one time. Perhaps they feel the escaping particulates are at an acceptable level, like our FDA allows certain levels of mercury in our farm fish, or acceptable levels of antibiotics and gene manipulations in our farm beef.

Signs of tolerance are still around. Here's a photo of actual chairs, in a commons area, in a business setting. They're cute, no? They're not gender-specific, per se, but the conversations about these chairs, at least those in my presence, always seem to turn gender-specific. Perhaps even this is just to test me and my own tolerance, to see how much more gender humor I can take without walking away. I once wrote in this blog about certain topics still seemingly being stuck in the 1970s here. Maybe my accuracy on the decade was a bit off.