..and finally, I got myself to see the last episode of Mad Men. I’d been putting it off because the series was the kind I enjoyed so much that I never wanted it to end. The last few episodes were quite ‘meta’ in the sense that through Don Draper, the show’s protagonist, the show itself was searching for a befitting ending.
<spoiler> These episodes saw Don getting rid of his possessions, until all he had left was an envelope with some money (and a ring) and a cover with a change of clothes. He had lived the previous few years of his life as Don Draper – a name that wasn’t his. The idea of Don Draper though was all his, but somewhere in him, was also Dick Whitman, his original name. Every time he made the confession of taking another man’s name, you could sense his guilt, and relief. Maybe that was the freedom he was looking for, when we was getting rid of all the paraphernalia attached to Don Draper.
It made me think of identity. Don probably felt conflicted because of his taking another man’s name, but some of it applies to us too. Throughout life, we build an identity (or is that a series of identities?) – from societal – nationality, language religion, schools we went to, to personal – the places we worked at, our possessions, the people we know etc and underlying belief systems, thought processes, behaviours, world view and so on. Step by step, day by day, sometimes by design, sometimes going with the flow. Sometimes the means to an end, sometimes the end itself. There’s a line that Bert Cooper attributes to the Japanese “a man is whatever room he is in.” As we move from one room to another, and layer upon layer accumulates, does it take us away from who we really are, or does it bring us closer? Does building an identity whose existence is governed by factors within and without also make us lose what was originally us? Does that original version matter?
One of Draper’s famous lines goes thus
Can one do that to a lifetime of identity? And if one does manage to strip it all away, who’s to say one will like what’s left? But imagine, if you didn’t have the ‘baggage’ of your identity, what would you do? 🙂