The Times, Are They A-Changin’?

posted at 10:23 am on August 21, 2009 by Karl

Like a lot of people, I chuckled over the story about Bob Dylan getting detained by a 24-year-old cop who failed to recognize him in Long Branch, NJ. But is it a signpost of the changing times?

A recent nationwide telephone survey by the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project reveals that Dylan is not all that well liked by any age group other than the Boomers. However, young people are not all about the last 15 minutes. Young people preferred The Beatles and the Rolling Stones over Nirvana and Coldplay — and Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash over Dylan.

These mixed results are mirrored in the survey results about differences exist between the values of the older and younger generations:

The survey asked that question of those who said the generations differed on any of four core values: work ethic, moral values, respect for others and tolerance of different races and other groups.

The public’s judgment is unmistakable on three of the four values tested. Regardless of age, about two-thirds or more of the public believes that older Americans are superior in terms of their moral values, respect for others and work ethic. The younger generation is viewed as being more socially tolerant, though the verdict is less one-sided.

The survey was still on my mind when I saw that the third-season premiere of AMC’s Mad Men drew personal record ratings, increasing 75% among adults 18-49. If I had to guess, the show appeals to liberals more than conservatives. Mad Men showrunner Matt Weiner, is clearly a liberal guy.

However, to date, Weiner has been more honest and balanced about the politics and mores of the era than you would get from someone like Aaron Sorkin. For example, he has made a point of showing that a lot of people did not care for John F. Kennedy as candidate or commander-in-chief. More progressive characters, whether they be beatniks, or the most bohemian copywriter at the Sterling-Cooper ad agency, often come off as poseurs in part. The lead character, Don Draper, may have manifest character flaws, but he also has a moral code and a traditional manliness that make him attractive, even to progressive viewers. And in interviews, Weiner has expressed surprise that viewers were shocked by the amount of smoking in the series, noting that people mentally airbrush the fact that smoking was prevalent in society well into the Nineties.

Bringing things full circle, Weiner recently used a musical metaphor to explain to TV critic Alan Sepinwall why the Mad Men story will likely end sometime around 1970:

I would like to see them get to the end of this (decade), and that was my original intention when I wrote the pilot… Let’s take away all the Boomer rosy haze… And no matter what happens — Summer of Love, The Beatles, Woodstock, Rolling Stones — when you get to 1970, “My Way” is still in the top 10 songs. You know what I mean? That’s what I’m interested in.

What Weiner means (imho) is that the cliched media narrative of the Sixties leaves out that boomers were — and still are — a highly divided generation that actually tilts a bit to the right, and that the conservative and populist forces of the era were often dominant. Hollywood has generally done a lousy job of telling that story; Weiner may well do better.

Most of all, what Weiner means (again, imho) is that Mad Men is a show that is as much about how little things change as it is about how much they do. The times, they are always a-changin’ — but human nature changes much more slowly. It is why people in the 21st century can relate to characters in a drama set in the early 1960s.

In the real world, Americans’ ideological orientation has barely budged beyond the margin of error since 1972. So when a survey about the generation gap finds most young people mostly prefer the values and work ethic of their elders, it would not be surprising if the young adopt those values as they mature. With a little work, those values ought to keep our increased social tolerance from sliding further into an acceptance of divisive identity politics or tolerance of threats to our national security.

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