It's been 25 years since Freddie Mercury, the four octave singer from Queen died from complications of AIDS. This Sunday will be the ending its 7th and final season of Mad Men. So I've been subconsciously thinking about pop culture tonight.
What's interesting to me, is that all night, as I've been listening to various Queen songs sung by Freddie, I've kept thinking of Don Draper and his second wife, Megan. I couldn't figure out why this association kept tapping on the front of my forehead, but it did. Then I realized, if I telescoped the various incarnations of Freddie Mercury and superimposed them over the Mad Men characters, I'd get a SPY Magazine match for "Separated at Birth" for Don (with a scribbled mustache) and Megan!
I loved Freddie Mercury's music and art (yup I own the book of Queen Art). I love the writing and acting of Mad Men. Together their eras encompass my youth and merging into adulthood. Queen with their music, style and anthems infecting my development, while,Mad Men represents the era of my childhood.
I stopped counting friends who died of AIDS when the number reached 33. Religious and literary power number or simply superstitiously, I just stopped at that number. The way the second to last episode of Mad Men has come crashing in full of minor chords, and the threat of a more discordant denouement for the show, leaves me feeling a tad anxious.
Well written & acted characters, singers with skin tingling personas and people who live life to the fullest are my weakness. They say the life of Freddie Mercury, as a boy growing up in Zanzibar under his families religion that celebrates life and has many family feasting rituals, gave him a strength as his body grew weak. Don Draper has lived the life of the mind, both as an ad man and as a character that is supposed to embody the American Dream of rags to riches, Horatio Alger and all that jazz. In this 2nd to last episode, his mind and imagination are still strong, but he's body is beaten up by stranger men he'd just confided in earlier that night. I'm not sure if Freddie contracted AIDS from men or a man who knew or not.
I read an interesting article in The Atlantic today, too. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/the-masculine-mystique/309401/?utm_source=SFFB&fb_ref=Default
How what is really affecting families now is that we all, collectively, fighting for money, regardless of gender or sexual orientation and who is "head of the household". The American Dream as a meritocracy myth is finally disappearing as the rights of equality rise and the disparity between rich and poor rises in tandem. As we saw in Mad Men, with Peggy and Joan, and same sex families struggle to make ends meet now, the cost of living has out paced the rate of inflation since the early 70's.
I wonder what Freddie Mercury would be singing about now, if he'd just lived long enough for a life stabilizing cocktail (although most of the men I knew who had those died by the mid-90's, just a few years later than Mercury). Would he be married and with kids, like Elton? What if Don Draper made it intact to the 1980's or even 2000. Would he be a Maker Dad, letting his CEO wife go out to work while he stays home, tinkers and taxi's the kids?
It's late. I have too much to do, but my mind likes to take these kind of strolls every now and again. More rumination at a later date and in more depth.
Good Night, 2nd half of the 20th Century, G'night!
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