The Times Aren't a-Changin': The best show on TV at the moment is probably Mad Men, AMC's original series about the personal and professional goings-on of execs in a high-powered ad agency in 1960. I'm pleased that, now that the whole period-piece culture shock has been covered, they are really digging into the characters, some of whom are remarkably well shaded. The acting, in some instances, leaves a bit to be desired, but the stories come through and even though it's already a fine show, I have the sense that they have yet to really hit their stride.

One thing that must strike anyone who sees it is how much things have changed since that time. In and of itself, that's no big deal. But to someone like me, who still has memories of those days (not 1960 strictly speaking -- I was only just born in 1960, but I remember the way of life described in the series vividly) it's a bit of a shock to see them again, this time as a historical representation.

The changes are almost certainly for the better, I believe. Of course, the basics remain in place -- they always do; humans are still humans -- but the spin and surface are very, very different. (I described a bit of this last month's Tube Notes.) My first reaction to the magnitude of change is to not see it as something out of the ordinary. My instinct tells me that, although the full effect of it can only be seen after-the-fact, social change proceeds at a pretty much constant pace. It's going on right now, but we just don't have the perspective to realize it, and if we try to distance ourselves enough to see it, we usually get it wrong because of our contemporary prejudices.

But then I read this observation from Gregg Easterbrook about the movie American Graffiti:

It's haunting to think American Graffiti, which surely depicts the perfect high-school-days summer night that [director George] Lucas never actually had -- was made in 1973 and portrays small-town California of 1962. Just 11 years had passed, yet American Graffiti was received as a nostalgic trip into a bygone era of music and social mores that could never return. Think if you made a movie today that was intended to be a wistful voyage 11 years into the past: to 1996. Hardly anything would seem different, except for the lack of cell phones, and there'd be no haunting sense of a simpler lost era. Is there even one single person who would pay $8 for cinematic nostalgia about 1996?

Haunting is right. Maybe the second half of the 20th century really was a time of accelerated social change. Or maybe the contemporary times stand out for their lack of social change. I don't know, but I certainly need to rethink the idea of social change at a constant pace.