Don Draper's carousel of genius
It's 1960, and the Sterling Cooper advertising agency on New York City's Madison Avenue, where Mad Men plays out, is pitching a campaign for a new-fangled Kodak machine that creates slide shows. The company is fixated on the "wheel" metaphor, but Don Draper (Jon Hamm), using images of his own family, shows the Kodak executives that the sum of technology is more than its moving parts as he introduces them to the "carousel" in which memory, yearning and images become one.
"This device... isn't a spaceship, it's a time machine.
It goes backwards, forwards.
It takes us to a place where we ache to go again.
It's not called the Wheel.
It's called the Carousel.
It lets us travel the way a child travels.
Around and around and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved."
What incredible writing and what sublime delivery! Mad Men is a marvel.
