“In Greek nostalgia literally means the pain from an old wound. It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone.”
Don Draper (Jon Hamm)
The perfect bookend to what I called The Perfect ‘Mad Men’ Monologue in my last post is Don Draper (Jon Hamm) giving his pitch to executive from the Eastman Kodak company in the first season of Mad Men, episode 13 titled The Wheel.
Technology is a glittering lure. But there is the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product.
My first job— I was in house at a fur company with this old pro copywriter–Greek– named Teddy. And Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is ‘new.’ Creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of calamine lotion. But he also talked about a deeper bond with the product—nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent.
Teddy told me that in Greek nostalgia literally means the pain from an old wound. It’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a space ship. It’s a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards. 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.”
Don Draper
Robin Veith and the show’s creator Matthew Weiner wrote that episode, which received an Emmy nomination.
P.S. Here’s part of what Wikipedia has under Nostalgia:
Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.[1]The word nostalgia is learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of νόστος (nóstos), meaning “homecoming”, a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning “pain” or “ache”, and was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. Described as a medical condition—a form of melancholy—in the Early Modern period, it became an important trope in Romanticism.
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