There’s a priceless moment in the 1979 film “Being There”,
based on Jerzy Kosinski’s 1970 novel of the same name, in which the character
played by Peter Sellers, in one of his last film roles, is asked about his
sexual preferences. Sellers plays a nice but dim gardener, charming and
innocent and gentlemanly, who has spent most of life in the employee of a
wealthy family in Washington, DC. His name gets distorted - as the plot unfolds
- to Chauncey Gardiner, although his real name is Chance, and his occupation,
gardener. Most of his spare time is spent watching television. He becomes
embroiled with media and political types, and before long seems headed for the
White House. Well now, who could imagine such a thing, a complete idiot becoming
President of the United States?
Anyway, back to the priceless moment. Because of his evident
naïvety and asexuality, enormous humour is elicited when he’s asked about his
tastes. “I like to watch”, he declares. “I like to watch TV”, he adds, with
innocent hints of further deviancy.
Liking to watch. Hm. So we’re back to last time’s uninvited
theme – voyeurism. The trouble is, there appears to be no technical term that
means “liking to watch”, without sexual connotations. Scopophilia and
scoptophilia, as with voyeurism, both imply liking to look at activities or
items of erotic interest, although their Greek roots are not so restrictive. It’s
just us, with our nasty take on everything. Can there be no innocent vision?
Even without a word for it?
So be it. I like - not so much to watch - as to look. As
someone who has always drawn or painted, I have always liked to look at the
world around me. I was blessed with a pair of eyes that have served me well. My
dad, who was a proper artist, taught me to observe. Not everyone is so lucky.
However, these days most people carry around a device that can be used as a
camera, and as such it can be used as an aid in learning how to see, to frame,
to compose, to crop. If they practise this, in time, they won’t need the
device; they’ll see that way out of habit, and their world will be that much
more interesting, more artistic, perhaps even more beautiful. Looking at things
is good.
When I’m travelling I often like to look out of the window.
I even do this on the tube. On aircraft I love to look at clouds, down at the
ocean, at the strangely flattened mountains, at cities where I’m about to land,
at everything. So when I read this week that Emirates wants to introduce planes
without windows, I was horrified.
Building aircraft without windows can no doubt improve their
structural integrity, and prevent passengers from being sucked out into the
pale blue yonder. I’ve never flown with
Emirates, so I don’t know if this is a peculiar problem that happens to them a
lot. But, no – quite apart from the arguments about safety and claustrophobia –
this is a perfectly daft idea. I want to look out at real sky, at what’s up
there and what’s down below, not at some televised real-time version of it,
however technically clever, however good for the airframe and not getting
sucked out. I’ll take my chances. All right, many people don’t want to look
out, they want to work or read or play or watch films or listen to music; trans-oceanic
flights (and others) can be very long and boring; many flights operate at
night. But do you think the airlines are going to be happy for long just
showing you the passing scenery? Nope, there’ll be a commercial break just as
you get to that interesting glacier or high level view of Paris or Chicago, the
very moment the Bay of Naples comes into view. There’ll be a trailer for your
destination, its hotels, its car hire firms, movies showing next month. Some
airlines – no guessing which ones – will charge you for the privilege of having
/ not having this facility. And what they do for aircraft they’ll want to do
for trains, cars and buses, and certainly for underground systems. Once again,
the curse of electronics (though if your next station is Neasden, they may be
able to brighten your day). And of course if they do the same thing for office
windows your workspace in Slough or Swindon may suddenly become more appealing.
“If it’s Monday it must be the Maldives”. No, bad idea.
Transport planners never get it, do they. It’s always all
about money and business opportunities, never about journeys or places or being left on your own. None of these
people understand that the enjoyment of travel as it is, is something that some people – mostly old duffers like
me from the pre-digital age – want and value. Travel as places, as geography, as
what you see out of the window. The sort of inconvenient people who don’t
respond to advertisements but who want as much freedom and privacy as possible,
not being dictated to by some teenage nerd with a techno-fetish or a marketing
wazzock with a product, and most of
all, not wanting to be the victim of some inarticulate announcer (“this is
Alison, your train manager”) fond of their
own amplified voice (“remember the three esses”). People who like the real,
natural, world, not a virtual replica of it. Already it’s bad enough being
stuck next to a “pillar” on a train, or being on one of those trams plastered
with hideous mesh-like adverts, or on a plane not being able to get near a
window.
If Emirates get their way and other airlines follow, then as
far as I’m concerned they can create a virtual me, stick me next to a virtual
window, and send me to a virtual destination far away. As for the real me, I’ll
stay at home, then take a walk and look at some trees.
Sorry, windows were invented a long time ago so you can look
through them. That’s what they’re for.
This story reminded me of a brief folly of mine at the age
of about nine, when I was going through an inventing phase. I’d seen a sundial
somewhere, only the sun wasn’t shining, so it didn’t work properly. “I can do
better than this”, I thought. So I “invented” a device which consisted of a
horizontal clock face, with a spike sticking up in the centre, and a light bulb
affixed to a rotating plate worked by an electric motor. The plate would
complete one revolution every 12 hours, and the bulb and spike would produce a
shadow that would travel round the clock face so you could tell the time.
Brilliant. A sundial that would work 24/7, even when it was raining or
nighttime. Disappointingly, I never thought to invent a window that you
couldn’t see through.
Next time: reinventing the wheel.
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