The kind of movies they show on airplanes are sentimental bits: microwavable pop-corn, ready made with explosions at the push of a button. Exotic scenery - say beaches, cities - makes up for empty characters. Hence, on many onboard flicks, you watch the iconic transition of an airplane in flight. And looking around, just for an instant, there is a common acknowledgement among the cabin: Hey, that is us.
Migration, settlement, ascendancy - the fundamental American expression is movement. It is an American tradition to showcase such journeys: buddies like Lewis and Clark, Huck and Jim, Duke and Gonzo, traveling down literary history in the vehicles of their days. But our country and technology have moved on. Now America is not found On the Road but Up in the Air.
Since taking off with Airplane! insights about air travel somehow reveal the essence of the American experience. Ever notice how people on airplanes think seat adjustment is a natural right? When the flight begins, everyone has equal leg room. I could cite American obesity or gripe about greed, but for some reason people decide they need more toe extension at your personal expense. The "not in my backyard" instinct takes over and suddenly you cannot pull down the tray table to enjoy your $4 Lays potato chips. The reclining libertarian is mumbling something about property rights. When the pilot chimes, "You are now free to move about the cabin," it sounds like an amendment.
There is, of course, the social hierarchy (literally, classes) on airplanes. Some comedians speak of the "poverty walk," the march past first-class customers that each coach man must make.
Southwest Airlines uses a different strategy. Each passenger receives a zone letter and number upon checking in. Then customers line up by assignment, allowing each person the equal opportunity to get on the plane and pick out their own seat. This is of course socialism.
If the '90s heard Jerry Seinfeld's airline comedy, then this decade had a different association with air travel. "One must recognize the birth of a new terrorism," wrote the theorist Jean Baudrillard in the months following 9/11. "Not only do these people not fight with equal arms," Baudrillard said in his essay, The Spirit of Terrorism. "But they appropriate all the arms of dominant power." He continues: "Money and financial speculation, information technologies and aeronautics, the production of spectacle and media networks: they have assimilated all of modernity and globalization, while maintaining their aim to destroy it." To Baudrillard, 9/11 was a "symbolic" tragedy. Terrorists had attacked this nation on its own terms; a remote virus of terror cells turned an American immune system against itself. They hijacked our airplanes, they hijacked our media. They hijacked our sense of security.
The arguments against the Transportation Security Administration's security methods are numerous, evocative with familiar imagery. As comedian Louis C.K. mocked in 2008, "People come back from flights, and they tell you their story. And it's like a horror story."
Negative rhetoric about airport precautions is almost inevitable. You will never hear a successful story of airline security - which is the point.
Waiting in the security line is not an infringement on our rights, but a minor inconvenience. The time argument fails: Are people in a rush to go wait at the gate? The body argument fails: Why are people afraid of someone quickly seeing their body for an important check? Would you disagree if it were a doctor's examination?
The TSA itself faces an almost impossible task. If they scan everyone, they are accused of being unrealistic (but it is just grandma!) If they only scan selected people, they are profiling. And if there is a security lapse, then it is still their fault.
Louis C.K. accurately mocked airport complaints: "They're like 'it was the worst day of my life ... first of all, we didn't board for twenty minutes, and then we get on the plane, and they made us sit there! On the runway! For forty minutes! We had to sit there.' Oh, really? What happened next? Did you fly through the air incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight, you non-contributing zero? That you got to FLY?? YOU'RE FLYING! It's amazing!"
He reminds us that these arguments are typically one-sided, selfishly unfair. It is so easy to typecast "the government" as sluggish bureaucracy, a psychological entity infringing on your day. I have read Orwell. I value my privacy. But I want to return to when we could joke about air travel. And untying my shoe is the least I can do.
Aaron Eisen's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.eisen@cavalierdaily.com.
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