It’s Impolite to Stare and Twice as Rude to Care:
Why We Ignore People in Public Places
Chapter 1. PUBLIC TRANSIT PORN
there is a genre of japanese pornography where two people make love on public transit. the films begin with two strangers standing close to one another in the aisle of a crowded train. they notice one another and immediately have a carnal attraction. it starts with harmless flirting. there is a courting process in which the woman can feel the man’s eyes on her. he moves closer to her and whispers in her ear. at some point their fingertips graze one another and they lock hands. petting turns to groping. groping turns to grinding. eventually the couple loses all inhibitions.
the most eerie feature of these films (and perhaps the feature that makes them so strikingly absurd) is the fact that not a single person on the train watches. an elderly woman has her nose buried in some book about “the life-changing magic of tidying up.” a well-dressed man riding home from work is staring out the window with glazed over eyes. several people are scrolling through their phones. nobody is watching the erotic scene.
the couple gets it on right in the aisle of a crowded train and not a single passenger pays them any attention. it’s not that they are unaware of the sex scene. they see it. but they don’t WATCH it. every once and a while when shifting their heads from left to right they notice the sexiness. but they don’t let their attention linger there. they casually withdraw their attention just as easily as they gave it, shifting their gaze back to their phone or book. it is as if the love scene doesn’t deserve any special curiosity. they just aren’t interested.
you are probably asking yourself the following question: “why on earth has this guy started off this essay talking about sex on trains?” i don’t blame you for asking it. the plots of porn are not usually discussed with any type of serious critical attention. the plots in porn are known for being absurd, dare i say idiotic. not only are you thinking that discussing porn is not intellectual but you are also probably thinking that it is completely immature for a serious author to start off the beginning of an essay in an X-rated manner. i will not blame you if you decide you are too refined for this filth and go elsewhere. but before you leave allow me the opportunity to argue that these japanese train pornos are not just smut, but they contain within them a brilliant commentary on the impersonal state of our modern cities. they are illustrations of the lengths we will go to avoid being interested in each other. porn is deep.
anybody that has ever watched one of these japanese sex train movies is left pondering an obvious question: aren’t all of these passengers secretly watching in their peripheral vision? peeking out of the corner of their eye. they must be! no human being is able to control their curiosity to that degree. the passengers could be feeling arousal or disgust, but there is no way they aren’t feeling anything. how could they act so casual about this? deep down they clearly want to react; to snicker, to curse, to gag. for some reason, everyone on the train chooses to give the couple their privacy. or at least the illusion of privacy. they are suppressing their most basic urge to be interested in order to be polite.
Chapter 2. CIVIL INATTENTION
this business of actively ignoring folks to give them privacy is what sociologist erving goffman called “civil inattention.” goffman noticed that in public we often act as if we don’t see each other. in fact, we go through a great deal of trouble to communicate to strangers that we are not paying attention to them. here is how goffman described civil inattention:
what seems to be involved is that one gives to another enough visual notice to demonstrate that one appreciates that the other is present (and that one admits openly to having seen him), while at the next moment withdrawing one’s attention from him so as to express that he does not constitute a target of special curiosity or design.
goffman, who has been described as the first post-modern sociologist, thought that people ignored each other because it was the only way they could cope with living in big cities. there is so much stimulation in city life that we have to find ways to ignore most stuff that happens. otherwise we would drive ourselves mad trying to attend to the peculiar details of hundreds of thousands of human beings that we pass on the street. we have developed some norms of behavior that allow us to feel some degree of privacy and to communicate to others that we do not want to impose. everybody acts like everybody else isn’t there.
goffman wrote about civil inattention in 1963. but he had no idea how far human beings would take this cold detached way of being together in public space. he never had the privilege of seeing trains filled with zombies all staring into a glowing box in their palms, plastic cords dangling from their ear canals, plugged in to the matrix. goffman invented the term civil inattention, but unfortunately (or fortunately) he was unable to witness the pinnacle of the thing he invented.
Chapter 3. THE SMARTPHONE (and EVEN WORSE, Pokémon Go)
a couple of months after goffman died, in november of 1982, motorola released the DynaTAC 8000X. it was gray, the size of a brick and only slightly less heavy. in modern-day prices it would cost about $10,000. between 1983 and 2016 we moved from a time when like 17 people owned these luxury miracle machines to an era where every man, woman and child has one (the smaller, lighter, touch-screen versions of course). the cell phone has solved countless problems in our society but one could argue that its crowning achievement has been that it has helped us perfect the task of avoiding each other in public space.
data collected by Pew clearly shows that as time progresses more and more people are approving of zoning out on a cell phone in public. if you are my mom’s age you still might think that it is rude to use a cell phone on the train. only 54% of people over 65 think it is acceptable. if you ask people born after the DynaTAC 8000 hit the market in 1982, they unanimously accept the normalcy of staring at a phone when other human beings are present. 90% of people 18–29 think it is OK to use the cellphone on public transit.
how can you blame us though? in 2016 it is more rational than ever for me to tune out things that are happening a few feet from me, even if they are spectacular. no i did not notice the fact that you are a midget with wings that looks exactly like nikki minaj. because even more spectacular things are happening on my screen.
and to be honest, i’m not the least bit offended when you ignore me either. by initiating a conversation with you i am essentially asking you to willingly do the least stimulating thing you could do right now, especially compared to listening to young thug’s new album, or watching a facebook live stream of a black man being murdered by the police in front of his children, or watching montages of lebron james pinning andre iguedala’s shot against the backboard from 11 different camera angles. what are the chances that what i say can give you a fraction of that excitement? very slim.
and if goffman could not imagine cellphones, how could he have foreseen pokemon go? why would i want to talk to the person sitting across from me on the train when there is a pokemon monster dancing on his lap that i need to capture? this stranger cannot dance or flip like pikachu so he is better off being part of the landscape upon which my pokemons wiggle and shake. and although i don’t really want to have a conversation with him, or look at him directly, it’s perfectly acceptable and not at all creepy for me to use his body as an object in a virtual world. at this point i will admit that i have no idea what pokemons do and did not do any research to confirm or deny that they dance. but even without doing that research i will declare undoubtedly that Pokemon Go is the devil.
Chapter 4. THE BLASÉ ATTITUDE
i just had an epiphany about the dystopian japanese pornography films. maybe the passengers are not interested in watching the public sex because the porn on their private screens is much more sexy. it’s a chilling thought. maybe these filmmakers are secretly indicting the pervasiveness and addictiveness of porn. are these pornographers self-critiquing their own industry? that would be cool. but i don’t think so. these films can’t be a critique of digital addiction, because if you look closely, all the passengers aren’t even on their phones. some of them aren’t doing much at all besides staring straight ahead. it’s not that they are distracted by something more exciting. they just seem to be numb to their surroundings, infected by the the blasé attitude.
georg simmel came up with this term to describe the desensitized personality of the city-dweller. we respond to things that would normally stir our emotions as if they are commonplace. this is the critique the pornographers are trying to make. they are trying to tell us how much our sensations have been dulled. we no longer have the capacity to feel.
we expect our neighbors to be blasé as well. if you are paying too much attention to me you are suspicious. if you are too interested you must be a psycho. you are allowed to smile at me to acknowledge my existence but if your smile is too wide you are probably crazy. you can make eye contact with me for 1.3 seconds, but any longer is cause for concern. divert your eyes and go back to your blasé attitude. we are much more comfortable when we are surrounded by apathetic people. apathetic people stay out of our business.
Chapter 5. THE CRAZY MOM ON THE TRAIN
i could feel the blasé attitude in the air when i walked through the sliding doors, boarding the red line. a woman was screaming at the top of her lungs. and all the other passengers looked straight ahead:
“you phony as hell damon. how you call yourself a man? not taking care of your kids? your own kids? and then you go and have some more kids. you needed some more kids like you needed a hole in yo head, but you go and have even more kids with her than you had with me.”
the elderly couple across from me stared straight ahead, trying not to make eye contact. a desi woman grabbed the brown grocery bag closer to her chest and looked into space. a teenager in athletic gear put his headphones in. we all looked straight ahead, nervously.
“take care of your muh fucking kids first. take care of me FIRST. you was my man first. do i get some respect for that? why can’t you respect me damon? you talk about how real you is and don’t take care of your own damn kids.”
she was sitting five seats down from me screaming into a cell phone in a fit of rage, sweat pouring down her face, hair all over her head. whoever was on the other end of that call could barely get a word in. but the most shocking thing about this scene was right there in her arms, cradled on her heaving chest was a tiny baby girl. the infant’s head bounced on her breast as she shifted erratically in her seat. when she shook her neck the baby dipped a little bit. when she yelled into the phone receiver the baby drew her tiny hands close to her face, trying desperately to shield herself from the noise. who screams that close to an infant?
“i should get my brothers to come fix your phony ass. that’s on everything. you bet not hang up on me. see that’s how i know you don’t give a fuck about me or anything else. go back to your mexican bitch. but hear this first…”
words rushed out of her mouth, as she fidgeted, whipping the baby around like a rag doll, we all just looked straight ahead. we wondered if she was having a psychotic break. she spit out curse after curse, inches from her baby’s face, seeming to be completely unaware that she was upsetting the infant or that she was making a scene. the entire train suspected that she might be on drugs or losing her mind. she was hitting rock bottom, and taking her child with her. but we said nothing. we just looked ahead.
the only two people whose faces communicated that anything out of the ordinary was happening were two little brown boys. one looked like he was about 8 years old, the other 5. they were sitting across from her on the other side of the aisle watching her every move. they were too young to play the game of civil inattention. in all of the commotion i hadn’t noticed them sitting there, slumped in their seats. swinging back and forth beneath them were four brown legs, too short to touch the ground. their faces were angry as if they disapproved of the cursing.
then the smaller of the two boys pointed his finger at the crazed woman and shouted, “stop it mommy!”
i couldn’t help but pay more attention, knowing now that these boys were connected to this woman who was spiraling out of control. were they embarrassed? embarrassed that she belonged to them. or maybe they were concerned for their mommy who was breaking with reality, who had lost all instinct to protect them as she screamed venomous insults at her ex-bae. they knew despite the fact that everyone on the train pretended nothing was happening, that this was not a normal situation and that she was losing it. they knew their mother required their attention.
“you know everything don’t you? you think you know fucking everything? here’s something you don’t know you phony ass nigga. you not even marquise’s dad. see you made me say that to you. i didn’t want to say the shit but the truth hurts motha fucka.”
“stop it mommy!” he screamed again pointing at his little sister. “you made the baby cry.”
our cities are filled with hundreds of thousands of people and millions of problems. problems are popping up all around us like a never ending game of whack-a-mole. the best way to respond to being inundated with thousands of problems that you can’t solve is to ignore them. in the spirit of laissez faire; allow these strangers to do whatever they wish. but most importantly, act as if none of it affects us. act as if we don’t see the woman traumatizing her own children in public space.
blasé
blasé
blasé
when i finally got home that day i sat on my couch and began to tremble. i couldn’t help but feel like this woman was crying out for help. she was up to her neck in trauma, gasping for air, hoping that someone on the train would see her drowning and reach out to her. was she hoping that throwing a public tantrum would force a society that had never cared for her to at least notice her? i sat on my couch wondering if there was anything i could have done. i could have asked if she wanted me to hold the baby while she handled grown folks’ business. i could have tried to calm her down by letting her know that somebody on that train cared. but i didn’t even look at her. because in public it is impolite to stare. and twice as rude to care.
6. THE INTERVENTION
many of us are fed up with the cool pose. we are required to assume this blasé attitude even while extraordinary shit is happening. not any more. we are tired of being asked to be numb. we are planning a flash mob on the train tomorrow. when you are on your morning commute to work a group of your fellow passengers are going to spontaneously break out into song. we will be doing a rendition of boys II men’s “end of the road.” you will look up from your phone and notice that you are surrounded by a choir of concerned citizens. we are disrupting your habit of zoning out and ignoring how extraordinary we are. we will force you to notice us and entice you to join our chorus. harmonize with us.
we are changing train etiquette one transit route at a time. we have a new line when a cool guy walks on the train and we like his swag. we don’t tell him, “i like your shirt.” instead we say “i’m interested in the guy that would wear such a dope shirt.” because we are interested. and we are tired of acting like we’re not.
when a fight breaks out on the bus, we make it clear that we would be upset if somebody got hurt. we are not indifferent. we don’t stare into space. we pull our earphones out of our ears and speak up. we are not extras in a dystopian pornographic world where people can hurt each other, or make love to each other and it doesn’t even register as worth looking at. consider this an intervention. we are detoxing you from your daily dose of novocane, forcing you to feel again. because if we leave you to your own devices, those devices will convince you that reality is a distraction.
