...i loved this article, yet this is possibly biased due to the fact that I was reading it aloud while in my underwear, while spooning lemon sorbet, and laying slouched against pillows, mattress, and boyfriend. Yet I thought it was very very well done but then again, I am a hapless sucker for this type of urban genre, especially on sundays*
from the Sunday New York Times
UNCHECKED BAGGAGE
Our Airports, Ourselves
By JOHN LELAND
Published: July 11, 2004
In the recent movie "The Terminal," the character played by Tom Hanks gets stuck in Kennedy International Airport for nine months, and discovers what many travelers are increasingly sensing: that airports have become their own worlds, laboratories for the latest forms of nourishment, commerce, entertainment, information, romance and fear.
As airport amenities and food courts have expanded, and security concerns have increased the time people spend in them, terminals have become more than places for departures, arrivals and lost luggage, yet remain less than destinations - without local history, tradition, religion or dialect, but borrowing bits of each of these from the people coursing through them.
"The Terminal" is just one of several recent byproducts of a culture that is slowly absorbing the sense that in a post-9/11 world, airports are neither what they once were, nor fully evolved into a singular something else. Where airplanes once served as a dramatic or comic vehicle (the "Airplane" movies; the Harrison Ford thriller "Air Force One"), the airport itself has become the star. Besides "The Terminal," there is the reality television series "Airline," which follows the strange experiences of Southwest Airlines personnel at Los Angeles International Airport and Midway Airport in Chicago. A surprise hit on the A&E channel earlier this year, it began its second season last week. And Heather Locklear and Blair Underwood will headline a fall NBC series called "LAX," set in Los Angeles International. It is only fitting that Ms. Locklear, who once reigned voluptuously over the site-specific Melrose Place, now governs the nonplace of LAX.
This new interest in the airport as dramatic stage reflects the convergence of two changes in airports themselves. Since 2001, the extended security lines, random searches, armed soldiers and bomb-sniffing dogs have pushed the airport from the anonymous background of modern travel into the anxious foreground, where we are all both suspects and potential victims.
More than that, the airport now sits at the center of a tangle of American values that have been called into question by the terrorist attacks and unending war on terror: mobility, anonymity, rootedness, nationalism, diversity, homogeneity and globalism.
"I would say we're in an era where there is a distinct airport culture," said Pico Iyer, who has written extensively about life inside terminals, particularly at Los Angeles International. "They represent an image of the way more and more cities are going. It's a culture of nonculture. They're places where people from hundreds of countries congregate, not communicating, thrown together in generic space. I think they're the postmodern metropolis."
That is to say, functionally points of transition, they have become so culturally as well. "There's an odd sense of being nowhere," said Mark C. Taylor, author of "Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World Without Redemption" and a professor of humanities, religion and architecture at Williams College and Columbia University. "It's almost as if they're designed to transport you without a sense of movement."
You leave one airport, Professor Taylor said, and the one you land in looks exactly the same, with the same stores, fast food and cable news on television. He suggested that airports are not separate locations but nodes in a network of similar terminals, which collectively are crossed by currents of information, commerce, disease and risk.
Airports sacrifice a sense of place for a sense of occasion, said Karal Ann Marling, a professor of popular culture at the University of Minnesota. "Spielberg did something very smart in 'The Terminal' to emphasize that the airport is one giant shopping mall," Professor Marling said. "It's a dodge game we play with ourselves to pretend airports aren't airports. In that shopping world, it's obvious that the management is going to take great care of you and nothing evil can happen to you. It distracts travelers from the possibility that they will meet bin Laden on the next flight. How can you be afraid when there's a Gap next to you?"
from the Sunday New York Times
UNCHECKED BAGGAGE
Our Airports, Ourselves
By JOHN LELAND
Published: July 11, 2004
In the recent movie "The Terminal," the character played by Tom Hanks gets stuck in Kennedy International Airport for nine months, and discovers what many travelers are increasingly sensing: that airports have become their own worlds, laboratories for the latest forms of nourishment, commerce, entertainment, information, romance and fear.
As airport amenities and food courts have expanded, and security concerns have increased the time people spend in them, terminals have become more than places for departures, arrivals and lost luggage, yet remain less than destinations - without local history, tradition, religion or dialect, but borrowing bits of each of these from the people coursing through them.
"The Terminal" is just one of several recent byproducts of a culture that is slowly absorbing the sense that in a post-9/11 world, airports are neither what they once were, nor fully evolved into a singular something else. Where airplanes once served as a dramatic or comic vehicle (the "Airplane" movies; the Harrison Ford thriller "Air Force One"), the airport itself has become the star. Besides "The Terminal," there is the reality television series "Airline," which follows the strange experiences of Southwest Airlines personnel at Los Angeles International Airport and Midway Airport in Chicago. A surprise hit on the A&E channel earlier this year, it began its second season last week. And Heather Locklear and Blair Underwood will headline a fall NBC series called "LAX," set in Los Angeles International. It is only fitting that Ms. Locklear, who once reigned voluptuously over the site-specific Melrose Place, now governs the nonplace of LAX.
This new interest in the airport as dramatic stage reflects the convergence of two changes in airports themselves. Since 2001, the extended security lines, random searches, armed soldiers and bomb-sniffing dogs have pushed the airport from the anonymous background of modern travel into the anxious foreground, where we are all both suspects and potential victims.
More than that, the airport now sits at the center of a tangle of American values that have been called into question by the terrorist attacks and unending war on terror: mobility, anonymity, rootedness, nationalism, diversity, homogeneity and globalism.
"I would say we're in an era where there is a distinct airport culture," said Pico Iyer, who has written extensively about life inside terminals, particularly at Los Angeles International. "They represent an image of the way more and more cities are going. It's a culture of nonculture. They're places where people from hundreds of countries congregate, not communicating, thrown together in generic space. I think they're the postmodern metropolis."
That is to say, functionally points of transition, they have become so culturally as well. "There's an odd sense of being nowhere," said Mark C. Taylor, author of "Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World Without Redemption" and a professor of humanities, religion and architecture at Williams College and Columbia University. "It's almost as if they're designed to transport you without a sense of movement."
You leave one airport, Professor Taylor said, and the one you land in looks exactly the same, with the same stores, fast food and cable news on television. He suggested that airports are not separate locations but nodes in a network of similar terminals, which collectively are crossed by currents of information, commerce, disease and risk.
Airports sacrifice a sense of place for a sense of occasion, said Karal Ann Marling, a professor of popular culture at the University of Minnesota. "Spielberg did something very smart in 'The Terminal' to emphasize that the airport is one giant shopping mall," Professor Marling said. "It's a dodge game we play with ourselves to pretend airports aren't airports. In that shopping world, it's obvious that the management is going to take great care of you and nothing evil can happen to you. It distracts travelers from the possibility that they will meet bin Laden on the next flight. How can you be afraid when there's a Gap next to you?"