December 20, 2005
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Taken to a New Place, by a TV in the Palm
Ron Barrett
December 18, 2005
Taken to a New Place, by a TV in the Palm
By DAVID CARR
Last Tuesday night, I took my place in the bus queue for the commute home. Further up the line, I saw a neighbor – a smart, funny woman I would normally love to share the dismal ride with.
I ducked instead, racing to the back of the bus because season one of the ABC mystery-adventure “Lost” was waiting on my iPod. Claire was clearly about to go into labor and John Locke, the sage of the show, had been acting funny of late. The portable show meant my commute, which I have always hated with the force of 10,000 suns, had become a little “me” time.
Much was made of how silly it was for Apple to believe people would watch television on a 2.5-inch screen. But consumers have downloaded three million video programs from iTunes since the new video iPod became available in October. What gives?
The new iPod is its own little addictive medium. Its limitations – a viewing experience that requires headphones and a hand-held screen – create a level of intimacy that arcs to television in its infancy, when the glowing object was so marvelous it begat silent reverie.
You now stare at bejeweled color and crisp lines rendered in miniature. The ability to download programming of my choosing gives me a new kind of private, restorative time, a virtual third place between a frantic workplace and a home brimming with activity.
But I feel a little dirty. As a print guy, I have always thought that magazines and newspapers were the ultimate in portable media – I even learned that fancy subway fold so I could read broadsheet newspapers without bonking my seatmate in the nose to get to the next page. And if I am living in a little world of my own making, it is not doing a great deal for my connection to the world at large.
Many times on the train or bus, before the new iPod, I would run stuff over in my mind – doing actual thinking as opposed to the data processing I do throughout the day and night. My commute has gone from a communal and occasionally ruminative day-part to a time when I stare at a television remote control that happens to have a picture embedded in it.
Still, I make the trade. “Lost” always sounded like a show I’d like, but as the father of three with a job that required long hours, and a commute thrown in for good measure, viewing network programming at an appointed hour never seemed to work out. The “Lost” bandwagon left without me.
With the new iPod, I could start at the beginning of the series and view “Lost” at my leisure. The average episode lasts 44 minutes, about the length of my commute. Watching “Lost” on the bus next to a large man working his way through a crinkly bag of nuts is a deeply satisfying media experience. Goodbye crinkly nut man. Hello Claire and John Locke. (It is a bonus that the man can’t see the image from the side, as hard as he tries.)
So this is how we end up alone together. We share a coffee shop, but we are all on wireless laptops. The subway is a symphony of earplugged silence while the family trip has become a time when the kids watch DVD’s in the back of the minivan. The water cooler, that nexus of chatter about the show last night, might go silent as we create disparate, customized media environments.
By forgoing a chance to sit next to my neighbor on the bus, I missed out on all sorts of gossip and intrigue. And that New Yorker in my bag with the article on Osama bin Laden’s upbringing? It is still sitting there, as is Joan Didion’s new book, “The Year of Magical Thinking.” Ditto for those MP3′s of the Concretes I downloaded so lovingly when I bought the iPod a month ago.
There are other drawbacks to personalized, portable video. “Lost” is a program with a background plot of visual clues that don’t scan on an iPod, and one and a half hours of video battery life seems precisely designed to frustrate a movie watcher. But as a device for taking in a single episode of a serial drama, sitcom or soap opera, the video iPod seems perfectly conceived.
I actually watch very little television in my home. Between the phones, both cell and landline, the kids’ homework and other needs, and a wireless broadband connection that keeps me on the work grid, the TV often ends up being a silent piece of furniture.
The iPod, on the other hand, gets charged, programmed and used almost every day. I have missed my stop on the bus because the video iPod is a completely immersive experience. The act of peering at a small hand-held screen with headphones on blots out the rest of the world – even more than the experience of listening to music.
Am I an anomaly, an overstimulated and overworked freak in need of digital soothing by staring at a curio? Apple does not think so. Remember that the company’s iTunes store began in 2003 with just 200,000 songs and now boasts over two million, and that consumers have downloaded songs 500 million times at 99 cents each.
There are five shows from ABC, or its parent Disney, available from Apple. And NBC Universal has followed with 11 new and classic shows – including “Law & Order” and “The Office” – there for the downloading. (There are also 2,000 music videos available, but I am a little more self-conscious about sitting on the bus with Shakira gyrating in the palm of my hand.)
Still, what kind of idiot would pay for shows that are otherwise free? I am paying a so-called convenience charge. I could go to BitTorrrent or some other place where video content is there for the taking, but I’m not interested in the moral and technological somersaults required to get free – I think the technical, legal term is “stolen” – programming for my iPod. Instead, I have become the gift that keeps on giving for Apple. The company has my credit card and I will continue to fork over $1.99 an episode to find out what is around the bend in season two of “Lost.” When that ends, I will probably give “Monk” a try.
Apple is working on the next version of the iPod, which could involve taking the vertical device and tipping it on its side, for a larger, horizontal image. And now that the precedent’s already out there – Apple convinced the networks to come up off of a half-century-old business model – the supply of programs will only get deeper.
Until then, look for me on the bus. Just don’t try to talk to me.
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In-Laws in the Age of the Outsiders
Scott Menchin
December 18, 2005
Home for the Holidays
In-Laws in the Age of the Outsider
By BENEDICT CAREY
SHE was in the kitchen trying to bond with her boyfriend’s mother and help prepare the food when the older woman made a remark that effectively shut the conversation down.
“I asked to try one of the chicken wings she was cooking, and she says, ‘Oh, these might be a little too spicy for what you’re used to,’ ” said Serene Hammond, 25, of Washington, recalling a cookout she attended five years ago.
Ms. Hammond said she felt odd at the time, and later, insulted. Her father is Haitian, her mother Irish, and she is fair-skinned. The boyfriend’s family is black.
“The way I took that comment was, ‘Well, this is too hot for what y’all white people eat,’ ” said Ms. Hammond, who since founded a group called the National Advocacy for the Multiethnic, a clearinghouse for multiracial education. “I said, ‘No, I’m from Louisiana.’ ” She added, “I think a lot of white women who date black men get some of that treatment.”
Whether innocent or intentional, even a casual remark or gesture can turn a rainbow holiday feast into a version of “Meet the Parents” or “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” – without the laughs and tearful hugs.
According to Census data, the number of mixed families and couples is increasing each year, from 4.4 percent of all marriages in 1990 to 6.7 percent in 2000. Fully a third of marriages involving Hispanics are interracial, ditto for Asian marriages, and the rate among black Americans is now about 13 percent, and among whites 7 percent, Dr. William Frey of the Brookings Institution concluded from a further analysis of the data.
Many families are delighted or unfazed by having an outsider join them. But many others know another reality: the imminent arrival of a new spouse or girlfriend who is a cultural foreigner almost always amplifies the anxiety they already feel as they try to live up to the holiday-card photos they send out with everyone hugging the Irish setter, or gathered around the tree, psychologists say. It is hard not to resent having to play ambassador when routine domestic relations themselves are tense, when it’s hard enough to keep dad and junior from coming to blows at Thanksgiving, say, or to ease the awkwardness between sisters who are not speaking.
Artful entertaining, psychologists say, requires some understanding of both the traps inherent in hosting a cultural outsider and the opportunities.
Most obviously, the new person can buffer or distract from simmering family problems by acting as an outside witness of the family’s behavior and an obligatory conversation partner, family therapists say. When a new person enters any closed group, whether in business, sports or in a family, sociologists have found, there is a tacit agreement that the newcomer initially take a place on the margin: often literally, by sitting against the wall, say, a few chairs away from the insiders. Typically, in a family gathering, people take turns approaching the new arrival and opening communication, which can divert attention away from the usual jealousies and grudges that are inflamed in the family’s usual rituals.
“Particularly if this person is interesting, he or she can become an attraction,” said Dr. Calvin Morrill, a sociologist at the University of California at Irvine who studies group interaction.
A guest who has suffered personal hardship, as an immigrant for instance, might also serve to shrink, at least temporarily, the more petty claims of unfairness that swirl around the table at any family gathering.
Psychologists who study interracial marriages have found that two things are particularly divisive and troublesome to these couples. One concerns children. In-laws almost by definition have strong opinions about their grandchildren or future grandchildren – about how they should be raised and where, and how they might be treated by peers. This topic is best left for another time.
“This issue may be most volatile when the husband is black and the wife is white – white wives’ parents sometimes reject the offspring and reject the black husband simultaneously,” said Dr. Stanley Gaines, a senior lecturer in psychology at Brunel University in England, in an e-mail.
The second problem is the tendency of people to resort to racial stereotypes – when conflict arises, “even if the conflict initially had nothing to do with race per se,” Dr. Gaines added.
The bottom line, psychologists say, is that holiday gatherings are perhaps the worst time to try to settle longstanding disputes. Racial stereotyping does not go down well with gravy, no matter how justified the underlying conflicts.
Smaller misunderstandings are almost unavoidable, therapists say. “I think you have to expect that there’s going to be some discomfort, some awkwardness when you’re entertaining this new person, and to prepare for that” and weather it, said Dr. Constance Ahrons, a psychologist in San Diego and author of the book, “We’re Still Family.”
When possible, she said, prepare other family members beforehand as well, by informing cousins, aunts and uncles as much about the new spouse or boyfriend as possible. “You may find that some family members decide not to come at all, because they’re uncomfortable with the situation,” she said. If one of those people came, it might be asking for worse trouble, she said.
Entertaining a guest of a different race or religion can also provide an excuse for one of the most effective strategies to soothe and preempt family discord: structured activities.
In a study of how family reunions affect personal relationships, Dr. Laurence Basirico, dean of international programs at Elon University in Elon, N.C., interviewed 566 readers of Reunions Magazine, a journal for planning reunions of all kinds. Those surveyed included families across the country who attended large gatherings. In his analysis, Dr. Basirico found that the most satisfying reunions were those that were highly planned, with scheduled events each day that were mostly optional.
If the new visitor is a fundamentalist Christian who objects to watching a Harry Potter film, or a Muslim who would rather skip the late-night drinking, they are warned and have an out.
“They simply take a pass, and there are no conflicts over these small decisions about what we should do and when, which can turn into big arguments, especially if you don’t know what some of the underlying cultural differences may be,” Dr. Basirico said in an interview.
Keep in mind, too, that it is not only the hosts who are worried and plotting. Dr. Ahrons recently had as clients a gay couple, one black and the other white, who, she said, spent weeks preparing for a visit to the white man’s family, who was very uncomfortable with the relationship. The pair role-played a bit, and did some of their own scheduling. And they had their own plan for defusing trouble.
“One thing they planned was simply to get out of the house regularly,” she said. “They would just excuse themselves at a certain time and off they went to get a drink.”
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