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Abstract
This article traces a history of inflight entertainment in order to examine the relationship between globalization, the urban imaginary and contemporary modes of travel. I rely on the many meanings of the word ‘screen’ to launch my analysis of the role of inflight entertainment in post-World War II air travel. Rather than examine the material displayed via inflight entertainment technologies, I take the installation of these technologies on aircraft as signifying particular attitudes airlines had toward their passengers, as well as larger struggles and negotiations over the meaning of travel. These coalesce in a cosmopolitan identity that takes the world to be easily accessible and readily visible, the desire of airlines to keep their passengers mollified and calm, and an emergent conception of travel as effortless activity.
Notes
1. Bayart, Global Subjects, viii.
2. Bayart, Global Subjects, viii.
3. Yeager, “Dreaming of Infrastructure,” 13.
4. For accounts of the city as networked mobilities and flows, see Yeoh, ‘Mobility and the City’ and Graham, ‘FlowCity.’
5. Yeager, “Dreaming of Infrastructure,” 13.
6. Cwerner, Keeserling and Urry, Aeromobilities; Gottdeiner, Life in Air; Iyer, The Global Soul; Kasarda and Lindsay, Aerotropolis.
7. IATA, Annual Review, 2012.
8. Virilio, Pure War, 77.
9. See Bilstein, ‘Air Travel and the Traveling Public’; Dierlikx, Clipping the Clouds; Dobson, Peaceful Air Warfare.
10. For an animated time lapse of global air traffic, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx7_yzypm5w; third party software companies such as Flightwise use public information regarding commercial flights to build digital layers animating planes in flight for users of Google Earth; black and white posters depicting the world as the confluence of air routes can be found at http://www.lx97.com/maps/. The phrase ‘space of places’ comes from Castells (The Rise of the Network Society), and is contrasted to the newly dominant ‘space of flows.’
11. In Pure War, Virilio argues that, ‘The new capital is no longer a spatial capital like New York, Paris, or Moscow, no longer a city located in a specific place, at the intersection of roads, but a city at the intersection of practicalities of time’ (79).
12. L’Hostis, “The Shrivelled USA,” 433.
13. Saskia Sassen’s 1991 book, The Global City, is the pioneering work on global cities. For more on the subject of aviation and the global city network see: Debbage, ‘The international airline industry’; Beaverstock, Smith and Taylor, ‘World-City Network’; Witlox, Vereecken and Derudder, ‘Mapping the Global Network Economy’; Derudder, Van Nuffel and Witlox, ‘Connecting the World’; Zook and Brunn, ‘From Podes to Antipodes’; and Cattan, ‘Attractivity and Internationalisation of Major European Cities.’
14. For examples see Boddy, New Media and the Popular Imagination; Flichy, The Internet Imaginaire; Groening, “From ‘a box in the theater of the world’ to ‘the world as your living room.’”
15. Virilio Lost Dimension, 35. In this passage, Virilio invokes satellites and the ‘cathode-ray window’ as a way to ‘confine’ everything. I have used the word ‘television’ for the sake of clarity.
16. Pico Iyer’s The Global Soul stands as the most thorough-going account of this kind of globality.
17. Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey.
18. Kaplan, “Transporting the Subject.”
19. Latour “Trains of Thought,” 179. The term ‘immutable mobile’ is first used in Science in Action (1987).
20. Latour “Trains of Thought” 176.
21. Latour “Trains of Thought,” 177. Latour uses high speed rail as his example, but air travel works just as well for the purposes of his argument.
22. Straszheim, The International Airline Industry, 143–144.
23. ‘Flight Film Move by CAB Opposed’.
24. ‘Drink, Movie Tariff by Airlines Called Farce’.
25. ‘Transport News: 3 Airlines Charge for Movies’; Joseph, Richard ‘Airborne Entertainment Reaching New Heights’; ‘Coffee, Tea, or Doris Day’
26. ‘TWA from Washington’.
27. Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey, 52–69.
28. Levy, “The Great Escapo-Vision in the Sky,” 59–60.
29. Rosenthal, “Letters to the Editor: Movies Aloft”.
30. Gottesman, “Letters: Movies Aloft”.
31. Strauss, ‘Letters: Movie Critic’; Spence, ‘On Movies Aloft’.
32. ‘Letters: “Pillow Fight” on Night Flight’; ‘Letters to the Editor: More on Movies Aloft’; Carter, ‘Letters: Movies Aloft’; Huether, ‘Letters: More on Movies Aloft.’
33. ‘Motion Pictures on the Screen While Flying Through the Clouds at 90 Miles an Hour!’.
34. The phrase ‘creative geography’ comes from Pudovkin, Film Technique and Acting, 89.
35. “An Aerial ‘Picture Theatre’”; See Hall, ‘The Whites of Their Eyes’ for a trenchant analysis of the adventure story.
36. Serling, ‘In-Flight Movies’
37. Groening, “Film in Air”.
38. Friedlander, ‘Movies in the Air’; ‘Transport News: Movies in the Sky’; Serling, ‘In-Flight Movies’.
39. Serling ‘In-Flight Movies’; ’T.W.A. 707 Flights Will Offer Movies’; Archer ‘T.W.A. Jet Films to Begin July 19’ (The New York Times, May 24, 1961).
40. These ads can be found online in Duke University’s John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History.
41. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 433.
42. Cubbitt, The Cinema Effect, 335–338; Lassen, “Life in Corridors,” 184–185.
43. cathaypacific.com.
44. Lassen, “Life in Corridors,” 184–185.
45. cathaypacific.com.
46. Whittaker, “Maps for the air age,” 28.
47. Oettermann, The Panorama, 93.
48. ‘PAA to Have Own Brussels Exhibit’; Willkie, ‘Airways to Peace’.
49. For more on aviation’s lasting effects on cartography see Cosgrove, Apollo’s Eye, 241–248; for widescreen formats and world’s fairs see Belton, Widescreen Cinema, 85–90.
50. Urry, “Aeromobilities and the Global,” 34.
51. Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, 162.
52. Virilio, Lost Dimension.
53. Wilkie, ‘Airways to Peace’; Spivak, Death of a Discipline, 93.
54. Goldsmith, ‘New Airline Cameras.’
55. Stampf, ‘Heavens Above.’
56. Friedlander, ’43 Years of Commercial Aviation.’
57. McCartney, ‘The Middle Seat.’
58. Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey, 159–170
59. Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey, 52–69.
60. Whitelegg Working the Skies, 104–105.
61. “Listen Up,” 37.
62. The Virgin America video can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyygn8HFTCo.
63. Brett ‘Deltalina creates stir’. The Delta video has been viewed nearly 3 million times on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgpzUo_kbFY.
64. Wassener ‘Airline has nothing to hide’. The Air New Zealand one has been viewed over 7 million times at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Mq9HAE62Y.
65. For more on fear of flying, genre, and inflight entertainment see Groening ‘Inflight Entertainment, Immediacy, and Immersion.’
66. It should also be noted that the presentation of attractive flight attendants via screened technology also filters risk for airlines, who are able to maintain the imaginary of the ‘sexy stew’ despite the legal prohibitions against the severe restrictions airlines once had on height, weight, and marital status. See Whitelegg, Working the Skies.
67. World Airline Entertainment Association. ‘Airline Inflight Entertainment and Communications (IFE) Industry Fact Sheet.’ 23 February 2007.
68. IATA Annual Review 2012.
69. Bor and Hubbard, Aviation Mental Health.
70. Gordon, Naked Airport, 220.
71. Adey, “Getting in the Flow,” 194.