The Talkies / Urban Walkman
Podhoretz, John
THE TALKIES URBAN WALKMAN by John Podhoretz Movies work best as spectacle, and there have been spectacles galore this summer: Superman II, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Escape From New York, An...
...The Walkman is a miniature tape recorder, easily attached to one's belt, with comfortable and unobtrusive foam headphones producing the sound...
...Imagine what California Buddhists will say...
...these headphones can do it for you...
...sorry...
...But I ask you: What would you do if a welldressed graduate of Harvard, a lawyer with a brilliant future, hand some and vigorous, came into your house with a tape recorder strapped to his belt and black foam head phones resting on his cranium, and announced that he wanted to marry your daughter...
...Buddhists meditate by repeating the word "Om" over again: It is very difficult to think while doing this...
...One must take special care now, as a pedestrian, for it is clear that our Walkpeople are not really seeing us...
...The friend would deliver her message, the "mike" would be released, and the Walk-person would return to her music...
...For the Walkman is the device that can lead one to the Me Utopia, and make no mistakes...
...Well, then, we can laugh...
...Search no more for 'inner' peace...
...The sound reproduction is extraordinary...
...For only $129, you can own a $5,000 stereo...
...For example, while wearing a Walkman one has no sense of distance...
...There is, quite simply, nothing else like it...
...Tom Wolfe thought that est seminars were the epitome of narcissistic frenzy, I fear he thought too soon...
...No fewer than three times have I collided with various Walkpeople, and each time no response was elicited...
...Yet if Mr...
...They are entertaining, eye-catching, but the only real issue with them is how many millions of dollars they will make...
...indeed, wearing a Walkman even for a short period of time helps one to understand just what function the ears play...
...It also, I need hardly say, deadens the mind...
...Unfortunately, there is not a lot to say about these movies...
...whether it be Haydn or the Supremes that plays in their ears, they are obedient to the meter...
...I said "I'm John Podhoretz is editor of Counterpoint and film critic of The American Spectator...
...They walk peculiarly...
...THE TALKIES URBAN WALKMAN by John Podhoretz Movies work best as spectacle, and there have been spectacles galore this summer: Superman II, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Escape From New York, An American Werewolf in London...
...Even as their bodies sway to and fro with the music, their eyes are glazed, vacant, far away...
...But when one sees a cross-cultural phenomenon like this one, the participants in which include young girls in expensive jogging suits, elderly men in Brooks Brothers suits, bicyclists of every color, cashiers, delivery boys, stockbrokers, ladies in supermarkets, etc., etc., he knows that something funny is going on...
...A friend said that at her office, rows of secretaries sit all day, Walkmen covering their ears, typing and typing...
...It is impossible to read lips, or the expressions on faces, with all that noise in one's ears...
...Someone may begin to wave, but it is not at all apparent that he is waving to you...
...At this point the chosen Walkperson reached down and depressed her "mike" button...
...They did not hear me, said nothing themselves, and so walked away, oblivious...
...And that me is untroubled by thought...
...When the world is blotted out, and the sounds that other people make have no effect, and what you see before you is severely circumscribed, there remains only me and the music...
...the world is blotted out, and the fantastic quality of the sound leads one to a sort of ecstasy...
...I am, no doubt, indulging in hyperbole here...
...For $129, any American can purchase a new stereo system known as a "Walkman...
...Further, the sound is audible only to the wearer...
...but, alas, the little "mike" button that allows the sounds of the world to intrude upon their music had not been depressed...
...It is not surprising that the Walkman should achieve such popularity: It is another embodiment of the American Dream...
...Therefore, I would like to take this space and write about another spectacle that has made a startling debut of late, and about which there is quite a lot to say...
...with the headphones on, one cannot tell the difference between a Walkman and a very, very expensive turntable-amplifier-speakers set-up...
...There is nothing to distract the attention...
...If she wished,to speak with one of them, she had to tap her on the shoulder, and make a gesture...
...Too many trees have died in the service of condemning the "Me Decade" (left-wing as well as right-wing trees, I might add) for this writer to climb aboard the bandwagon...
...Sony introduced it to the market, and due to Sony's success Panasonic and Texas Instruments, among other companies, have begun selling it as well...
...depth fades without sound to accompany it...
...Down the streets of every major city there parade, at all times of the day, men and women with those little black foam headphones round their skulls, each dancing to the beats of various different drummers...
...The seductive nature of the Walkman is immediately clear once one puts it on...
Vol. 14 • October 1981 • No. 10
