That’s the IMAX cinema viewed from my office window these days. Any time I dare look out, I find myself watched over by those four frozen gigantic icons; a rather unsettling feeling, I must admit.
Unsettling also that the IMAX cinema (part of the British Film Institute (BFI), a public cultural institution) is increasingly using its billboard space not to advertise currently screening film, but to generate income from hiring it out to external parties: there we’ve now got the Beatles courtesy of Apple iTunes, but from my memory I retrieve, among many film-unrelated products, cars, clothing brands, ice-creams and chocolate bars blown up to the impressive scale the IMAX offers.
The BFI charges £120,000/fortnight for the IMAX 360 degrees façade to interested advertising parties (as gathered from a colleague of mine who recently made an enquiry to place an advertisement there). Without knowing much about the BFI’s finances, I can only guess that renting out that space must be the BFI’s most profitable line of business. Of course, as a public institution whose funding has particularly been cut recently (what not?), it’s difficult to reproach the BFI for seeking the extra income. Thus, I’ll reproach the Establishment instead for insidiously stepping up the shift from the public to the private, leaving the balance between freedom and equality in the hands of the market, demoting citizens into consumers and, as I see it, for renouncing the aim of solidarity in favour of individual profit.
The Beatles appropriated by Apple, public culture appropriated by the logic of the free market…, and me not being able to do much more than just avoiding my office window these days. I never thought that we were so close to do the right thing, but I can see that we are now in fact getting further. Rather unsettling, I said.
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Apple iTunes: The Beatles. Now on iTunes
BFI IMAX Cinema, Waterloo
London
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