Apple iPad

Here some warm subjective camera shots of idealised Apple iPad users according to Apple. Or something like the following proposition:

'Are you a (cultured and well-informed) reader of The Economist, a (cool and up-to-date) Twitter user, a (savvy and enlightened) follower of TED talks and a (maybe nostalgic) friend of books? Are you (do you like to think of yourself as) all or either of the above?
Then you, who enjoy being all these things while sitting leisurely at home or at a trendy and generic café with sofas, wearing brand-new casual clothes, with your nicely air-brushed skin tone…, you must be an iPad person (buyer)'.

By the way, the ads bring an illustrative take on our contemporary cultural landscape, again, according to Apple: the titles of books we like to read (or just buy), e.g. Nineteen Eighty Four (now that’s a surprise); the people we like to listen to, e.g. Jamie Oliver (still?); the issues that we are concerned about (or supposed to be), e.g. climate change; the nothingness we like to spread via Twitter, e.g. a classic: “Just ate the best sandwich. Ever” (!).

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Apple: iPad
Euston Station (LU)
London

The Beatles. Now on iTunes

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