Subscriptions
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Subscriptions
There is a stack of magazines my mother piles in front of the toilet bowl, just so that we get some reading materials when we decide to take a dump every once in a while. I like the idea of that, to have something to occupy my head when I am doing my business on the can. A point to note to those people who have the same habit as myself: never being something that is lengthy and interesting into the restroom when you want to do the number two, because you could end up being in that seat for longer than you really should. Magazines are fine, because their articles are relatively short, and you could always go to the next article if you don't want to spend too much time in the restroom. Or just look at the pretty pictures, check out the adverts, read a joke on the last page, there are more ways than one to read a magazine. The magazine business is a mega business, I was thinking, and its roots has reached even the restrooms of most homes around the world. A lot of those magazines would like you to subscribe to them though, they'd like to know that they have your loyalty for the next year or so, and then try to renew that subscription when the year is up. Almost every magazine these days has the option for you to subscribe these days, even the online ones has a glaring button for you to do so. It got me thinking about how our lives resemble the magazine business so much, the way we are all subscribing ourselves into a lifestyle that is very much invented by the society.
The magazine pretty much tells you what you need in life, what you want in life, and what kind of life you should have altogether. You really should be having this type of body, wear this type of lingerie, buy this type of car, wear this brand of watch. If you want a certain social status, you have to subscribe yourself to a certain type of magazine out there. It is the advertisements I am talking about, the ones in between the articles, and the ones in between other advertisements even. They are all jumping out subtly at readers all around the world, quietly telling you what to do and what not to do. On the part of the publishers, it is all about what kind of business they can make. You pick the right kind of advertisement for the right kind of audience, because it appeals more and sells better. You don't advertise Prada, for example, in a magazine meant for teenagers. You want the teenagers to be buying what you want the teenagers to be buying, the same with the upper class people, the way you tell them what you want them to be buying. So we are told what to buy and what not to buy by these magazines, and we are in an age whereby individuality can be seen as being a deviant act. When your personal identity is just a Lego Tower of social constructs. We cannot run away from that, I cannot run away from that. And I suppose, in a way, we are all prisoners inside this cell built by our own hands.
The movie trailer for Revolutionary Road scares me to no end. As much as I am a fan of Sam Mendes, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet (oh, Kate!), you cannot help but wonder how many people are in the very same fix as they are. Two ordinary people, married to each other, and then buying into a lifestyle that stifles and suffocates. None of us grew up wanting to work at a job we hate, or to stay at home the whole day to take care of a baby. We grew up wanting to be more than ourselves, to be somebody else, to make it somewhere. But the idea of "somewhere" is always so very vague, and the directions are written by a blind man. Nobody really knows where that place really is, but they all want to get there. The truth about this place, though I have never been there myself, is that it has a narrow passageway that leads to a small room through a small door. Not everybody can squeeze through these obstacles to get into this room, though everybody wants to get there somehow. Some people make it, while others get left behind to feed on their own failure. It is a cold cold world out there, Darwin's theory is tuned up to the highest notch in our society, the way that it eliminates those who are just not good enough.
I suppose the most disconcerting aspect of the story is probably how real it feels. It's not difficult to find someone who is unsatisfied with his or her job, or someone who is just dying to get out of the house. I was watching the news over on CNN yesterday evening when they featured a report on the day of an average office worker in Japan. This man is probably in his late twenties or early thirties, and he has just one daughter who isn't even old enough to be in school yet. His wife takes care of the daughter for the most part, and he goes to work every morning. The journey to and fro takes about two hours everyday, and he stays in the office for fourteen hours everyday of the week. He sees his daughter once every week, and his daughter hardly recognizes him whenever he tries to have some quality time with her. It's depressing to know that we have these people everywhere around the world, people working long hours and not knowing if they'd be fired tomorrow or not. We are in tough times, but it's not like life is any easier when we are in better times. People are still subscribed to this stifling life, people are still telling themselves that it is normal to be living this lifestyle. To sacrifice your life for a company, to disregard the family, to be trapped at home, that is what the subscriptions are telling us to do.
But who gave us these rules to follow anyway, who told us that we need to be doing all these? There isn't a guidebook somewhere to tell us what kind of lives we should be leading, we just kind of fit into the shoes given by the society because everybody else is doing it. It helps the society function, and I think Kaveri would be very proud that I am using sociological terms in this blog entry. But it's true, we are all like gears of this giant machine, turning ceaselessly and aiding in the functioning of this great machine. It almost makes us mindless drones somehow, claws on an assembly line, a bolt that holds pieces of metal together. We have all bought into this life - but what life is this anyway? It is difficult to say now, because we have gotten so used to it. We get used to being second rate, because there are only so many opportunities in our lives when we can tell ourselves to let go, to fight, to reach out, to find something better. Once that moment is over, you slip back into the shoes prepared by the society, you are once again a gear in a machine. It's so cruel that you almost want to run away from it all, this subscription forced down our throats from generation to generation. Or to sink into oblivion, sometimes that idea isn't half as frightening as people make it out to be, really.
I think people subscribe to this lifestyle because it is easy, in the sense that it is common and everybody is doing it. It's kind of like a magazine subscription that comes with every magazine, the kind that just slides out from the pages when you open the package. That, as oppose to the kind that is hidden in a corner of the magazine, and you have to fill out the form and then cut it out from the page. You even have to find an envelope and a stamp to mail it yourself, whereas you really only need to fill in your personal particulars in order to have a subscription. This office worker type of life is easy, because they are just so common. And those stay home wives, they get to do whatever they want to do while they are at home, and they don't really need to worry about themselves being retrenched, or any job related issues that could arise. It is simpler in that sense, and people like things to be that way. It is difficult, on the other hand, to say that you want to leave everything behind and then move to a foreign country. To set up a cafe by the beach in Malawi, build everything from scratch, to be away from civilizations. I was watching Long Way Down the other day, with Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman riding their bikes through Africa. They came upon this Georgian couple who did exactly that, and I was greatly admired by their courage. To leave a life and live life, that's courage.
I suppose in the Asian context, especially in the Asian context, it is even more difficult to unsubscribe to something that we've learned, you know. Everything is about career, about work, about money, about the future. We are always trying to take three steps forward in something and then taking four steps back in something else. We keep the job that we hate, the income remains, but your only daughter grows up thinking that she was brought up by a single parent. Why don't more of us learn how to take a step back? Sometimes, retreating is the only form of advancement, we don't always have to move forward to, well, move forward. This Asian society does not allow that to happen though, it is this constant strive to catch up with the West, I feel. Everything has been about the West, the West, the West, and I suppose the society at large is sick of it. So we have been trying to catch up with them, trying our very best to not fall behind ever again. But what are we giving up, what are we letting go? What are we sacrificing in turn, for this pride? It gets tiring, it really does. It is the kind of subscription that, by the time you reach the last page of the magazine, you feel as if you haven't read anything that you don't already know. Everything is recycled, everything has been digested and spat out before. We are just learning the same things over and over again, because we never really learn - do we?