Sure, I too once mocked how older folks dismiss the modern world. Even the ball point pen was predicted to be the devilish downfall of humanity when it hit the scene…It will come for each of us: this disconnect with new “stuff.”
However, my complaints are not exactly about technological changes. Not quite. I have issues with ways culture is shifting because of technology…
Consider: The “First Look” trend at weddings, newly designed by professional wedding photographers so that they do not have to be all that talented at capturing reality. They can stage everything, like so many other things in our world are now staged, to avoid missing the moment when the groom first sees his bride in her wedding get-up. “What?” You ask, “Are you talking about?”
My best girlfriend when getting remarried received a schedule from her photographer with a butt load of times penciled around the clock. Apparently my pal is preparing for a photoshoot, not a wedding: 10 a.m. Bridal Breakfast, 12:30 pm Bridal Dress-up (where photographer sets up pictures of bride putting her hair up, swiping her eyelids with make-up, sliding into her dress), 1:45 Bridal Party (where the fully ready bride, her family and her maidens all pose around some predetermined location,) 2:30 Groom’s Party (same), 4:30 Full Wedding Party, 5:30 Reception Untouched (staged photos of all the food, china and flower details before anyone arrives); 7:30 Married Couple Post Wedding etc., etc..
Notice there are NO 6:30 Wedding–taking-place pictures, no vows-spoken shots. On this photographer’s website there is not one candid photo of any weddings…And she was not alone. This is the trend among wedding photography.
But it’s the 3:30 First Look that really proves my point: the photographer sets up the groom to capture his face as bride appears in the perfect lighting, dressed in her gown long before the wedding ceremony; said photographer retakes the shot until she is happy with the look on the Groom’s face. In other words, the actual “first look” photo, might not even be a first look, and it is definitely going to be something the groom contrives after all that pressure to react to “the dress.”
So why did they even have a wedding ceremony then? In fact, when they went to cut the cake, no one at the reception was even aware because apparently the only thing that mattered was whether the photographer got a good angle. Guests literally didn’t know they were scarfing down facefulls of frosting until the tradition was almost over. I told my friend, if all you wanted are pretty pictures, you should have saved yourself the money and just got married at the courthouse and hired this woman for your staged couple’s pictures.
Have we gotten to where keep sake photo albums of the wedding outweigh the vows? I see this as a direct result of the selfie trend, which is a side effect of our digital world. One begat the other. We’ve become a world where photos supplant experience.
Which leads me to a related complaint. What the hell is going on with all the weird matchy-matchy women groups? Is this the adult version of friendship bracelets of yore? My tight group of five girls (read Clique) in the 7th grade spool-knit rainbow bracelets to wear so everyone could know we were it. At least four times this summer, I’ve seen grown-ass women doing the same with clothing.
The bridal parties of uni-dressers were the worst, nearly cruel. One group of about seven women showed up at a rooftop bar where my husband and I sat, all of them wearing very tiny, spaghetti-strap rompers. The bride sported white, of course, while the rest were in black. And let me tell you, not every body type can carry off sleeveless, cinch-waisted short-shorts. No one looked like they were having fun; and the larger girls quite obviously were trying to hide behind the others at every possibility, ducking and weaving and fanning their fingers over their bare flesh as their eyes darted about the room. The next day on the beach, a different crowd of nine young women showed up in matching bathing suits. (Nine! I’ll complain about that ridiculous number another day) The bride had a dramatic, white bikini and carried a floatation device shaped like an engagement ring. Of course, she was surrounded by her “maids” who had been forced into black bikinis patterned like the bride’s. At least the women who might have preferred a different, more demure style could hide under the waves…
Somehow in both cases, the look-at-us outfits seemed to squash any spontaneous, natural connection between them. They clearly were there to be seen—Oh, and to capture “clever” selfies of the bride and her coordinated stooges—but not to socialize with each other.
What is this weird need to be the center of attention while simultaneously forcing others to do your bidding? People must not grasp the point of Bridezilla where producers mean to denigrate that selfish behavior, not anoint it…
My complaint about the outfits and the “first-look” photography are linked in more than one way. Both disregard the point of the wedding ceremony. Neither respect the purpose of the day. Two people are literally standing before their God and promising to try and love and honor one another for the rest of their lives. How does modelling for photographs all day long or forcing women to humiliate themselves in public just to gain attention fit into that supposed love? Both reduce a wedding to a Photo Op and into social media fodder…
The modern loss of true meaning in order to capture an image depresses me. Do these sorts of brides even feel the spiritual depth of gathering your friends to bear witness to your love? Or do they say yes to the proposal so they will have photos for social media like those fools who order food they won’t eat just to snap a picture of it.
But then, I also recently saw several matchy-matchy groups of female (dare I say middle-aged) tourists—not bridal parties—one dressed in slinky banana-colored tops at the US Open:
Another all in pink at the Met. So this staging of grown women cannot just be a spoiled, mean-spirited bride issue. Either way, parading in matching “supposedly” sexy outfits seems to be an attempt to gain attention, either from the television cameras nearby, or just plain old social media…
And then, let’s talk about socializing for a minute. Or rather… not socializing, the disconnect caused by modern technology.
Erik Pickerskill has a series of photographs where people pose how we typically use our cellphones, only their hands are empty. They sit on their sofas, pause on the sidewalks, stand on the subways staring into their clenched, phoneless hands. This art depicts who we really are now, disengaged from the world, unable to ever be alone with our thoughts, as we stare into our tiny screens.
I had this artist in mind when I rode the parking tram to the airport. Everyone around me was staring at their hands…I mean phones. Noone was daydreaming as they looked out the window, or chatted with the stranger next to them. Walking through Central Park, people jogged by looking at their phones, standing in line at the museum visitors looked at their phones, waiting online in Grand Central Station and its gorgeous Art Deco Lobby, tourists looked at their phones…
I worry that this generation coming up will have vast chunks of their brain missing…chunks that develop only when you must occupy yourself with daydreams and imagination…
What happens to us when we do not devote any time through our days to being alone with our thoughts or connecting to the people and world around us? Even babies in strollers stare at phone screens not the trees, or the skyline, or the people nearby…
The worst example of this screen obsession, however, isn’t about daydreaming, it’s about parenting.
We sat in a café yesterday between separate tables where parents dined with their individual child. On one side, a father took a seat across from his five-year-old son as mother parked their car. As they waited for her, they ordered Croque Monsieur. They pondered the Egyptian mummy they were about to see at New York’s Museum of Natural History, the boy asking if he could touch it and wondering why he couldn’t wake the mummy up. They then explored the parking situation in the city and why there were plastic shields between the café’s tables and on and on. Each looking the other in the eye, very human, Dad offered his son thoughtful answers and questions. They even engaged with us for a minute over the merits of grilled cheese.
At the opposite side of our table, a Mom arrived with her young daughter. The child was carrying a knotted balloon-sculpture while Mom was staring into her phone. Through lunch, Mom never broke eye contact with her screen, no matter how hard the daughter tried to block her view with that balloon doggy. She gently batted Mom’s forehead, boop boop; she asked questions; she tried to show her how the balloon doggy could walk on the table. She swatted at the phone, but Mom was soldered to it, only stopping to snap a smiling selfie of mother and child having a “grand, happy” lunch. The only time the little girl got any sincere eye contact or one-on-one attention was when the sweet waitress knelt down and to ask her important questions about her day. (I wonder how often wait staff feels compelled to do this for our neglected children…)
The difference between the tables was astonishing. I worry…what will become of our young if most of them have parents like the little girl’s? …And no, it was clear the Mom was not on some important, cannot-be-avoided phone conversation. She was just more interested in whatever was on that screen than in her daughter.
And to make matters worse, what we are witnessing instead of engaging is all staged, not even real…like the viral video of the poodle almost drowning in the family pool before his buddy the pitbull rescues him, where it is obvious the dogs’ owner has set this scenario up from the get-go; we are obsessed with screen life, even faked. Yes, we have been watching TV for nearly a century now, with its fictionalized theater. But now, we are stuck on a 24/7 sort of distorted reality that is not real, not spontaneous, not felt…Will any bride who sees her keepsake “first-look” photos ever be able to trust that the expression captured on her groom’s face is genuine? Will those ladies dressed in yellow have any honest memories of their trip to the open? But most of all, will that child in the restaurant know she is worth more than imagery..?
So maybe I sound like whoever was once scared of the ballpoint pen, and then the typewriter and then the photocopier. But something horrendous is happening due to being able to socialize through “insta” pictures and video. We have become obsessed with imagery of ourselves and each other, avoiding real connections. We take pictures of things we do not experience—food, smiles, vows, friendship—we know exactly what our best side is and are not embarrassed to fake-pose to present it, we force our friends into humiliating outfits and our dogs into life threatening situations, we stage our most intimate expressions, and worse, we ignore our children…without thought to what we are losing in the long run.
For what?
Try going a whole day without thinking about how [fill-in-the-blank] will look on a screen. Try sitting quietly in a park without your phone. Try experiencing something real without posting a picture of it or socially cataloging it in someway, at all. Can you?
Steering with My Elbows 