On a recent flight I took from Mallorca, BA then managed to make this whole business even more ludicrous by announcing to ‘European Travellers’ (ie normal passengers) not once during the flight, but twice, that they should not pass through this curtain and cross the seating area beyond it without permission; nor, under any circumstances, use the toilet at the front. Yeah, that makes sense – one hundred people using the two loos at the back, some of them walking down the entire length of fuselage, which might be blocked by hostesses and their drinks trolleys, to do so – while a toilet a few metres away at the front goes unused, so that it’s available for the bladder of just one passenger in ‘European Club’! (What’s more, they’d abandoned nine passengers in Palma, who seemed to have been confused by 24-hour timetables, and turned up for this midnight flight the night after they should have flown (woops!) – leaving them behind even though there were so many empty seats at the front of the plane).
Anyway, it’s not all bad on BA – they throw in drinks – and just before I dozed-off under the influence of a whisky, it struck me that the curtain revealed more than it obscured. It revealed its own silliness, for starters: because, as a method of conferring a special status on passengers, it’s a pretty sorry attempt; drawn back during take-off and landing to reveal a section of fuselage identical to the rest. Why not give them little hats at boarding, with ‘VIP’ written on them – that ought to do the trick, surely; if they’re so anxious to stand out? Or put doilies on the seats, and rugs on the floor - even give them their very own cabin-crew, in extra-short skirts, (and lederhosen for the young men?), who’d give everyone in Club Class a neck-rub - then we might all want to shell out the extra!
As things stand, the sheer flimsiness and inadequacy of this rather token barrier betrayed the fact that the ‘privilege’ for which an extra fee had been paid (whether they’re designated First Class, Business, ‘European Club’, or whatever) wasn’t up to the mark; at least not in the sense of having a useful difference to the commodity or service the rest of us had purchased. Nor was it necessary to us that it existed – that was why it was virtually empty. It wasn't effective at conferring additional status, so that we didn’t aspire to be there; on the contrary, we’d have felt a bit daft if we were. And we’d probably far rather the airline had taken pity on the nitwit chavs stranded back at Palma and given them the seats. All in all, it looked like an unpardonable lapse in an otherwise smooth operation.
Perhaps the curtain and the other little rituals of ‘Club Class’ are a bit like the robes and crosses, hymns and paraphernalia of a church service, which those without faith are obliged to attend because of a marriage, a funeral or a christening. Few of us nowadays believe a sacred rite is taking place in the eyes of an omnipotent and omnipresent God on these occasions –- but we do acknowledge the appropriateness of the Church leading us through such an event with one of its services, structuring our experience with the empty ceremonies of faith. And we are willing, perhaps grateful, to let the minister and the faithful do the believing, the magic bit, on our behalf.
In the same way that aspects of a particular faith, its hymns and liturgies, are vaguely familiar to most of us from a communal past when we were obliged to regularly attend services – and perhaps actually participate in these rituals of belief – so BA’s corporate identity and advertising campaigns generally try to evoke a shared history of style and service during travel; one once enjoyed by the wealthy on planes, renowned liners, and trains bearing famous titles. (Their one attempt to try, instead, to re-brand as hip, global and demotic – the costly and disastrous ‘tailplane art’ debacle - has long been abandoned.) This is in common with a more widespread and consistent ploy of advertising to evoke a desirable past none of us actually shared – Ridley Scott’s ads for Hovis being the classic example – and it’s invariably an imagined past of profound (ie non-commercial) values, such as family, service and tradition, of which the product or service in question is supposedly a continuation.
Just like religious faith, most of us no longer believe in their structures and rituals of social hierarchy, which seem quaintly old-fashioned in the modern era of egalitarian, cut-price air travel; where we all get the equal right to destroy the world at a discount. (* see below) In fact, many of us probably think air travel is way too cheap: hell, we aren’t even confident we should be doing it at all. (Perhaps we should be embracing the travel of the past in fact, as well as in fancy; saving the planet by using ships and trains, or staying at home, instead of flying.)
Instead, BA does the believing, the magic bit, for us; or at least, they should do when they get it right. Whether you wish to consider it jaundiced or clear-sighted, we all know what’s actually happening around the modern traveller. That is, monstrously huge and largely unchecked capital interests - aided, abetted and subsidised by the craven and venal governments with whom they’re in cahoots - are burning damaging fossil fuels in sixty-year-old technology, in order to produce a profit from transporting a tiny and privileged fraction of the world’s population to an alternative location. (And we’re complicit; that profit may be made on our behalf, for our pension funds). For the time being, our foreign holiday-spot is probably slightly less fucked-up by capital’s domestic legacy of urban blight, rural despoliation, or industrialisation than our own locale. But once there, we’re more likely to have an adverse impact than a positive one. Perhaps the poorer residents will give better value in services for the traveller’s first world currency than (s)he could receive back home (often at the expense of their communities, long-term economic prospects, welfare and environment). Certainly, it’ll be a place where other capital interests and other venal governments can profit from the tourists’ brief presence. We all know this perfectly well, but needfully choose to behave as though we did not, most of the time.
Now and then, of course, the unseen workers in this crazy set-up are desperate enough to go on strike - the baggage-handlers, or the under-paid people who make those fancy in-flight meals - or one witnesses the airline refusing to assist passengers who’ve missed their flight. And then we see that it’s the surplus value of others’ (undervalued) labour, not magic, which keeps the whole shaky shebang in the air, literally and figuratively. Suddenly, you’re reminded what we’re really dealing with: just one more uncompromising, impersonal and ruthless mega-corporation; as their price-fixing fine has confirmed. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6925397.stm)
And while we may take air conditioning and iced drinks at 37,000 feet for granted, we also know that one loopy Jihadist, or one technical slip-up, and we’re all toast; as events this week at Phuket have reminded us. So that the real may rudely intrude into our phantasmagoric little universe at any time; a haunting awareness gnawing at a corner of our consciousness, which a whole raft of scare-in-the-air films has inevitably exploited. And all the while, like that ticking crocodile stalking Captain Hook, the melting ice-caps and broken levees remind us that the time is nearly up for our stay in consumerist Neverland – and it’s coming sooner than we think.
It isn’t only the silly curtain which is trying, rather ineptly, to eclipse such nagging doubts with some traditional sleight of hand: the slick television advertising campaigns, the badges, branding and logos, the professional smiles and crisp uniforms, the scrupulously clean, shiny airports, with their mechanised walk-ways and concourses turned into smart shopping malls of marble and glass, the consumer-led websites, the press campaigns and glamorous junkets for journalists; it’s a constant, frantic and continuous effort required to keep us dreaming that sweet day-dream of our life, like the future populace in the film The Matrix.
All these things are working so well, so hard, and a bit of cloth goes and lets them down! The curtain seemed worth remarking on, because it was so crude, old-fashioned and inept – as were the crass admonitions not to trespass beyond it - transforming the stewardess from attentive helper to corporate policewoman. (Airline executives getting together to fix prices is pretty crude, old-fashioned and inept, come to that!) And what happens in such a case, what such failures do, is inadvertently foreground the way that we’re constituted as (consuming) individual subjects and stitched into the social fabric; often by mechanisms which are imperfect and clumsy. We’ve come to expect services and commodities not only to believe implicitly in late capitalism on our behalf; but also, to exist and run things smoothly on the premise of this unquestioned belief, as if there was absolutely no imaginable alternative. Of course, the more we let people like BA executives run the world – and the more folk who take to the skies with them and their ‘competitors’ - the sooner we’re definitely going to have to start imagining some alternatives……
(*)
Although they run first class options, airlines and train operators recognise that few of us think some people should receive better treatment than others because of birth or funds, nowadays. So they tend to use slightly more ambiguous terms, like ‘Premier’, or ‘Business Class’; because we will happily accept that where a firm is paying, an employee may regard a bit of extra comfort as a legitimate perk of having to travel for work (and may also need enough space and quiet to get some work done in transit). ‘Club’ class is a particularly adept term; one suggesting exclusivity, while inviting us to want to include ourselves and ‘belong’.
Yet they can’t quite sell us a sense of ourselves as more glamorous, potent, or desirable, as the promoters of a brand like Gucci or Porsche might do; that’s left to the private jet operators. In fact, BA seem very keen to guard against any hint of elitist or class associations. They do this by setting their latest advertisements in Australia; a country we conventionally associate with a vigorous, no-nonsense, unpretentious approach to life; where no one would have any truck with snobbish or class-bound conventions. And in case we’re just too dense to get the message, the BA staff are assisting at some sort of ‘fun-day’ there. Stuffy? – not them!
Unable to mobilise elitist or glamorous incentives, BA has to fight the commercial threat of low-cost, no-frills operators with an ethos of ‘professionalism’. If only we could have the same level of helpful, professional assistance in the rest of our lives as we have on their flights, their new advertising campaign laments. If only every aspect of our lives could be so congenial and well-managed as a flight with them! Then our whole lives would be “up-graded”.
By metonymic implication, if we “upgrade to British Airways” (that is, from the low-cost operators), as we’re exhorted to do for the duration of a flight, not only will the rest of our lives receive an “up-grade”; but also, we (that is, we ourselves) will be “up-graded”. Presumably, we will become the sort of people who have both sufficient means to choose ‘the best’ (the airline with the most helpful personal service, the most professional staff, etc) - and the judgement to discern that the additional cost involved is justified.
Hang on a minute, though - there’s a contradiction here. An “up-grade” is not something you pay for: in popular parlance, it’s a gratuitous seat enhancement at the discretion of the airline, perhaps owing to over-booking in economy, or a problem with either your seat or neighbours; in other words, a freebie. Google it, and what comes up are helpful tips on what you can do in order to increase the chances of an airline moving you from your cheaper seat to first class, without paying any extra. One of these tips is to have yourself noted as a CEO or VIP of some sort by your travel operator when purchasing the ticket.
In other words, there’s a suggestion in the adverts that even economy class with BA is effectively an upgrade from low-cost carriers – and it may not necessarily cost you any more to do so. Usually it will, of course; but that’s okay, because upgrades are available to VIP’s: so by upgrading yourself, you’ll become one; become the sort of person who gets upgraded. And, presumably, this upgrade of yourself is gratis; not something you’ve worked for, or had to earn. What you’ve actually done is pay a bit more hard-earned currency for exactly the same thing – fast but environmentally-damaging and scary transport from A to B - and, it transpires, you’ve been paying through the nose on fuel surcharges. But the advert manages a Derren Brown moment; in which you’re encouraged to believe that they’ll throw in an extra: flying BA has the potential to transform you into a more impressive, important and significant person – and they’ll do this for you gratis.
