The new trains gleam.  New York’s subway still doesn’t let you know when they’re
coming, as London’s has for years, but from your first glimpse of the shiny new car, rounding the
bend in the dark tunnel, the new trains gleam.  The red light on top, shining (2) or (4) or (5); the
graffiti-, scratchitti- free windows and walls.  The trains are shiny, and inside they are plastic.
Most of all, grey.  The pale, institutional gray that, the shrinks say, tells us to Be Calm and Relax.
Attention-deficit gray.

 When I was in high school, my old school building underwent a series of major
renovations.  The main change I remember, from the old school to the new school, was attention-
deficit gray.  Gone were the yellow hallways on one floor and the peach hallways in another.
Gone were classrooms painted white or tan.  Everything had been turned that same shade of pale,
light gray.  We were told, or our teachers and principals were told, that this would help us relax
and pay attention; it would focus the mind.  Its blandness, now ubiquitous, would soothe.

 The new subway cars go further.  True, the lighting is garish; I dread the first drunken
2:00 AM ride I have to endure back from Tribeca.  Every hair out of place seems highlighted; the
bags under my eyes seem darker; my skin an even more sun-deprived pale.  But apart from the
bright illumination, the new cars seemed engineered to provide the calm, detached Protestantism
we’ve come to expect from advanced technology.  The gruff, inaudible announcements of the live
conductor have been replaced by a non-accented recording.  (The recordings seem to alternate
between male and female voices.  Was this fought for by the feminists?)  The brash ding-dong of
the door-closing bell has been supplanted by a brief, low-intensity dink-donk seemingly created by
machine.  And the bright orange and yellow seats, shaped to fit tiny Japanese bottoms, are,
famously, gone.  In their place are dull blue-gray benches with no divisions to upset the
increasingly fat American passengers.

 I like the new, clean subway cars as much as anyone.  I like watching the cool LED lights
count off stop after stop.  And I appreciate the clocks in every car, the signs letting the clueless
know where they are and where they are going, and the surprising fact that the ads seem to have
gotten smaller.  But there is something disturbing about this leveling-out of New York, the
depersonalized cleanliness of it all.  This isn’t the Disney-squeak of the new Times Square.  It is
something entirely more disturbing: the presumption that, in the future, we will all be WASPs.
None of us will have accents -- Italian, African-American, New-Yawk, nothing.  None of us will
have individual characters -- all the trains will look the same, more or less.  (I wonder if we had
the money, whether the MTA wouldn’t do the same job on the station’s, and make them all as
uniform, boring, and sterile as those of the much-envied Washington, D.C., Metro.)  And
everything will be clean, cool, and polite.

 It seemed to me as though people kept their voices down on the new train.  Maybe it was
just the train itself -- the new brakes are blissfully squeak-free, and you barely feel a bump as you
hurtle down the tracks.  But I got the distinct impression that people were speaking more quietly,
as though afraid to disturb everyone else.  They seemed to be sitting more stiffly, as if slouching
would ill-befit the spanking new environment.  And I was weirded out by all of it.  What is this
new politeness, taking the place of regional charm?  Why is it better that the New York subway
resemble the Old New York as little as possible?  The Old New York of ethnicity, pushiness, and
character.  Don’t get me wrong -- rudeness is annoying.  I wouldn’t miss being cut off in line or
pushed as I walk down the stairs any more than you would.  But on my first ride on the new train,
I felt I already missed some of the distinctive humanity that comes from having the seams
exposed, the laundry out on the line.

 And I think the change is a matter of cultural clash.  Politeness, reserve, efficiency -- these
are Protestant traits, bred in New England, transplanted to the Midwest, and totally at odds with
the organic humanity of New York’s Irish Catholics, Italians, Jews, Eastern Europeans, urban
African Americans, the Asian communities of New York’s ‘Chinatowns,’ and the diverse blend of
other non-WASP cultures that make New York so vital and interesting.  These are cultures that,
historically at least, value the messy humanity of closeness more than the reserved dignity of
distance.  You’ve got a problem?  They’re in your face.  You have something to say?  They’ll say
something back.  And, conversely -- they’ll play with your dog on the street; they’ll be more likely
to smile at people in the neighborhood.  These are people people.  It’s messier, yes; it’s a lot more
efficient to have politeness everywhere and everything be clean and neat.  But why do we have to
agree that efficiency and neatness are worth more than warmth and character?

 This isn’t just a feature of the subways.  Think of Tomorrowland, a 1950s-70s version of
what the future would be like.  Remember?  Everything was clean, white, smooth, and plastic.
Like the new subway cars.  People were going to exist, the Tomorrowland makers told us, in
worlds surrounded by technology and free of trash.  There would be no stains.  Think of high
modernist, minimalist furniture -- the spreads you see in magazines.  There are no signs of life.
Everything is put away in Scandinavian-simple drawers and hideaways.  The blankets are never
mussed.  The sofa isn’t cushy, textiled, and comfy; it’s sleek or smooth or both.  God help you if
you eat spaghetti in one of those places, and splatter some sauce on the glass table, white carpet,
granite counter, Mies chair.  You probably don’t want spaghetti at all.  You’ll probably be eating
a few strands of asparagus, arranged artfully on a vast, square, terra cotta blue platter.  Or, if
we’re really in Tomorrowland, your food will be Food-Tech, a cube or pellet or pill.

 Why were these visions of the future inevitable visions of less organism and more artifice?
Even now, I think when we imagine the future we imagine a place that is cleaner, neater, trimmed,
and polite.  We don’t think about houseplants, or bagels and lox, or sex.  Why is this?  Politeness
is just a set of rules about social exchanges -- and it has costs as well as benefits.  Are we really
better off never speaking our mind to strangers, sitting stiffly in smooth plastic environments and
respecting the funereal quiet of the public space?  Are we really better off as Swiss Germans?

 It is this quest for politeness and smoothness, I think, that is the real motivator behind the
drive for ‘political correctness.’  It’s not ideology; it’s a growing intolerance for any kind of
offense.  People are “offended” by all sorts of remarks and behaviors, not only those that
implicate race or class or gender.  As a culture, we seem less and less likely to put up with stuff
we don’t like, and more and more likely to insist on the bland, placid, and totally inoffensive.
Look at our leaders. Look at how many new rules we have governing our interpersonal relations.
And look at our public spaces, increasingly devoid of originality, increasingly sterile -- so much so
that I suspect at least an entire generation has now grown up knowing nothing different.

 I’m not a Luddite.  I don’t want the new trains to go away, to be replaced by the noisy,
clattering, stink-filled old ones.  I simply wonder what we lose in our relentless drive for
cleanliness and orderliness, whether there isn’t something culturally specific about the preference,
and why each successive subway, building, plastic consumer item, and media product leaves me
with an increasing sense of isolation.
 
 
 
 

December, 2000
 
 
 
 

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