When It Comes to Reclining Plane Seats, Who Will Think of th
Source: Clive Thompson
I worry on airplanes that the person in front of me will wrench their seat back and damage my laptop. Don't we all have a responsibility to look behind us first?
The short answer is yes. Here's the long answer: In 1998, a 6′3″ man named Ira Goldman was flying from Minneapolis to Amsterdam and, aghast at the fundamental injustice that the person seated ahead of him could unilaterally occupy the space he needed for his sizable legs just by reclining, he rigged his umbrella across his foldout table in a way that blocked that seat from tilting backward. By 2003, Goldman was marketing a product: Knee Defender―two little clips that do the same dirty work.
The existence of the Knee Defender―specifically, the product's to-hell-with-you ethos―has drawn a lot of vitriol. Some people think it's too harsh and combative and that to actually deploy a Knee Defender against another human being you'd have to be an arrogant bully, a Mussolini of the skies. One person was so disgusted that he wrote an email to Goldman: “I should come put a bullet in your head.” And yet Goldman also gets emails from people who initially felt the Knee Defender was a vile invention but now are buying one―and it's often because they had their laptop screen cracked by a thoughtless recliner. It left them no choice.
Goldman understands the criticism. But don't blame the user of the Knee Defender, he says, blame the airlines: As his website puts it, “If airlines will not protect people from being battered, crunched, and immobilized … then people need options to protect themselves.” He's heard all the counterarguments and counter-counterarguments and play-acted them for me. (“Just don't use your laptop, this isn't your dick-fucking office. Do your work before you get on the plane or buy a business-class seat. Well, my company won't pay for business class, and I have a presentation when I land.”) There's just no getting around the fact that when we board a plane we are thrown into a brutal, zero-sum game. Not everyone's going to be comfortable, and one person's comfort comes at the expense of another's. So Goldman feels that knee-defending is a legitimate tactic. Righteous, even, since an unruly onboard arms race of knee-defending might actually pressure the powers that be to change. I asked Goldman if this every-man-for-himself approach implies that a person reclining shouldn't feel any responsibility to look back first. “Exactly,” he said.
Well, I disagree. I don't want to live in a world where it's acceptable for us to turn on each other. What if the abuse we're dealt by the airlines had the opposite effect―if it fostered solidarity with fellow passengers, an impulse to be kinder? What if we were a compassionate community of living bodies, hurtling through the sky together at 600 miles an hour?
I know it's rough in that cabin. I'm no Pollyanna. I've fought my share of subtle yet merciless elbow turf wars over middle armrests. But I'm not proud of that. Just turn around. Look at your fellow passenger. Then recline. It's easy to forget we are leaning on each other.
Why, exactly, couldn't siblings John and Joan Cusack do a sex scene? Straight actors do gay scenes; friends play lovers.
Dude. It just wouldn't work. You know that.
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