Fighting for the right to silence, and its privilege

For many Australians, and certainly for many republicans, the reaction to the death of the queen has been wildly over the top.

Part of that has been bemusement/annoyance/anger at the idea that it shouldn’t be business as usual while the death of the sovereign is acknowledged. Next Thursday’s public holiday has been widely criticised, especially by aggrieved business. The decision by McDonald’s to close in the UK on the day of the funeral has been criticised and mocked.

We here at Crikey have had some fun with things that won’t be happening because of the death of the sovereign — including a supermarket chain turning down the volume of self-service checkout beeps — prompting the question, surely, of why they can’t be permanently turned down.

And the incessant coverage across the media, and especially on the ABC, has infuriated many (lucky there was no social media during the ultimate OTT global event, Diana’s death).

Even the UK advertising industry suspended ads across a range of media in response, which struck me as interesting while at the same moment one of the most profoundly ugly things in Sydney, the Glebe Silo Billboard, was renewed for another three years over the protests of many either directly affected by the megawatt lighting it requires, or who see the thing as a monstrous blight.

Allegedly the “biggest billboard in the southern hemisphere” (an echo of the 1970s, when Australians perennially consoled themselves with the pissweak claim that something here was “the biggest/tallest/fastest in the southern hemisphere”), for two decades this advertisement has inflicted its gaudy products on millions of drivers.

Now don’t get me wrong, outdoor advertising is as good as any other advertising, and doubtless for many public entities such as transport infrastructure providers and local councils, it provides a useful stream of revenue from advertisers keen to capture the attention of commuters.

But if we’re not quite at Blade Runner yet, that constant pressure to turn everywhere we gaze, and every sonic environment we’re in, into a contest to manipulate and monetise our attention is steadily degrading our quality of life. Pity the poor consumer who can’t board a bus without being advertised to, can’t wait for a train without being berated by Sky News, can’t fill their car up without enduring content from that innovation that surely represents the crowning glory of human scientific advance, a petrol bowser ad screen.

And much of life outside the home is now based on that line from Twin Peaks about “there’s always music in the air”. Restaurants play fast, loud music in order to encourage diners to eat quickly and leave, turning over tables. Supermarkets have abandoned the stilfing drone of muzak for in-house radio stations playing the hits of the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, 2000s, 2010s and today, because they claim to want customers “dancing in the aisles”. Medical waiting rooms inflict local radio stations on you. Many shops insist on inflicting music on you (I still recall a running shoe shop in Salzburg that was pumping out dance music from a DJ in the front window, prompting a passing young American to observe: “This must be the douchiest shop in Austria”).

Above all, it seems, we mustn’t have silence; it must always be filled with some kind of noise. Silence, evidently, is something that scares people. Silence is “awkward“.

And yep, I know, I’m a grumpy old man railing about all the noise these young folk are enjoying. I want this noise off my lawn. I’m fully conscious of the extent to which I am inhabiting a stereotype. Added to that I’m a fairly extreme introvert, and always have been, so I’ve been grumpy about noise since childhood. I hang out in cathedrals when I travel abroad, where silence and history can soothe my godless atheist soul. I love silence and quiet.

More seriously, I’m also privileged. I can control my aural and visual environment. I work from home, I don’t commute. Most people, especially low-income earners, can’t control their environments. They have to put up with the constant attempts to monetise their attention, manipulate their emotions and keep them from boredom, whether they like it or not. Silence is an issue of class and privilege.

So at one extreme, there’s grumpy me, an old privileged white male whining about how everything’s so noisy. At the other extreme, there’s a relentless and apparently unstoppable effort to colonise literally every single moment of our attention, either because it can be manipulated to make us be good consumers, or because the idea that we might have a moment to reflect on ourselves without external distraction fills us with dread.

For all the absurd pomp and ritual around the death of a rich old foreign lady accidents of history and genetics made our sovereign, I’m all for more quiet and a bit less business-as-usual noise. I’m for a lower volume in everyday life, and less incessant demands on people’s attentions. If that makes me a stereotype, so be it.