The Exploration of Escalating Rage Towards a Broken Escalator: A Tale of Short Legs and Tall Frustrations

The Exploration of Escalating Rage Towards a Broken Escalator: A Tale of Short Legs and Tall Frustrations

Introduction

Here I was at Schiphol Airport. Not to catch a flight, but to change trains. I had to go from platform 2 to platform 6 to take the Intercity Direct to Rotterdam Centraal. I take this train quite often and for some reason, there is always some kind of delay which always ends in me having to wait at Schiphol. Normally I hate waiting, especially when taking public transport, but at Schiphol, I do not mind. There is always a lot happening and lots to see. The mere thought that the majority of the people will be on every end of the world within the next 24 hours always fascinates me.

I always observe people and try to guess why they are there. Are they picking someone up? Awaiting a lover? Are they on their way home? Going on a trip? Moving abroad? Business trip? So many possibilities. I love to observe the different kinds of travellers. You have the chill traveller. The one that is relaxed no matter how many minutes their flight departs. There is the stressed traveller. Still afraid to miss their flight even though they have arrived 5 hours prior. And my favourite of all, the Dutch family. Always with a parent that hands out homemade sandwiches wrapped in those thin plastic bags. Homemade sandwiches because ‘’after security, the food is way too expensive’’ and ‘’they are not going to be ripped off’’.

So here I was. In my happy place. My train to Rotterdam was departing soon and I made my way to platform 6. As I was joyfully walking there I noticed something which instantly turned my mood around. The escalator that I had to take to go down, was broken. I know this sounds like the most minor inconvenience. And to be fair, as an able-bodied person, it is. But for some reason, a broken escalator makes me unreasonably angry. Having to walk the big metal steps with my short little legs makes me angrier step by step. And then for some reason, the escalator that goes the other way. Always works. Staring you in the face with a big nasty smile that says, yes I am working. I know it is unreasonable, and I wish an escalator did not have that much power over my emotions, but for some reason it does. Therefore in this essay, I want to explore this further. And ask: Why does a broken escalator make me unreasonably angry? If according to McLuhan the media is the message. Then what message is a broken escalator trying to convey to me? And what does my anger towards that mean?

The Escalator

The escalator has been around for quite some time now. The first patent for the design of the escalator was registered in 1859 and was registered by Nathan Ames. The name escalator is a combination of the Latin words scala (steps) and elevatus (to raise) (Cooper, 1998 p.75). He was ahead of his time since the first production of electric motors did not arrive until the 1870s (p.74) and this was even before the widespread availability of electricity (p.75). This also troubled the possibility of production, Ames was probably a bit too ahead of his time since the design could never be built (p.75). After progress in electric motors and with the increase in availability and knowledge of electricity the first escalators started being installed in the early 1890s. Not as a device to move passengers, but as pleasure rides (p.76). A few years later department stores and public transport companies saw their opportunity and started using them with the same function as we know them today (p.77). Nowadays, (functioning) escalators carry millions of people billions of miles every year all around the world (p.74).

The Medium is the Message

In 1953 McLuhan published an article which introduced an early version of the idea that made him famous: “The medium is the message” (Berland, 2017, p.140). Here went against the traditional views of media as content delivery methods, and shifted the focus to the formal properties of media and technology (Sharma, 2022, p.2). McLuhan's intention was to broaden our attention concerning media (Berland, 2017, P.140). He argues that the message of the medium is not the message itself but the change of pace, scale or pattern that the medium introduces into society (Sharma, 2022, p.2).

We can see McLuhan as a pioneer in the field of study of media as media. However, his texts are filled with frequent misogynistic, racist, and nonsensical commentary (Sharma, 2022, p.3). But numerous authors (Towns, 2014,2022; Sharma, 2022; Berland, 2017; Peters, 2015) have shown that his use of media theory can still be useful to examine different phenomena. McLuhan's theory can be used as a critical framework. This allows a deeper examination of social structures and power dynamics inherent in technology (Sharma, 2022, p. 4). His media theory allows us to consider the technical aspects of a medium while still being medium- and context-specific (p.7). McLuhan's media theory emphasises the incorporation of inequitable power dynamics into the properties and capacities of technologies that mediate power in social and institutional spaces (p.2). McLuhan's theory emphasizes the ontological and epistemological power of media. (p.6). Therefore McLuhan’s theory of media will still be used in this essay. Because it allows us to look at the deeper structure of a certain phenomenon. In this case: the escalator. This might not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about media but McLuhan’s central metaphor in his work ‘’Understanding Media’’ (2003) was that media are extensions of men (p.108). When taking this definition one could argue that an escalator is also a form of media. It is an extension of men. Giving the option to move to another floor with ease.

Reliance on Technology

McLuhan frequently discusses all media as extensions of the senses. All technologies are extensions of our physical and nervous systems to increase power and speed (McLuhan, 2003, p.108). The use of any kind of medium alters the patterns of interdependence among people. Because it alters the ratios among our senses. (McLuhan, 2003, p.107-108). Postman (1985) built on top of this and stated that the introduction of a new technique to a culture is not merely an extension of man's power, but also a transformation in the way of thought and the content of a culture (p.13).

As mentioned earlier the escalator came to be in the mid/end of the 19th century. Though the time frame is up for debate since a few innovations were developed as early as the 1700s, the Industrial Revolution began in earnest by the 1840s in Britain, and in a few decades spread to the rest of the world (Allen, 2009, p.136). The escalator being introduced around the same time. is a beautiful example of this new revolution of machinery. Switching from manual to machine. I would argue you could see this as the start of a transformation in the way of thought that Postman mentioned and the decrease in interdependence among people that McLuhan stated. The way of thought transformed from a interdependence among people to the dependence on technology.

When analyzing the world today, one could say that we very much rely on technology. My annoyance with the broken escalator very much demonstrates my own reliance on technology. I grew up in the 2000s. I cannot imagine a world without computers, I cannot imagine a time before the Internet even. I am one of those Gen Z monsters that cannot use a map and will die without Google Maps. I cannot study without YouTube videos, I listen to vinyl for the aesthetic and only have an old home number of my parents memorized by heart, a number that is not even in use anymore. I rely heavily on technology, and the same holds when I find myself at a train station. In my head, I always have two options. Either take the stairs or use the escalator. Lazy as I am, I always choose the latter. I think that my reliance on technology also explains why the defect of one brings out so many emotions in me. I cannot fathom the fact that we have come so far as humankind with technology, but for some reason, the escalator that I have to use is always broken. How can we live in a world where technology is so developed that computers can be so human-like that people fall in love with them (Singh-Kurtz, 2023, para. 2). But at the same time I still have to use my legs to move from one level to the other.

Infrastructure

As stated before McLuhan argues that a medium alters our patterns of interdependence (McLuhan, 2003, p.108), because it alters our ratios among senses (p.107-108), something that I notice myself. McLuhan said that in the same sense, each form of transport not only carries, but translates and transforms, the sender, the receiver, and the message. (McLuhan, 2003, p.107-108). McLuhan argued that historically, roads and written communication were closely intertwined, the advent of the telegraph introduced a new dynamic, allowing messages to travel faster than messengers (McLuhan, 2003, p.110). Media scholars today challenge this notion of a separation between transportation and communication. By even taking McLuhans own example of the telegraph. The electric telegraph relied on physical infrastructures such as wires and telephone poles, transforming contested spaces and blurring the boundaries between transportation and communication (Towns, 2022, p.29). The materiality of infrastructure makes it so that the distinction between transportation and communication is flawed.

An escalator is a form of transport but also infrastructure. Infrastructures are built networks that enable the flow of goods, individuals, or concepts, facilitating their exchange across distances (Larkin, 2013, p. 328). There is a duality in infrastructure. It is a matter that enables the movement of other matter. It is a thing on its own, but also the relation between other things. An escalator is an object on its own that also represents the possibility for people to move from one floor to the other (p.329).

Infrastructuralism

Just like with McLuhan’s media theory, we can gain insight into how politics can take shape through various methods by directing our attention to the aspect of form or poetics of infrastructure (Larkin, 2013, p.329). Harold Innis was the first to emphasize the importance of infrastructure in media theory, way before McLuhan (Peters, 2015, p.18).

Peters (2015) suggests the adoption of "infrastructuralism" as a framework for understanding media, focusing on the basic, mundane, and often hidden aspects (p.34).’’It is a doctrine of environments and small differences, of strait gates and the needle’s eye, of things not understood that stand under our worlds.’’ (p.34). Infrastructuralism allows a way to understand media as fundamentally logistical by ordering it in terms and units. With infrastructuralism, you can organize and orient, to arrange people and property, often into grids (p.37). When looking at media logistically, it pretends to be neutral and abstract, but this often encodes subtle and deep political or religious partisanship (p.38). Infrastructuralism shares the classic concern of media theory: the call to make environments visible (p.38). Peters said that ‘’Perhaps McLuhan’s most fundamental ethical call, against his horrified fantasies of mankind growing into a single hive mind, was the call to awareness’’ (p.38).

With the framework of infrastructuralism, we will dive further into my irritation towards escalators, in a logistical way. Ordering it into dimensions, making its hidden environment visible. The different dimensions will be as follows. The aesthetics concerning the escalator. The promise that the escalator represents. And the precarity that the escalator embodies.

Aesthetics

A dimension of infrastructure is aesthetics, drawing from the Aristotelian concept of aisthesis. Aisthes refers to the bodily reaction to lived reality, involving taste, touch, hearing, seeing, and smell. In this sense aesthetics is not a representation but an embodied experience. Infrastructure produces the ambient conditions of everyday life: our sense of temperature, speed, fluorescence, and the ideas we have associated with these conditions (Larkin, 2013, p.336).

As someone who is almost always in urban environments, the escalator is something of the everyday for me. With this comes an embodied experience. When taking an escalator I have certain expectations. I expect the metal pedals of the escalator to first be flat and then tilt towards the direction that I want to go in, taking me either up or down. I expect a black plastic railing that moves with you, at the same speed. I would rather not touch this railing, since I expect it to be unhygienic, but I know this as a possibility for stability. When other people are on the escalator I expect them to stand on the right side, making place for the people that want to walk by them on the left side. When people do not follow this behaviour, I consider them as rude. I expect a subtle smell of metal on the escalator and the dimmed sounds of spinning wheels in the background. But most importantly I expect it to work. I expect a technical machine that moves me from one floor to the other.

The Promise of the Escalator

Infrastructure has its conceptual roots in the Enlightenment idea of a world in movement and open to change. Nowadays Infrastructures are often perceived as bulky and uninteresting systems (Peters, 2015, p.30). But modernity is characterized by a proliferation of infrastructures. Today living within and relying on infrastructure is an essential aspect of being modern (p.31). It allows the body to apprehend what it means to be modern, mutable, and progressive (Larkin, 2015, p.337). Marx (1992) argued that infrastructure enacted the course of history (p.49) and Deleuze (1992) argued that different types of machines can be matched to different types of societies (p.6).

Even though the escalator has been around for a century and a half, I still connect the escalator to modernity and my idea of a ‘’modern society’’. When I picture an escalator I view it in a big shiny mall with high-end stores and a fountain in the middle. A picture very much connected to the neoliberal view of progress. Peters (2015) stated that ‘’Media are civilizational ordering devices.’’ (p.5). When looking at the escalator one could make distinctions between civilizations that have escalators and that have not. I will not go in line with McLuhan and situate people with the media that they use to make some hierarchical order (Towns, 2014, p.546). Since this builds of builds off a long history of Western associations of tribalism with a presumed intellectual and racial superiority (p.546). Therefore I will follow Postman (1985) who stated that a major new medium changes the structure of discourse (p.27). I already connected the advent of the escalator with the Industrial Revolution. But this broken escalator goes further than just a mismatch in technology advancements. Societies with escalators have a certain degree of progress. And with this progress come societal expectations, a promise of a good life.

Infrastructure operates on the level of fantasy and desire. Infrastructures embody the dreams of individuals and societies, transmitting and making these fantasies emotionally real (Larkin, 2013, p.333). Benjamin (2002) argued that infrastructure contains the movement of history and that this enters our unconscious, influencing our imagination (p.152). Infrastructure's political address lies in its representation of the possibility of being modern and having a future. (Larkin, 2013, p.333).

The Precariousness of the Escalator

Foucault (2010) said that infrastructure is integral to the organization of a market economy (p.163) and that the concept of progress is central to neoliberalism (p.244). According to Brown (2015), the spread of neoliberalism's hegemonic rationality (pp. 21-22) has led to the displacement of homo politicus by homo oeconomicus (p.51); market actors, solely driven by profit-seeking (p.28). Lorey (2015) builds upon this by introducing the concept of precarization, which refers to the destabilization of individuals' living and working conditions (p.1). Lorey argues that precarization serves as a tool of governance under neoliberalism, enabling capitalist accumulation and social regulation and control (p.1). Not only does governmental precarization destabilize employment, but it also disrupts the conduct of life, bodies, and modes of subjectivization (p.13). The normalization of precarization within the neoliberal framework has resulted in existential precariousness (pp. 14-15). Individuals are now capital themselves, expected to manage their own insecurity through constant self-investment. This continuous pursuit of improving human capital leads to exclusion, inequality, and a perpetual state of insecurity (pp. 70-71).

I think for me the escalator embodies a metaphor that concerns this existential state of precariousness. Where the escalator operates on fantasy and desire, it represents the promise of modernity, to have a future. And the brokenness of it represents the fact that this promise is false.

The greatest promise of capitalism is that each generation will rise, on the shoulders of the one before, as a result of the natural workings of a market economy (Reeves, 2019, para. 4). Capitalism runs under the promise of progress. That as long as you work hard, you can achieve whatever you want. With this come the promise of a certain type of stability. A promise that says that in this place of modernity, we do not have to be afraid to starve or to not have a roof above our heads. This was something of the past, we have progressed. Now we can dream big.

The fact that the escalator is broken represents that this promise of stability is false. Even if we work hard, have a stable job, there is no promise of a house and still the possibility to have to go to bed with hunger.

The hegemonic rationality of neoliberalism has resulted in a constant state of insecurity. The things that we rely on are never sure. They can be taken away from us at any second. Just like the escalator that I rely on. It can malfunction at any time and then I am on my own. For me, as an abled-bodied, this is not a problem. I just have to get over my laziness and walk. But this does not mean the same for non-abled bodies. The broken escalator represents the precariousness of the current neoliberal system. A system with exclusion and inequality.

Conclusion

By using media theory and the framework of infrastructuralism, I have analyzed my anger towards a broken escalator. Using McLuhan's theory that the medium is the message, we can consider the broken escalator as a medium that conveys a message of inconvenience and frustration. It conveys the message of the intricate relationship between technology and our daily lives. Infrastructuralism, as a framework for understanding media, sheds light on the escalator from a logistical point of view. Looking at the dimensions: aesthetics, the promises it represents, and the precarity it embodies

I have learned that a broken escalator irritates me because it demonstrates my reliance on technology and I have argued that the broken escalator can be seen as a metaphor for the precariousness in the neoliberal society. It demonstrates how the idea of a certain modernity and security is promised. The brokenness of the escalator demonstrates that this promise of security is fale. When the escalator breaks most people will be able to use their legs and walk the stairs, but not everyone is able to do this. Leading to a society with exclusion and inequality.

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