Gotham Diary:
Trousers
24 February 2014
I knew I knew her from somewhere. The actress playing Mrs Hudson in the BBC Sherlock series, Una Stubbs. Her face seemed familiar, but that was only because she looked like any number of other pretty English actresses. It was her voice that drove me to track her down. At IMDb, I had to scroll away for quite a while — all the way to the bottom, and even then I didn’t spot any likely titles. Scrolling back up more cautiously, I found what I was looking for in 1979: Fawlty Towers. In “The Anniversary,” Una Stubbs plays Alice, who with her husband (a cutup, played by Ken Campbell, who’s got all the laugh lines) is the first to arrive at the disastrously miscarried fête that Basil has planned as a surprise for Sybil on their fifteenth anniversary — a date which he thinks it’s funny to let her believe that he has forgotten. Ms Stubbs’s speaking voice is something of a squeal, high-pitched and “girlish” and almost, but never quite, annoying. It contrasts wonderfully with the hearty contralto of Pat Keen’s Virginia, the stout nurse who insists on palpating “Sybil’s” glands only to be socked in the eye by Polly. I recognized Ms Stubbs’s silvery voice because I’ve watched “The Anniversary” countless times. It’s locked in my head.
IMDb! Isn’t the Internet amazing!
You’re not quite so thrilled, eh? Of course not.
I came across an update at Facebook last night that made me holler. It was one of those posters that people share, like the one about shouting “Plot twist!” whenever something really bad happens. (Mmm, yes.) Here’s the one that caught my attention:
Q: If someone from the 1950s suddenly appeared today, what would be the most difficult thing to explain to them about life today?
A: I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get in arguments with strangers.
The joke about trivializing the Internet with LOLcats and flame wars, I see more clearly now than I did last night, clinches my objection to the answer. It might, indeed, be difficult to explain smartphones to a visitor from the 1950s, but only because it would be hard to convince the visitor that smartphones were anything but a crazy new gimmick. After all, the Fifties witnessed the introduction of a remarkable device that had almost immediate repercussions outside the developed world: the transistor radio. Far more baffling to a visitor from the 1950s would be the way women dress — or don’t, as trouser-like garments have replaced skirts in the intervening decades. Only fashionable women, and women with dating in mind, wear dresses anymore. Oh, and very old ladies. Some of them, anyway.
Then our visitor would demand to know why even the men look like they left the house in their pajamas. It would take days to create the context in which a visitor could grasp the smartphone. Until then, he’d say, “Why would I need a smartphone?”
***
Remember when people used to say that about computers? There was always someone, back in the late Eighties or early Nineties, ready to assume a posture of defiant resistance. And the thing was, the challenge was unanswerable. There was really no way to persuade a computer illiterate of the uses of computers, a subject almost as inexplicable as parenthood. In the end, almost everyone had to use a computer at work. The Internet changed things — although perhaps I ought to point out that personal computers were around for about fifteen years before Internet use took off, a fact that younger readers might well overlook. Eventually, though, everyone had to find out for himself why he needed a computer.
And then, guess what! — nobody really needs a computer! Well, some people still do. Writers, designers, professionals in one line or another. But that’s all for work. The personal computer has evaporated. Rather, it has shrunk to such proportions that “computer” just isn’t the word anymore. “Pocket computer”? So Texas Instruments.
It turns out that, what you needed a computer for, was to learn how to make the most of a smartphone. So: not only was the “Why do I need a computer question” unanswerable, but nobody knew the answer — except, just maybe, Steve Jobs.
My eye, by the way, looks almost normal. I’m good to go — so I’m told. Tomorrow, alas, is another day.