A wise man once lamented that if he had the eyes of a fly he would have enjoyed an undivided 360 degree view of the world. Yes, seeing and observing is a unique activity. So versatile is the scope of the word ‘see’ that vocabulary is doing extra time to catch its different nuances. When somebody says “I see,’’ it can mean anything — looking, understanding, agreeing, asserting, conviction, reinstating faith and so on. The act of seeing has always been singular, individualistic, and one-sided. Like a mirror its reverse side is opaque. I see, I value, I absorb, I assimilate and I interpret. Through this process I own what I see and then describe it to others. In short, the act of watching comes with a process of explanation. We spend crores of rupees just to make people see things in a way that works to our benefit.
“In every age,” as J. Bronowski said, “there is a turning point, a new way of seeing and asserting the coherence of the world. It is frozen in the statues of Easter Island that put a stop to time — and in the medieval clocks in Europe that once seemed to say the last word about the heavens forever. Each culture tries to fix its visionary moment when it was transformed by new conception either of nature or of man...” These lines written 37 years ago in his book ‘The Ascent of Man’ sound prophetic today when the individual is under a constant scanner.
Everywhere it is an invasion of ‘I’. Everywhere we move the lens is stalking us. Remember the Lakme ad of the cricket gallery? During a match break the cameraman focused on the pouting lips of a young lady (Yana Gupta) in the gallery just as she was putting on a fresh application of lipstick. The lady then started to catch a tossed-up popcorn into her open mouth. Little did she realise what reaction her actions created on the thousands of spectators watching her on the big screen.
The lens so far has seen things in uni-dimension. Today, 3G technology has made vision two-way. And two things have started happening simultaneously. We see and we are also being seen thus putting an end to the era of the finality of the unilateral view. Today no perception is complete without a counter vision.
The image of a person is in a duel with the individual. Narcissus had only his image on the surface of the water to fall in love with. Today if we look around us everything is like a mirror — doors, windows, shops, floors... Multiple images of me from different surfaces are vying for my attention at this very moment. Every surface that reflects me almost sets a new alert for me — hey! your hair is not looking bad... are you putting on weight? Even the Income Tax Tribunal took notice of this syndrome when they allowed actress Amisha Patela a tax rebate on her make-up expenses: “The compulsions of public glare and virtual blurring of the line of demarcation between personal life and professional life requires these glamour professionals to be at their best all the time, and no part of the expenses on their make-up and costumes can, for public appearances therefore, be disallowed as personal expenses,” said the ITAT (Income Tax Appellate Tribunal) bench of Mumbai (The Economic Times, 31st Jan ’11).
I would not be surprised if such rebates are extended to the taxpaying junta in the near future. The sum total of vision dynamics is a complex one. At one level we have developed multiple eyes/lenses and we are becoming flies. At another level we have the simultaneity of vision. And at a third level we also see that we are being watched. Added to these visuals is the ubiquitous reflection of us from multiple shining surfaces around. Are we really ready to tackle this ‘multi WE?’
The TVS scooty girl in the ad used the smoke screen glass of the car parked at the red light as her mirror to refresh her make-up — much to the shock of the driver sitting inside the car. The camera creates simultaneous reality, picture within picture, drama within drama, action within action. In the TVS ad there is one action on the street as the girl puts her lipstick on using the black filmed car window much to the amusement of the passer by. Inside the car the driver thinks that the girl is making amorous gestures to him much to the annoyance of his wife sitting beside him. A third episode starts simultaneously when the surprised driver pulls down his glass and the scooty girl and the boy make eye contact. The audience of this TV commercial are watching and enjoying all the layers of events unfold. Are we entering an advanced level of communication very similar to the way we upgraded from reading one alphabet to reading a word at one go and so on? A journey from a word to a sentence and from a sentence to a page? Imagine telling somebody who is habituated to reading a whole page at a glance to go back to reading one alphabet at a time again! Are we making consumer communication such a huge exercise that people will not even look at your communication unless it’s loaded in layers and ignores simple, straight forward communication? Think about it!
The writer is VP, Consumer Insight & HFD (Human Futures Development), McCann Erickson India. He can be reached at kishore. chakraborti@mccann.com