As a native born New Yorker, a committed supporter of mass transit and an advertising man I have always had a fantasy of making short public service spots about how to behave on the subway. Sort of along the lines of the etiquette films I saw in school growing up in the 60s.
Every day I am outraged by people who stand in the doorway and don't move when the doors open, making getting on or off near impossible.
Every day I am outraged by mothers who insist on riding the subways with their children in strollers during rush hour.
Every day I am outraged by the hawkers of free rags (I can't even consider calling something like AM New York a newspaper) blocking the stairwells, pushing papers in my face and leaving fire hazards and accident causing litter throughout the stations.
Well some Australians clearly feel the same way, because they have made my fantasy real and created a series of public service spots about bad behavior in the subway. And my favorite, which will if you're a New Yorker, you will certainly recognize, is the Crotch Spreader:
I've always found the difference between riding the NY subways and the Tokyo subway instructive of the difference between the American sense of personal space and the Japanese sense of personal space, which relates to the masculine aggressive action of crotch spreading to mark territory.
On the NYC subway, standing too close is considered an act of aggression — and too close can mean 6 inches away to some people. Of course, personal space shrinks with growing crowds, but on a crowded NYC train there are often people who make it clear that they expect a clear berth or there will be hell to pay.
In Tokyo on the other hand, personal space on a crowded train is not 6 inches away. Or one inch away. The trains are so crowded that it feels as though one has negative personal space. Or to quote Groucho Marx when Margaret Dumont asked him to hold her closer "If I were any closer to you I'd be behind you."
You can see the other spots on this series on YouTube. But I would really like to see these done for New York City, and our own particular sense of language use. For while the way I write about this might sound rather high-falutin, a day doesn't go by where I don't say out loud at one point or another (usually while trying to walk through Times Square and impeded by gawking tourists who under other circumstances I am always happy to help with directions since so many in Japan helped me) "This is New York, get out of the way."
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