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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, October 4, 1999
Scary vacuums, boomboxes: What next?
Now, I am the first to concede that my credentials as a commentator on modern industrial/consumer design are not impressive. In fact, I will cheerfully confess they're nonexistent.
Here's the thing: If a toaster or a can opener does its job satisfactorily, that's good enough for me: I've never lost much sleep over the finer points of the machine. Could it somehow be rendered more relevant, more graceful, more life-affirming? Ask me if I care.
However, there is something going on out there - some strange, as yet unexplained something - that's more than just a little puzzling. In fact, when you think through the implications, it gets almost sinister.
As one who almost always spends a little time thumbing through the advertising supplements that arrive with my Sunday paper (these nice people are kind enough to buy the ads that help me keep bread on the table; seems only fair that I should spare the time to peruse them), I have become increasingly aware of these strange stirrings in ConsumerLand.
Take your boom boxes and small stereo systems, for instance. Now, I have one of these in my office - a nice, tidy little RCA CD/cassette deck with detachable speakers. Perfectly respectable little piece of work. Lots of black plastic, a little black mesh over the speakers, the appropriate controls . . . With a kind of disarming charm, it simply looks like what it is.
I bought this particular item a few years ago (got the last one in a kind of fire-sale free-for-all, in case you're interested). Since it has performed admirably, I haven't been in the market and so haven't been paying as much attention as I should have.
Over the last couple of weekends, though, I've shaken off my indifference and done a little research.
Here's the thing: Why is it that all of a sudden everybody's boom boxes and small stereos have taken on a new look that may be intended to radiate pizzazz but which ends up projecting something not far removed from belligerence?
Some are black; others - more than a few - feature a sort of brushed-chrome look. All seem to share a commitment to bulges, abrupt angularity and multi-hued digital readouts.
Darn things look like the old Transformer toys my kids used to play with back in the mists of prehistory: You walk by any discount-store electronics department and you half expect one of the things to morph into a jacked-up Jeep or a jet fighter or a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. You're going to leave the kid alone in a room with that thing? And you call yourself a parent?
But that's just the warm-up. The main event, at least for the moment, is over in the vacuum cleaner department.
Can you imagine anything less threatening than a vacuum cleaner? The vacuum cleaners with which I grew up were about as threatening as Arnold Stang. They were frumpy, dowdy contraptions that made a lot of noise and collected the occasional dust bunny. (Of course, in my house we did occasionally kick over the traces: My mom and dad let a smooth-talking salesman talk them into buying a revolutionary new vacuum that deposited dust and grit in a water-filled container that you emptied out later. Years later, I read a report by some consumer outfit suggesting it was all hype - but in those dim days it seemed cutting-edge.)
Times change, Bubba. The vacuum cleaners of today not only inhale dust bunnies - they intimidate the heck out of them. The dumpy vacuums of yesteryear have been succeeded by a new generation of sleek black plastic dust-inhaling monsters that roll like so many panzers through den and living room and rumpus room. Woe betide him who should be so unwary as to cross the path of the 12-amp Fantom Fury! Alack for her who fails to take seriously the Eureka Whirlwind! Beware the onslaught of the sinister Panasonic Quickdraw!
I'm sorry: I just don't get it. What's the point? Why the visual aggression, the copy-writing belligerence? Are we now out to punish dirt rather than just bag it?
Could be, just could be. Or could it be . . . could it be that we are the target? Are these boom boxes and vacuums just the opening wedge for an onslaught of consumer goods that will intimidate us into buying them?
Far-fetched? Perhaps; perhaps not. Do you want to bet your Berber rug on it?
(Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com)
Brooks Peterson
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