{"id":1065,"date":"2014-08-11T18:02:37","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T18:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/?post_type=chapter&p=1065"},"modified":"2014-09-26T20:05:57","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T20:05:57","slug":"pleasure-spots","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/chapter\/pleasure-spots\/","title":{"raw":"Pleasure Spots","rendered":"Pleasure Spots"},"content":{"raw":"
\r\n

(<\/b>Tribune, 11 January 1946<\/b>)<\/b><\/p>\r\nSome months ago I cut out of a shiny magazine some paragraphs written by a female journalist and describing the pleasure resort of the future. She had recently been spending some time at Honolulu, where the rigours of war do not seem to have been very noticeable. However, \u201ca transport pilot. . .told me that with all the inventiveness packed into this war, it was a pity someone hadn\u2019t found out how a tired and lifehungry man could relax, rest, play poker, drink, and make love, all at once, and round the clock, and come out of it feeling good and fresh and ready for the job again.\u201d This reminded her of an entrepreneur she had met recently who was planning a \u201cpleasure spot which he thinks will catch on tomorrow as dog racing and dance halls did yesterday.\u201d The entrepreneur\u2019s dream is described in some detail:\r\n\r\nHis blue-prints pictured a space covering several acres, under a series of sliding roofs \u2014 for the British weather is unreliableand with a central space spread over with an immense dance floor made of translucent plastic which can be illuminated from beneath. Around it are grouped other functional spaces, at different levels. Balcony bars and restaurants commanding high views of the city roofs, and ground-level replicas. A battery of skittle[footnote]Similar to bowling.[\/footnote] alleys. Two blue lagoons: one, periodically agitated by waves, for strong swimmers, and another, a smooth and summery pool, for playtime bathers. Sunlight lamps over the pools to simulate high summer on days when the roofs don\u2019t slide back to disclose a hot sun in a cloudless sky. Rows of bunks on which people wearing sun-glasses and slips can lie and start a tan or deepen an existing one under a sunray lamp.\r\n\r\nMusic seeping through hundreds of grills connected with a central distributing stage, where dance or symphonic orchestras play or the radio programme can be caught, amplified, and disseminated. Outside, two 1,000-car parks. One, free. The other, an open-air cinema drive-in, cars queueing to move through turnstiles, and the film thrown on a giant screen facing a row of assembled cars. Uniformed male attendants check the cars, provide free aid and water, sell petrol and oil. Girls in white satin slacks take orders for buffet dishes and drinks, and bring them on trays.\r\n\r\nWhenever one hears such phrases as \u201cpleasure spot\u201d, \u201cpleasure resort\u201d, \u201cpleasure city\u201d, it is difficult not to remember the often-quoted opening of Coleridge\u2019s \u201cKubla Khan\u201d.\r\n\r\nIn Xanadu did Kubla Khan\r\n\r\nA stately pleasure-dome decree:\r\n\r\nWhere Alph, the sacred river, ran\r\n\r\nThrough caverns measureless to man\r\n\r\nDown to a sunless sea.\r\n\r\nSo twice five miles of fertile ground\r\n\r\nWith walls and towers were girdled round:\r\n\r\nAnd there were gardens bright with sinuous rills\r\n\r\nWhere blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;\r\n\r\nAnd here were forests ancient as the hills,\r\n\r\nEnfolding sunny spots of greenery.\r\n\r\nBut it will be seen that Coleridge has got it all wrong. He strikes a false note straight off with that talk about \u201csacred\u201d rivers and \u201cmeasureless\u201d caverns. In the hands of the above-mentioned entrepreneur, Kubla Khan\u2019s project would have become something quite different. The caverns, air-conditioned, discreetly lighted and with their original rocky interior buried under layers of tastefully-coloured plastics, would be turned into a series of tea-grottoes in the Moorish, Caucasian or Hawaiian styles. Alph, the sacred river, would be dammed up to make an artificially-warmed bathing pool, while the sunless sea would be illuminated from below with pink electric lights, and one would cruise over it in real Venetian gondolas each equipped with its own radio set. The forests and \u201cspots of greenery\u201d referred to by Coleridge would be cleaned up to make way for glass-covered tennis courts, a bandstand, a roller-skating rink and perhaps a nine-hole golf course. In short, there would be everything that a \u201clife-hungry\u201d man could desire.\r\n\r\nI have no doubt that, all over the world, hundreds of pleasure resorts similar to the one described above are now being planned, and perhaps are even being built. It is unlikely that they will be finished \u2014 world events will see to that \u2014 but they represent faithfully enough the modern civilised man\u2019s idea of pleasure. Something of the kind is already partially attained in the more magnificent dance halls, movie palaces, hotels, restaurants and luxury liners. On a pleasure cruise or in a Lyons Corner House[footnote]Large multi-floor establishments in London with numerous restaurants, food, and other leisure services.[\/footnote] one already gets something more than a glimpse of this future paradise. Analysed, its main characteristics are these:\r\n\r\nOne is never alone.\r\n\r\nOne never does anything for oneself.\r\n\r\nOne is never within sight of wild vegetation or natural objects of any kind.\r\n\r\nLight and temperature are always artificially regulated.\r\n\r\nOne is never out of the sound of music.\r\n\r\nThe music \u2014 and if possible it should be the same music for everybody \u2014 is the most important ingredient. Its function is to prevent thought and conversation, and to shut out any natural sound, such as the song of birds or the whistling of the wind, that might otherwise intrude. The radio is already consciously used for this purpose by innumerable people. In very many English homes the radio is literally never turned off, though it is manipulated from time to time so as to make sure that only light music will come out of it. I know people who will keep the radio playing all through a meal and at the same time continue talking just loudly enough for the voices and the music to cancel out. This is done with a definite purpose. The music prevents the conversation from becoming serious or even coherent, while the chatter of voices stops one from listening attentively to the music and thus prevents the onset of that dreaded thing, thought. For\r\n\r\nThe lights must never go out.
The music must always play,
Lest we should see where we are;
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the dark
Who have never been happy or good.[footnote]From W.H. Auden, \u201cSeptember 1, 1939\u201d.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nIt is difficult not to feel that the unconscious aim in the most typical modern pleasure resorts is a return to the womb. For there, too, one was never alone, one never saw daylight, the temperature was always regulated, one did not have to worry about work or food, and one\u2019s thoughts, if any, were drowned by a continuous rhythmic throbbing.\r\n\r\nWhen one looks at Coleridge\u2019s very different conception of a \u201cpleasure dome\u201d, one sees that it revolves partly round gardens and partly round caverns, rivers, forests and mountains with \u201cdeep romantic chasms\u201d \u2014 in short, round what is called Nature. But the whole notion of admiring Nature, and feeling a sort of religious awe in the presence of glaciers, deserts or waterfalls, is bound up with the sense of man\u2019s littleness and weakness against the power of the universe. The moon is beautiful partly because we cannot reach it, (the sea is impressive because one can never be sure of crossing it safely. Even the pleasure one takes in a flower \u2014 and this is true even of a botanist who knows all there is to be known about the flower is dependent partly on the sense of mystery. But meanwhile man\u2019s power over Nature is steadily increasing. With the aid of the atomic bomb we could literally move mountains: we could even, so it is said, alter the climate of the earth by melting the polar ice-caps and irrigating the Sahara. Isn\u2019t there, therefore, something sentimental and obscurantist in preferring bird-song to swing music and in wanting to leave a few patches of wildness here and there instead of covering the whole surface of the earth with a network of Autobahnen flooded by artificial sunlight?\r\n\r\nThe question only arises because in exploring the physical universe man has made no attempt to explore himself. Much of what goes by the name of pleasure is simply an effort to destroy consciousness. If one started by asking, what is man? what are his needs? how can he best express himself? one would discover that merely having the power to avoid work and live one\u2019s life from birth to death in electric light and to the tune of tinned music is not a reason for doing so. Man needs warmth, society, leisure, comfort and security: he also needs solitude, creative work and the sense of wonder. If he recognised this he could use the products of science and industrialism eclectically, applying always the same test: does this make me more human or less human? He would then learn that the highest happiness does not lie in relaxing, resting, playing poker, drinking and making love simultaneously. And the instinctive horror which all sensitive people feel at the progressive mechanisation of life would be seen not to be a mere sentimental archaism, but to be fully justified. For man only stays human by preserving large patches of simplicity in his life, while the tendency of many modern inventions \u2014 in particular the film, the radio and the aeroplane \u2014 is to weaken his consciousness, dull his curiosity, and, in general, drive him nearer to the animals.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"

\n

(<\/b>Tribune, 11 January 1946<\/b>)<\/b><\/p>\n

Some months ago I cut out of a shiny magazine some paragraphs written by a female journalist and describing the pleasure resort of the future. She had recently been spending some time at Honolulu, where the rigours of war do not seem to have been very noticeable. However, \u201ca transport pilot. . .told me that with all the inventiveness packed into this war, it was a pity someone hadn\u2019t found out how a tired and lifehungry man could relax, rest, play poker, drink, and make love, all at once, and round the clock, and come out of it feeling good and fresh and ready for the job again.\u201d This reminded her of an entrepreneur she had met recently who was planning a \u201cpleasure spot which he thinks will catch on tomorrow as dog racing and dance halls did yesterday.\u201d The entrepreneur\u2019s dream is described in some detail:<\/p>\n

His blue-prints pictured a space covering several acres, under a series of sliding roofs \u2014 for the British weather is unreliableand with a central space spread over with an immense dance floor made of translucent plastic which can be illuminated from beneath. Around it are grouped other functional spaces, at different levels. Balcony bars and restaurants commanding high views of the city roofs, and ground-level replicas. A battery of skittle[1]<\/sup><\/a> alleys. Two blue lagoons: one, periodically agitated by waves, for strong swimmers, and another, a smooth and summery pool, for playtime bathers. Sunlight lamps over the pools to simulate high summer on days when the roofs don\u2019t slide back to disclose a hot sun in a cloudless sky. Rows of bunks on which people wearing sun-glasses and slips can lie and start a tan or deepen an existing one under a sunray lamp.<\/p>\n

Music seeping through hundreds of grills connected with a central distributing stage, where dance or symphonic orchestras play or the radio programme can be caught, amplified, and disseminated. Outside, two 1,000-car parks. One, free. The other, an open-air cinema drive-in, cars queueing to move through turnstiles, and the film thrown on a giant screen facing a row of assembled cars. Uniformed male attendants check the cars, provide free aid and water, sell petrol and oil. Girls in white satin slacks take orders for buffet dishes and drinks, and bring them on trays.<\/p>\n

Whenever one hears such phrases as \u201cpleasure spot\u201d, \u201cpleasure resort\u201d, \u201cpleasure city\u201d, it is difficult not to remember the often-quoted opening of Coleridge\u2019s \u201cKubla Khan\u201d.<\/p>\n

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan<\/p>\n

A stately pleasure-dome decree:<\/p>\n

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran<\/p>\n

Through caverns measureless to man<\/p>\n

Down to a sunless sea.<\/p>\n

So twice five miles of fertile ground<\/p>\n

With walls and towers were girdled round:<\/p>\n

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills<\/p>\n

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;<\/p>\n

And here were forests ancient as the hills,<\/p>\n

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.<\/p>\n

But it will be seen that Coleridge has got it all wrong. He strikes a false note straight off with that talk about \u201csacred\u201d rivers and \u201cmeasureless\u201d caverns. In the hands of the above-mentioned entrepreneur, Kubla Khan\u2019s project would have become something quite different. The caverns, air-conditioned, discreetly lighted and with their original rocky interior buried under layers of tastefully-coloured plastics, would be turned into a series of tea-grottoes in the Moorish, Caucasian or Hawaiian styles. Alph, the sacred river, would be dammed up to make an artificially-warmed bathing pool, while the sunless sea would be illuminated from below with pink electric lights, and one would cruise over it in real Venetian gondolas each equipped with its own radio set. The forests and \u201cspots of greenery\u201d referred to by Coleridge would be cleaned up to make way for glass-covered tennis courts, a bandstand, a roller-skating rink and perhaps a nine-hole golf course. In short, there would be everything that a \u201clife-hungry\u201d man could desire.<\/p>\n

I have no doubt that, all over the world, hundreds of pleasure resorts similar to the one described above are now being planned, and perhaps are even being built. It is unlikely that they will be finished \u2014 world events will see to that \u2014 but they represent faithfully enough the modern civilised man\u2019s idea of pleasure. Something of the kind is already partially attained in the more magnificent dance halls, movie palaces, hotels, restaurants and luxury liners. On a pleasure cruise or in a Lyons Corner House[2]<\/sup><\/a> one already gets something more than a glimpse of this future paradise. Analysed, its main characteristics are these:<\/p>\n

One is never alone.<\/p>\n

One never does anything for oneself.<\/p>\n

One is never within sight of wild vegetation or natural objects of any kind.<\/p>\n

Light and temperature are always artificially regulated.<\/p>\n

One is never out of the sound of music.<\/p>\n

The music \u2014 and if possible it should be the same music for everybody \u2014 is the most important ingredient. Its function is to prevent thought and conversation, and to shut out any natural sound, such as the song of birds or the whistling of the wind, that might otherwise intrude. The radio is already consciously used for this purpose by innumerable people. In very many English homes the radio is literally never turned off, though it is manipulated from time to time so as to make sure that only light music will come out of it. I know people who will keep the radio playing all through a meal and at the same time continue talking just loudly enough for the voices and the music to cancel out. This is done with a definite purpose. The music prevents the conversation from becoming serious or even coherent, while the chatter of voices stops one from listening attentively to the music and thus prevents the onset of that dreaded thing, thought. For<\/p>\n

The lights must never go out.
The music must always play,
Lest we should see where we are;
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the dark
Who have never been happy or good.[3]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

It is difficult not to feel that the unconscious aim in the most typical modern pleasure resorts is a return to the womb. For there, too, one was never alone, one never saw daylight, the temperature was always regulated, one did not have to worry about work or food, and one\u2019s thoughts, if any, were drowned by a continuous rhythmic throbbing.<\/p>\n

When one looks at Coleridge\u2019s very different conception of a \u201cpleasure dome\u201d, one sees that it revolves partly round gardens and partly round caverns, rivers, forests and mountains with \u201cdeep romantic chasms\u201d \u2014 in short, round what is called Nature. But the whole notion of admiring Nature, and feeling a sort of religious awe in the presence of glaciers, deserts or waterfalls, is bound up with the sense of man\u2019s littleness and weakness against the power of the universe. The moon is beautiful partly because we cannot reach it, (the sea is impressive because one can never be sure of crossing it safely. Even the pleasure one takes in a flower \u2014 and this is true even of a botanist who knows all there is to be known about the flower is dependent partly on the sense of mystery. But meanwhile man\u2019s power over Nature is steadily increasing. With the aid of the atomic bomb we could literally move mountains: we could even, so it is said, alter the climate of the earth by melting the polar ice-caps and irrigating the Sahara. Isn\u2019t there, therefore, something sentimental and obscurantist in preferring bird-song to swing music and in wanting to leave a few patches of wildness here and there instead of covering the whole surface of the earth with a network of Autobahnen flooded by artificial sunlight?<\/p>\n

The question only arises because in exploring the physical universe man has made no attempt to explore himself. Much of what goes by the name of pleasure is simply an effort to destroy consciousness. If one started by asking, what is man? what are his needs? how can he best express himself? one would discover that merely having the power to avoid work and live one\u2019s life from birth to death in electric light and to the tune of tinned music is not a reason for doing so. Man needs warmth, society, leisure, comfort and security: he also needs solitude, creative work and the sense of wonder. If he recognised this he could use the products of science and industrialism eclectically, applying always the same test: does this make me more human or less human? He would then learn that the highest happiness does not lie in relaxing, resting, playing poker, drinking and making love simultaneously. And the instinctive horror which all sensitive people feel at the progressive mechanisation of life would be seen not to be a mere sentimental archaism, but to be fully justified. For man only stays human by preserving large patches of simplicity in his life, while the tendency of many modern inventions \u2014 in particular the film, the radio and the aeroplane \u2014 is to weaken his consciousness, dull his curiosity, and, in general, drive him nearer to the animals.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

  1. Similar to bowling. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  2. Large multi-floor establishments in London with numerous restaurants, food, and other leisure services. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  3. From W.H. Auden, \u201cSeptember 1, 1939\u201d. ↵<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"menu_order":2,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":["george-orwell"],"pb_section_license":"public-domain"},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[73],"license":[78],"class_list":["post-1065","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","contributor-george-orwell","license-public-domain"],"part":1064,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/1065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/1065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1471,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/1065\/revisions\/1471"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/1064"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/1065\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=1065"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=1065"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=1065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}