Featured in January-June 1955 edition of National Geographic Magazine, “Let’s Talk Picnic!” Pupils Pair Off to Practice Words, taken by Willard R. Culver, depicts a speech exercise at the Clarke School For The Deaf. Founded in 1867 in Northampton, Massachusetts, the Clarke School is an institute that offers residential educational services for hard of hearing and deaf students. In fact, Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the first telephone and telegraph, joined Clarke as a teacher in 1871 and would be involved with the school for a little north of fifty years. In the photo, Kevin Nolan and Linda Kessler, two hearing-impaired children, are depicted making faces at each other with a hearing-aid or headphone type device in each other’s ears. The blurb explains that these hearing aids have “dual receivers” in which the “slightest drone of a speaker’s voice facilitates lip reading.” The article points out how a child is able to “improve the pitch of his voice and speak rhythmically” simply through a mere “remnant of hearing.” This feature in National Geographic along with the accompanying context demonstrate how the Jet Age expanded far past the transportation realm. As a result of the Jet Age aesthetic being integrated into everyday life, the concepts of an objective reality and the true human experience become convoluted.
The respective ideas of objectivity and Jet Age combat in a way in which individuality struggles with conformity and group-think. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison characterize objectivity as “blind sight, seeing without inference, interpretation, or intelligence” (Daston and Galison 17). A way of seeing and experiencing the natural world as “untouched by human hands.” (43). However, it is “not always possible to serve truth and objectivity at the same time” as objectivity only serves a means to an end in the larger epistemological process (28). Although truth is more comprehensive than objectivity, the latter is far more individualistic. With objectivity, what one sees or experiences is what they will believe. Truth, a socially constructed idea, is far more collective idea and can oftentimes work against objectivity. By these parameters, an objective existence is an individual existence. The Jet Age is defined as late 20th century period in which commercial air travel become more efficient and cheaper while passenger numbers grew exponentially (National Air and Space Museum). The topic of focus, the Jet Age aesthetic, as described by Vanessa Schwartz, focuses on feelings of “fluidity” and motion as “something beautiful, pleasurable, and easy” (Schwartz 9). In reference to Disneyland’s PeopleMover, a self-automated trolley system which connected ends of the park, Schwartz notes how its futuristic and efficient feel was regarded as a groundbreaking innovation by the masses. Although it has its roots in transportation, the Jet Age aesthetic was adopted into everyday life as a suave, fluid, and smooth lifestyle. As will be discussed with the National Geographic Photo, there is an interesting dichotomy where the Jet Age aesthetic is regarded as a largely positive and innovative force within the world; however, it works to eliminate objective individuality. Because the Jet Age lifestyle was adopted as the ‘correct’ future and qualities such as efficiency and pleasure were categorized as desirable, objectivity is diminshed as the human experience is guided by this ‘correct’ lifestyle.
“Let’s Talk Picnic!,” taken in 1955, would have been towards the beginning of the Jet Age yet displays its aesthetic in full force. Although no transportation elements are present in the photograph, the hearing aids in which the children wear have a sleek and futuristic look to them. Like Jet Age innovations, these hearing aids were viewed as an innovation in which quality of life was massively improved. The children in the photo look cheerful and merry as “classrooms and dormitories buzz with the eager, excited chatter of youngsters happily using their voices.” In this jet age, once to be thought impossible concepts such as hearing aids are now, bringing a future once thought to be far away to the present day. Although hearing aids are a net positive to society, as many children get to live out sound-filled lives, questions of objectivity and the societal construction of norms arise. The caption states how most deaf children “have normal speech organs but cannot imitate sounds they do not hear” and “until they are taught, they live in a world apart.” The verbiage “a world apart” suggests that those who cannot hear are not experiencing the world in the ‘correct’ form. This idea of a single “world” in which everybody should experience in turn eliminates personal objectivity. As Daston and Galison discussed earlier, one of the key conditions of objectivity is the absence of man-made interference. Although these students are hearing-impaired, without the hearing aids, they were living their objective reality in which the world is as it appears. Now, not only are they living a different experience, but the technology is seemingly part of their bodies as the hearing aids are planted in each ear. The Jet Age is literally and metaphorically embedded within these children. Hearing aids, like many of the Jet Age innovations, standardized the human experience. For example, in the PeopleMover, every participant is traveling at the exact same speed on the exact same route. This is as opposed to everybody walking across the park on their own, at their own pace, looking wherever their eyes take them, and having an objective experience.
Society’s relentless pursuit of fluidity, efficiency, and futurism, has demonstrated a desire to consolidate the human experience into one “world” in which everybody exists. This is demonstrated by the photo in focus, as the children are given non-human ‘body parts’ in order to standardize their experience in the world. Through this, objectivity is lost. I want to re-emphasize that hearing aids are a net positive in society and are crucial innovation for hearing impaired individuals. As touched on earlier, truth is not the same thing as objectivity. The truth here is that hearing aids improve quality of life massively. It is amazing that hearing impaired children are able to live happier lives, which is shown by the jovial look on their faces. I am not arguing here that objectivity is a good or a bad thing, rather how the lack of it may affect how societal norms are constructed.
Works Cited:
Vanessa R. Schwartz, “Disneyland and the Art of People-Moving” in Jet Age Aesthetic: The Glamour of Media in Motion, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2020), 57-97.
Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, “Prologue: Objectivity Shock” and “Epistemologies of the Eye” in Objectivity, (New York: Zone Book, 2007), 11-53.
“The Jet Age.” Homepage, airandspace.si.edu/explore/stories/jet-age#:~:text=Between%201955%20and%201972%2C%20passenger%20numbers%20more%20than%20quadrupled%2C%20and,nation%20was%20becoming%20increasingly%20homogeneous. Accessed 8 Dec. 2023.
Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech, 6 Oct. 2023, www.clarkeschools.org/new-york/.
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