motel-register:Free HBO, Color TV, white noise, and the comfort of lonelinessThe motel room is unthi

motel-register:Free HBO, Color TV, white noise, and the comfort of lonelinessThe motel room is unthinkable without a television screen. It would be impossible to lure someone into one of the loneliest places in the world without some promise of distraction (let’s not be so generous as to characterize it as entertainment). It’s no surprise, then, that motel signage insists on reminding would-be guests that rooms feature first COLOR TV, then CABLE TV, and finally FREE HBO.Television is like a lifeline in the motel. Does anyone actually turn it off at night when travelling alone? I don’t. The white glow is too comforting, too hypnotizing, too much like the only evidence that there’s a world on the other side of the door.The motel is born at the same time as the television, rising from the ramshackle cottage and auto courts to a mass-built, unified concept in the 1950s. If the early tourist camps were about family adventure, the motel came into its own as a place where one could be alone.Post-war America is the time of the travelling salesman, the oppressive family home, and dreams of permanent mobility. Even if families still flocked to the motor court for vacation, its day-to-day customers were businessmen and couples with made up names who used the television to cut the silence in the room after an affair had been consummated.Even if free WiFi is more valuable than television these days, the thought of a TV-free room remains terrifying. There are times when you don’t want infinite choice, when the limited channels provided, which are the same in every room, serve as a reminder that you’re not the only one in the midst of a journey.There’s someone in another room going through the exact same motions as you — tired, bored, even mildly afraid. The collective anxiousness of being untethered is tempered by a sense of confinement. If the motel room is forced to serve as a makeshift womb, the television is the traveler’s umbilical cord.Photos (in order) by Eric Cousinneau, Stephen Shore (x2), Bryan Schutmaat @bryanschutmaat, Valerie Chiang @ninebagatelles, Steffan Walter, Brendan Barry, and army.arch. -- source link

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