Watch out for the paparazzi.
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You don't have to be famous and they don't have to be professional. The American dream of being constantly pursued by people who are crazy to capture your every moment on film is coming true for everyone.
The latest means for effecting this miracle is the picture-taking-and-transmitting cellular telephone. We also have the wristwatch camera, the pen camera, and a variety of ever-smaller cameras and camcorders that can pop out of nowhere and snap away, but it is the telephone one that worries Miss Manners. All we needed was a new irritant to stir up the hostility between that half of the population who has not yet acquired cell phones, and the half that has but has not yet learned to use them politely.
What with all the commotion made by people screaming into cell phones and people screaming about cell phones, the camera function may not be immediately suspected by its targets. And they could be anyone -- household members thinking they were at leisure, guests caught off guard, strangers assuming shared privacy in gyms and anonymity in the streets.
Not that there is a lot of pictorial privacy to lose. We are all already starring on numerous security films, presumably caught in the act of going about our lawful business. Some who claim to have been going about lawfully find that the traffic-regulating film on which they have made cameo appearances argues otherwise.
Most people seem to be used to being on camera, although Miss Manners has to remember not to stop and use video monitors to pat her hair into place as she passes through surveillance. She also has trouble remembering why a society composed of people angling to get on television to confess their disappointments or, now that we have reality television, demonstrate their shortcomings, would defend privacy with a straight face.
Apparently it is the right to straighten up their faces (a euphemism, Miss Manners notes, for pulling in their stomachs) that invasive photography overrides. In the days when being photographed involved fitting the head against an iron clasp and going immobile until the photographer scared the daylights out of you with a burst of sound, light and possibly smoke, you were at least not caught unawares.
But the complaint of the bride was a familiar one. She said the unauthorized pictures made her look fat.
Even the lady's lawyer was not willing to take up that angle, nor is Miss Manners concerned with the particulars of indignant movie stars. What struck her is that no one -- not even a famously beautiful professional actress while she is posing for other cameras in her wedding dress -- feels safe from photographic ridicule.
And surely ordinary people going about their lives -- whether relatives who are corralled or strangers who are caught -- matter more than the stirring arguments one hears from camera wielders about their art and their duty to the historical record. If such subjects do not give permission in advance, they should at least be offered the chance to delete.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I'm hoping you can help me -- my family and I have a bit of a debate on this issue. I am currently a graduate student studying for my master's degree. I currently hold another master's degree, for which I received a hood at graduation. At my upcoming graduation, is it appropriate for me to wear my other hood? If I continue on for my doctorate, do I wear both hoods?
GENTLE READER: Your head may be stuffed with knowledge, but Miss Manners presumes you have only one, currently and otherwise. So however many disciplines you can juggle, she is afraid you can wear only one hood at a time.
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