In Jacques Tati’s seminal film Playtime there is a delightful little scene involving an ultra-modern apartment complex. Hulot, after being recognized by an old army buddy, is invited into his acquaintance’s apartment to meet his family and see his home. In the traditional Tati style of spatial manipulation, we as spectators are not allowed to accompany Hulot inside. Lucky for us, the entire front wall of the apartment serves as a giant window through which we can witness (but not hear) the entire goings-on within.

Tati uses the window primarily for comic effect, but it’s hard to miss his ulterior motive here since he appears all too eager to expose it for our consideration. For Tati, the apartment represents the ultimate in self-absorbed bourgeois vanity. While the bedrooms of the home are relegated to the innermost sanctity of the dwelling: concealed from view, safe and private since they belong to entirely different tradition available only to the immediate family, the front of the apartment, that is to say the living room— the room usually reserved for the entertainment of guests- is on display not only for those privileged enough to be granted access to the premises, but to any casual passer-by with even the slightest sense of curiously.

Tati’s assertion here is that in a world in which we are defined by our possessions, we feel it our duty to display these possessions publicly and make sure others know our own worth through them.

I was thinking of this scene while passing by the new homes being erected in my neighborhood. As the property values appear to be increasing, the more excessive the newer construction becomes. Curiously, each new home has shirked the conventional bay window arrangement adorned by most of the older houses here in favor of monstrously oversized windows that seemingly expose all within to the public (here let me quickly interject my obvious disdain for contemporary architecture which either refuses to acknowledge its own rich history thus draining it of personal style, or attempts to re-visualize it under some bourgeois ideal that substitutes novelty for culture).

With this in mind one can only conclude that such dwellings are no longer simply a place to live within, but a lifestyle to be admired. The rich are not content to simply have all and live in private, but to make us lucidly aware of our own disenfranchised status by teasing us with a life most of us could never afford.

It falls within the same mythology of the cinema in which what is onscreen becomes an unattainable ideal for our own life, a certain perfection of life of which we feel the need to strive toward but find our hopes continually thwarted. However, whereas the cinema invites identification with its players, the windows of these homes prohibit it. We can look, we can admire, we can even envy, but we can never imagine any other inhabitants for that particular household other than those already in possession of it. It represents a cinema of sadistic design. One can never identify with it, and to look upon it for too long could bring about severe consequences (whether legal in nature or something linked more to a sort of wounding of pride).

I’m reminded of John Berger’s famous analysis of European Oil Paintings of which he says:

“Oil painting, before it was anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have…The oil painting showed what its owner was already enjoying among his possessions and his way of life. It consolidated his own sense of his own value. It enhanced his view of himself as he already was. It began with facts, the facts of his life. The paintings embellished the interior in which he actually lived.”

Thus, we can view these illustrious “windows” of the privileged class as a modern form of oil paintings even more so than advertisements since ads feign a certain attainability in their ideals; the rich make no apologies about the exclusion of those on the other side of the glass. Such is the self-absorbed ideal of ownership beyond the necessities. Even on a smaller scale this remains true, since arguably anything bought for a household represents a display of proud ownership to the visiting party. The difference being that while those articles of prestige among lower-income homes are reserved for small circles of friends, the rich impose their ownership upon all who surround them.

To return to the link to Berger’s analysis, while oil paintings served as a means for endowing the possessions of the rich with the illusion of immortality, there remains no permanence to these objects of prestige viewed through windows. Perhaps that is a reflection on the impermanence of our times, in which everything functions for the now, but little provides a foundation for future generations. Their current wealth, as immortal as it may appear to us, still does not extend beyond the mortality of the bricks and mortar that encase it.