Theodore Dalrymple muses about unexpected attractions during a recent walk through the Geneva airport.
Two of the advertisements, however, caught my attention. One appealed to rebellion, the other to daring. I do not associate Geneva with either, particularly, certainly not in its present-day incarnation; rather it is its extreme stability that attracts some and repels others. …
… What did the rebellion touted by the advertisement consist of or amount to? It consisted of a male model, no longer in the first flush of youth but obviously trying to look still young (perhaps, unknown to me, he was an aging rock star), who was tattooed to his fingertips and up to his collar. To me he looked both repellent and stupid, though not by nature unintelligent. Intelligence, however, makes stupidity and bad taste all the more appalling.
The appeal to rebellion was itself of interest and significance, for it assumed that rebelliousness was necessarily a good characteristic, irrespective of what was being rebelled against, in this case good sense and good taste. Such approval of rebellion as a good in itself is a profoundly adolescent attitude; which is to say, profoundly shallow, if I may be allowed a slight paradox. You can, after all, be shallow to the very fiber of your being, and this was an appeal to that deep shallowness. …
… As to daring, how is one enjoined to dare in the passage leading to baggage reclaim in Geneva Airport? It seems by buying a certain kind of watch, no doubt very expensive but not to my eyes very elegant: a large stainless-steel apparatus that could no doubt also serve as a knuckle-duster, and that tells you to the nearest millionth of a second what time it is in Reykjavik.
