Transitional states are often ideal for experimentation, seeking out the novel, and stepping out of your comfort zone. Airports and planes are an exception. In such a brief span of time, with chaos in the minds of fellow travelers and inevitably inadequate preparation — no matter how many times you have checked and double-checked your packing list — trips home and back make you stuck and immobile in a liminal space. In this state, it is difficult to diverge from familiarity and risk discomfort. Instead, you stick to what you know.
“Unless it’s a really long flight, I rarely watch new movies,” College second-year Calista Hill said. “I watched Crazy Rich Asians like 10 times just on flights alone. It passes the time very quickly because these are films that I can very easily comprehend. Even though it’s two hours of time, it’s all filled in by preexisting media that I’m comfortable with. It’s a good thing to zone out to. It makes it very easy to sit still.”
Music and movies provide comfort in the air. With little to no knowledge of where exactly you are or who you will coexist with for the next several hours, the flying experience is a surreal one. Only able to peek out of a small rectangle into the vastness that passes you by, you have the authority and intelligence of a newborn baby. The lights and shapes that lie thousands of feet below you all look the same, and even if you are flying over a state, you cannot say that you have been to that state but merely experienced it as a liminal space.
With loss of knowledge comes loss of control. There is little you can decide for yourself on a plane but the entertainment you consume to hush the white noise. When making this decision, digestibility and ease take priority. The absent mind is a comfortable one, and familiar movies allow relaxation to take the place of suspense and confusion.
“I watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” College third-year Libby Cleavinger said. “I can’t really hear on airplanes, but with this show I can still get what’s going on.”
Going on flights requires entering a shared space and surrendering your privacy. To share a liminal space is to feel that you have become an actor. Being unplugged means that you have little stimulation to distract from your own movements, sounds, and glances. In an attempt to transition from the actor to the observer, it is often instinctive to reach for streaming services, where acting is a glamorous job and not an unfortunate situation. When choosing which shows or movies to watch, you come to the realization that your eyes may not be the only ones on your screen. Your flight’s liminal space belongs not only to you but to the strange traveler sitting next to, across from, and even behind you. This adjustment proposes a bit of caution and wariness in making your choice.
“I usually watch films that are very queer and probably not good for watching next to someone I don’t know, so on planes I will watch something a little more acceptable,” College second-year Ella Bezkorovainy said. “I feel like I’m probably being judged for what I watch. I feel kind of surveilled.”
Factoring in the cramped legroom, occasional cries of babies, and persistent lethargy, the airplane is clearly not the destination but the liminal space that precedes and follows it. Nonetheless, with careful decisions and enough patience, flights have the potential to be a neutral, even positive experience.
“I think the passage of time goes by pretty quickly on planes,” Hill said. “I forget that I’m in the air. I walk into the plane from one place, and I walk out in a different place. Similar to how it’s hard to process that I’m thousands of feet up in the air, the concept that time is also moving while I’m not in a specific place makes it feel like everything blurs together.”
