Sometimes a Phone is not just a Cigar

I appreciate Haltman's use of "psychocultural" analysis of the candlestick telephone (86) and its physical associations, its "suggestively organic" connection, with the human body (75). The material cultural analysis of its many distinct ingredients is, if nothing else, interesting and from its details we receive clues to help interpret the ways in which it was intended to be used (focusing, perhaps on the base?), such as the following observation: "The felt pad underneath the base, allowing for easy sliding back and forth without damage to a surface, seems to argue for a tabletop or desk location" (Ibid.). We also have a brief summary of its seemingly brief popularity (1923-1927 from what I'm gathering from this essay, except one photo which is from 1919), following it quickly from office to home, mixed ever so gently with a summation of the history of "the telephone." But I can't seem to ignore the fact that Haltman is either teasing us with his psychocultural obtuseness or is simply missing the point. Or that psychoanalysts so overemphasized "the point" that Hatlman daren't bring it up where it might actually make sense, lest his useful reading of the phone's form be dismissed as phallocentric. But all I can see when I look at the candlestick phone is a phallus, with its "overall stature and dignity, its heft and weight" (71).

Haltman uses language that helps to humanize the telephone, mixing "touch" with "carress" and imbuing it with "warmth" and body parts. I absolutely see it. But, and it could be because I'm gay, I don't see the dial as the genitals. If there are genitals to be found (my reading of Susan Bordo has helped me to distinguish between phallus and penis and here I see a phallus), I would argue that it is the "gracefully expanding cylinder" with its "cap" (73), ready to burst into upper middle-class homes during this period of the telephone's "explosive growth" (78). Haltman's only nod to its perfected manhood, beyond the sensuous language used to describe the telephone ("hard," "smooth," and "swelling" within the same line on page 76), is reference to its "verticality" (86).

I can't imagine that Haltman is not being coy, but I'm afraid that he might be and I wonder what that means or has meant for analyses that might benefit from a more direct "psychocultural" approach. Has he opted to "conceal it" in the same way that House and Garden of 1923 spoke of the candlestick phone (85)? I'm not sure that he speaks (or doesn't speak) of a penis, since it's clear that this phallus has "stability and calm" (71) and "visual harmony" (74) that doesn't sound all that familiar to male anatomy. Here we have a brilliant opportunity, not just to get into the "omniscient eye" of the telephone (84), which I think is also a great reading, but to get into the omnipresent and always potent (it's always upright) intruder in the house.

I'll admit that phallic readings are often overdone and rarely that illuminating (I don't know that it really matters to me whether the Washington Monument is a phallus, but I do know I'm interested in the fact that it's an obelisk), but I think it's an important consideration for this particular phone (that's what they all say, right?). Its "unsightly" nature (fig 4.6 on 84) makes me think that their is something of phallic disgust at play, but beyond that I like thinking of the "anxiety" it could produce. Its form comes out of "commercial" interests, "the first self-conscious telephone design," but the thing ends up in the home. There the user becomes self-conscious, because of its intrusive qualities and perhaps because of its "unsightly" form.

Why is it unsightly? It's "vertical," large (it is almost a foot long and, as is mentioned several times, has "heft"), and a deep shiny black. I can't imagine that a man of the household isn't a little distraught to see his lady of the house weilding that (black) monster so close to her face. She probably doesn't do that for him, so why should the telephone get all the (imagined) fun? If women were so associated with telephones and their use, then it might have seemed a smidge inappropriate in its shape. The blackness is an afterthought, as I've said, I think this is a phallus, not a penis. But it could be a new jumping off point.

According to Haltman, the later "French Telephone" has none of the human form of before (86), but I can't help notice that it does still have the "genitals" of the dial and the "anus" of the "phonecord aperture" (75) and it does look more like a face than the old wall phones that he suggests were made to have faces (82). The eyes are still there, although they do look a little sleepier than the one-eyed giant that used to stand proudly at the productive man's desk. In its new iteration, it's a little more servile, perhaps, and just as black (for anyone who wants to go that route).

And now you all get a free pass to psychoanalyze me, because every psychoanalyst brings it on themself.