II went to Haarlem to see the wonderful old Teylers Museum, one of my favorite museums. That electrifier alone! One imagines oneself in a novella by WF Hermans: ‘The smell of the ozone created by the electric sparks permeates the atmosphere of the classroom like a scent of holiness.’ But Teylers also moves with the times. ‘Dive into the world of optical illusions’, the museum boasts, and it promises ‘200 years of Virtual Realities’.
Outside it is raining, inside the exhibition is full of children, who have been lured in by their well-meaning parents (‘no, no screens now, boys’) with the promise of ‘something really fun’.
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Sylvia Witteman prescribes de Volkskrant columns about daily life.
And it is fun too, those magic lanterns, antique projection equipment, the gigantic Kaiser panorama, the dancing skeleton, the neat lady who is mysteriously half undressed and the wooden video from 1900 of a man who takes off his own head like a hat. Only: for children of the 21st century, used to the most fiercely realistic images of sex, violence and death, there is nothing special about it anymore. Moreover, many devices cannot be seen in operation, reducing them to an old, mysterious object.
Two very bored girls of 10 and 12 trudge behind their father, a vital forty-something with a smile that never budges, and who, to make matters worse, shouts out loud ‘all machies!’ at every device, no matter how boring. crows, in the voice of clown Bassie. The girls give each other exhausted looks of understanding behind his back.
‘Good grief! This might be a bit exciting, girls,” the father shouts at the so-called “Pepper’s ghost,” a popular optical illusion for 19th-century thrill seekers. “If you are young and/or sensitive, bring an adult,” the caption warns.
The girls reluctantly take a look at the ‘ghost’, a literally and figuratively rather transparent mirror trick. The eldest is sultry silent, the youngest groans in pain, ‘Dad…’, but the father pulls them along and shouts: ‘Now something really cool is coming!’
He positions the two girls with clumsy gestures in front of a kind of large cupboard, called a ‘floating head’, in which a round table can be seen in front of a velvet curtain. The man disappears behind the curtain. The girls roll their eyes.
There the grinning head of their father appears, ‘floating’ above that table. The girls look at him with disgust: two Salomés near the head of John the Baptist. Then they turn around and walk to the exit.
His ‘all machies!’ ricochets off their backs.
