Ethnography of the Subway 

Hikaru Yonezaki 

“Stand clear of the closing doors please.” A man had just made it in through the closing doors when that familiar voice came through the speakers. Anyone who has taken the subway in New York City could recite that in his/her sleep. Equally common, though, is one’s attempt to go against the wish, and this man was no exception. The man forcefully held the door open for his friend, seemingly not caring that he was delaying many other people in the process.  

They are strong looking men of average height in camouflage attire, canvas backpacks, and caps. Fast forward a few more stops and they are taking up three seats on a crowded train, carefully leaving one open seat between them that lets their legs stretch wider than usual. One of the two men angles his cap and slides it over his face – nearly an innocent, sleeping position. He’s not asleep, though: he seems too conscious for someone who was truly asleep, and people rarely sleep on the subway.68  

“Next stop is Chambers Street.” A woman in sunglasses gets on the full train, finds that supposedly occupied (but not truthfully so) seat between the two men, and walks over. The “sleeping” men don’t budge, but this woman gathers enough courage to squeeze herself between them. Neither of them are small figures, so it’s a tight fit and the men squirm a little.  

Sleeping on public transportation is never a good idea. Potential negative consequences could be missing one’s stop or falling asleep on a stranger’s shoulder. Not only is it a terrible idea, but it is also a potentially dangerous idea. The New York Police Department advises people on subways to “not doze or fall asleep on the train”69 in order to ensure safety. The notion of sleep suggests the mind’s activity lowering to an unconscious, or at least less conscious, state, which can weaken the body’s ability to make proper judgment. In fact, “sleeping where hazardous” is a violation under the “Rules of Conduct and Fines” section on the MTA website.70  

When people sleep on the subway, they are not actually disobeying the law. On the contrary, they are obeying the rules, because they are performing the act of sleep, not truly sleeping. In Gender Troubles, Judith Butler articulates the idea of performance in its place between gender and performance. For Butler, anything that is “always a doing” is “performative,”71 so even gender is a performance. Thus, anything that is a “doing” of some sort is a performance. When applied to the scenario of the sleeping passengers, because sleeping is a constant “doing,” sleep becomes a performance, in which case sleeping is not at all what it may appear to be—a disregard of the law. Instead, it becomes its complete opposite and obeys the law.  

In fact, on the subway, performing sleep does much more than simply obey the law, it becomes a clever way of avoiding eye contact. Within our culture, we have somehow come to a mutual agreement that eye contact should be avoided as much as possible. On the subway, strangers must stay strangers, and all efforts must be made to prevent any form of contact with a stranger, including eye contact. Just as the “clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space” is one of three important qualities in making a safe and “successful city neighborhood”72 for Jacobs, the same concept applies to the subway. Especially in a subway where there is little personal space, it becomes even more important that what can be personal space stay that way. Essentially, making eye contact becomes an invasion of privacy in the same way physical contact would be a clear invasion of privacy. Therefore, it becomes all the more important to not make eye contact in order to keep the distinction between “public space” and “private space” clear. Accidental eye contact is followed by a quick glance in the other direction, pretending that it didn’t happen. Someone who dares to keep the eye contact would make someone else feel awkward and uncomfortable.  

The woman on the end starts to groom. She brushes her hair repeatedly. When the man in the middle gets up, the woman and I make quick eye contact. I look away fast, feeling awkward.73 

In that sense, strangers typically do not sit near one another, and they do not talk to each other, as that would require some eye contact. The rule in primary school used to be: “keep your hands to yourself.” It’s applicable to the subway, only with a minor edit: “keep your eyes to yourself, too.”  

Both “sleeping” and squishing oneself into a small, yet unused, space have features of a performance. On one hand, pretending to sleep (although not truly sleeping) creates a façade, a mask to cover reality. The men portray themselves as “sleepers,” and actively pursue the sleeping, like in a theatrical show. By squeezing into the seat between the two men (who, by their body language, had claimed the middle seat, and excused themselves for this behavior through the act of “sleeping”), the woman has chosen to ignore the performance of the two men, which ends their act. As Shakespeare once said, “all the world’s a stage.” Even in this one scenario, there are performers on both sides. Through this interaction, they change their roles; nevertheless, they take part in the performance as a whole, as one could not exist without the other.  

At the beginning, when the men pulled down their caps to prepare for their “nap,” they were performing the act with the rest of the riders as their audience. Their performance was successful for as long as the other riders respected the “sleep”—until the woman came in to the picture. However, the woman made a shift in the dynamic: she became the center of attention, taking away the power of performance from the men. As soon as she deliberately put herself in an uncomfortable seat, she took away the focus and used her body language to present the men’s behavior as inappropriate and unfair. With the act of sleeping ignored, their entire act is destroyed and their performance is cut short. 

As soon as the woman enters the picture and their “doing” has to stop, the men are no longer performers. The woman becomes the performer who is “doing” the act of pretending to not know (or care) that the men are “sleeping” as well as pointing out the flaws in the men’s actions. When she sits down between them, she is clearly expressing herself and showing both the “sleeping” men and the other passengers that what the men decided to do is unacceptable. Furthermore, according to Butler, performance is “an ongoing…practice” that is “open to intervention.”74 Because performance is always in the making—it is never a finished product for Butler—the woman’s “intervention” halts the men’s performance. In fact, the woman takes away from their performance. Her performance, which comes from her reaction to the men, becomes a clear indicator of the men’s rude and impolite character. Butler’s idea on gender being a performance is a clear analogy to the men’s (and later, the woman’s) actions creating a performance. 

Although the woman’s decision to squirm in between two men paints her as a bold character, she was following the informal, yet enforced, rules regarding seat choice. First, most people tend to go to a seat next to the door or a seat next to the poles. Middle seats are usually taken after the door and pole seats are taken, unless there is a middle seat that gives the person more space than the other seats. When no remaining seats have their full capacity (i.e., if someone is taking up more than one seat, the second seat is assumed to be “occupied,” even though it is not), people begin to stand.  

I choose a seat on the left end because the seat on the right end is already occupied. I give absolutely no thought to sitting in any other position. When the next would-be occupant approaches, she takes the very center seat. Truth is, if she had chosen another it would have struck me as weird.75 

In fact, these informal seating rules have become so engrained into our culture that we naturally expect it to be followed and we don’t question where to sit—it is not so much a choice. Only when someone truly wants a seat does the person squeeze him/herself into a seat that does not have its full space. In this case, on such a crowded train, the next place to go would be one of the empty but “occupied” seats, which is exactly where she went. 

The disruption that the woman causes in the men’s performance gives it a new meaning. As opposed to the beginning of their trip when they might have been busy, exhausted workers, their behavior was now cast as immature and inappropriate. This new awareness of rudeness brings light to an event from earlier, which is the way the men came aboard the train. As an isolated incident, it may have seemed that they were simply two men in a hurry who couldn’t afford to wait for the next train. But with the light that the woman shed on the two men, it now seems that it is more deeply rooted in their character and habit that they are selfish individuals who do not care for others. 

While I have tracked down one incident, its commonalities with many other acts on the subway make it representative for all such scenarios. Too often, “do not lean on door” signs are blocked by passengers who are leaning on the doors. Again, passengers pretend not to notice. Pretending that something doesn’t exist when you know it does makes it an act—choosing to disobey a sign in the presence of other passengers makes it so. Pretending isn’t just a game we play in preschool, it is a game that we enroll ourselves into throughout life. We pretend this or that on the subway—we pretend not to notice the signs, we pretend not to notice each other, we pretend. For example, this one man is a performer in every aspect: he catches the attention of others through his attire, his rebels against the rules, and he creates a situation where it is clear that everyone is pretending not to notice him:  

Everyone has proper attire on for the weather, except for one guy who has a sweater on, instead of a jacket. He stands up while the train is moving to its next stop and stands at the central door. He doesn’t leave at the next stop—he stays standing for a few stops. He sneezes pretty loudly into his hand, but no one notices, or everyone at least pretends that they didn't hear anything.76  

Pretending isn’t just pretending either. We perform the pretending. When we pretend to not notice, we act as if we didn’t notice. If we truly didn’t notice, that wouldn’t be a performance! Pretending lets us feign ignorance, and the subway is a place that requires it. It’s what unites this incident with many other incidents on the subway. At any moment, a passenger can become a performer. 

Despite feeling an initial shock when watching the woman dare to criticize the men in an open and public manner, in reality, the activity that undermines others’ performances is frequent on the subway and in this case presents that same kind of activity, but on a larger scale. The participation of passengers as performers on the subway makes subway culture what it is, and the limelight constantly switches to newer interests. These shocking performances that we observe everyday are not as rare as they seem; the mind automatically picks up on the most dramatic performances, but they occur regularly on a smaller scale.