Day 61: Paneful Business

Today I watched a bizarre little short about window-cleaners on the Empire State Building. The film was made in 1938 and seems to be one of those short newsreels they'd show before movies back then.

The whole things only a few minutes long and consists mainly of window cleaners climbing the long building floor by floor, sticking their heads out each window grabbing onto the ledge for dear life, and trying to clean the windows. Meanwhile the narration is cheese-tastic and filled with window puns (hence the title).

For such a short film it gave me a lot to think about; why are the windows cleaned? Obviously for aesthetic purposes, but is that it? Is it worth the hard, dangerous work just to have shiny windows? How many window washers have fallen or died while on the job? How has window washing changed over time, with the invention of new technology and safeguards and whatnot? Why would someone want to be a window washer?

I also love the old timey-ness of the video. It makes me want to watch more of these newsreel type things.

I just looked up how many windows the Empire State Building has- 6,500 windows over 102 floors. Wowee.

Here's the video. The youtube page is filled with old clips like this.

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