Remote control wasn't mainstream in the early '80s when I first saw the movie, but I realized it was a magical device.

Magic device

From time to time, I re-watch the movie "Being There". The movie is relatively old as it was produced in 1979. I was a teenager when I first saw it on the video and I was waiting for the main actor in the movie, Peter Sellers, to do something comedic, as we are used to in “The Party” and the “Scarlet Panther” series. The film this time was bleak both visually and visually, but I think it was my first lesson in the meaning of black comedy.

The main character in the movie is Chancy Gardner. He is a gardener with a less than limited level of intelligence. He was raised in a house in Washington that he never left. His life is the walled garden and a television set through which he looks at things he does not seem to comprehend. His name is Chance, meaning luck. He was brought together by chance and an accident with a lady of the highest class after the owner of the house died and was expelled by his heirs. He told the lady, "My name is Luck," the gardener as he coughed. I called him "Chancy Gardner". From that day his world changed and he entered the world of adults, repeating vague words that others interpreted as wisdom.

Before he met the lady, Chance was wandering the streets, out of touch with reality. He carries his bag, and he has one thing in his pocket: a TV remote control. A group of teenagers intercept him and start to annoy him. He does not understand the situation, so he reaches into his pocket to take out the remote control and point it at the teenagers to “change” the disturbing scene in front of him. Remote control wasn't mainstream in the early '80s when I first saw the movie, but I realized it was a magical device.

Iraqis respect and appreciate the remote control in particular.  Enter any Iraqi house and you will see that to preserve it, they wrap it in Sullivan paper

Before the remote control, you had to get up and go to the TV to change the channel, whether by rotating a mechanical dial, or pressing buttons lined up on top of each other. It was real “suffering,” and you have to imagine the faces looking at each other among those seated when a change of channel is proposed: from the least lazy to move and change the channel. In my country, the issue was not very much raised, as there are only two channels, broadcasting from six in the afternoon to midnight, that merge to broadcast news bulletins twice in these few hours, and the news bulletin can extend from eight to nearly ten in the evening, so that the date of the next bulletin returns in Ten o'clock and repeat what it broadcast at eight. Changing the channel at its most is towards a programmed video channel, or if you live in an area of   the south, there is an opportunity to receive Gulf channels.

Remote-controlled televisions crept in quickly, and with satellite television they became two. Iraqis respect and appreciate the remote control in particular. Enter any Iraqi house and you will see that to preserve it, they wrap it in Sullivan paper. The father has already broken the battery cover because he treats the remote control like a rosary. Sullivan keeps the batteries in place and hides some "crime."

Remote control is everywhere now. In hot countries, who controls the remote control of the air conditioner, controls the temperature of the office or home. This is a different kind of struggle. This one feels cold and that one feels hot, and this is close to the air-conditioning vents, and they are despairing of the possibility of controlling the remote control, so they redirect the ventilation holes towards a female colleague.

The car key is no longer a key. It is a remote control that you put in your pocket. Leave the car running so that the air conditioning does not turn off in a hot country. Nobody will steal it. Remote control in my pocket. Alarm in the house. Opening and closing the garage. TV subwoofer player. Video games for boys. A drone at a distance of continents carries out a raid and launches missiles.

The TV remote control remains the original. Samsung give you two of it. One is modern without buttons and the other is classic full of buttons. Put them in the same room to control one TV and you will know a new meaning of the Cold War: whoever controls which broadcasts and which programs are shown, wins the battle.