in case of emergency

USED TO BE you could turn off the screen on the seat back in front of you. You had to press the dimmer button eight times for the screen to go blank, and, yes, it would re-illuminate with the slightest provocation — when your neighbor would rest her hand on the armrest, for example — but at least you could turn it off for a while.
     Then the airlines wised up and did away with the off buttons, and the dimmers don't dim anything anymore, so the screens are always on, as bright as they want to be, mini billboards flashing commercials twenty inches from your face whether you want to see them or not:

WE'VE GOT HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTERS

100+ CHANNELS OF LIVE TV

     As corporations go on the offense, invading your personal space with visual clutter, unless you start playing defense you'll drown in an ocean of commercials. Which is why I remove the cartoon instructions from the pocket of the seat in front of me whenever I fly and tuck it into the crevice at the upper edge of the screen so that it covers the bright commercials as they play in an endless loop.

LET YOUR BRAND BE SEEN

BY MILLIONS OF PASSENGERS

WHO VIEW THESE SCREENS

     It's more of a gesture, of course, a small act of defiance — I can still see a hundred billboards on the seat backs all around me — but at least the noxious one nearest my eyeballs has been extinguished.
     Tie the loose end of the rope around a door handle or the leg of a seat like so, the looping red arrows say. Inflate the yellow life raft by yanking on its cord and toss it through the escape hatch onto the choppy turquoise ocean.