What is a watch anyway?

A philosophical discussion

Recently I was engaging with His Majesty kingflum in the comment section, as one does. The question that arose was, would an object that looks like a watch but has the movement removed and replaced with a block of intricately engraved gold still be considered a watch? He says yes, I would say no.

What is the function of a watch? I think in the electronically disconnected but physically connected times of the 1990’s, a watch was a device worn on the wrist that told the time. But now, as His Majesty kingflum has repeatedly pointed out, it is a social signifier and status symbol. In that way, it approaches more the traditional function of jewelry, except that it is not female coded.

Is a watch simply a piece of jewelry that is acceptable for all genders and particularly for men? I would argue not. Here are some cases to consider:

1. A watch that is not worn but not wound, as in the case of Andy Warhol who famously didn’t bother setting his watch. In this scenario, the watch is being used for its decorative and social signaling aspects and not to tell the time. However, I would argue that since the watch was created and designed to tell the time, and in fact it has the potential to tell the time, it is still a watch. The less accuracy that is displayed (correct time and date > correct time wrong date > wrong time wrong date) the more it approaches jewelry, yet it never fully becomes jewelry due to its potential for timetelling.

2. A watch that is not able to tell time due to malfunction. I think in this case, a watch that needs a service and merely tells the wrong time is better than a watch that does not run at all in that it exhibits its watchy-ness by moving its seconds hand and making ticking sounds. However, similar to the previous case, its potential to tell the time is what makes it a watch, not its actual timekeeping accuracy. A watch that has run out of power reserve and sits in a drawer is definitely and unquestionably a watch, after all. The ability to restore the timekeeping is what makes it a watch.

3. A watch that cannot be restored to functional timekeeping. For example, a watch that sat at the bottom of a lake and the movement rusted out. Let’s make it even more destroyed, let’s say it has a ceramic case that is cracked and cannot be replaced. I think even in the case of irreparable damage, the item remaining is still a watch, even if its value is mostly in parts or it has no value because it was originally a watch. I think this is perhaps less of a watch, in the same way that a dead person is referred to as a corpse. It retains the shape of what it once was but it lacks life.

4. A Frankenstein watch. I heard a while back of a type of fraud where the criminal takes a real Rolex and a superfake that is mostly indistinguishable from the real thing. The part that can’t be faked is the movement. So they take the real movement and swap it into the fake case, and put the fake movement in the real case. Then they take the Rolex case and fake movement, add the box and papers, and sell it to a dealer. The case is real, the box and papers are good, so the dealer takes it without looking inside. Then they take the one with the fake case but Rolex movement and bring the “naked” watch to another dealer. Maybe some sixth sense alerts the dealer that something is off so they open the back and find a real movement. Authentication is thus “confirmed.” In the context of criminal math, a $10,000 Rolex plus a $500 superfake equals TWO $10,000 Rolexes. Now in this scenario, would you consider the item with the fake movement but genuine Rolex case to be a Rolex or in any way equivalent to a Rolex? I don’t think any reasonable person would consider it to be so.

5. A dummy watch. This is the closest to the original example. A while back Rolex wasn’t able to produce enough watches to even put in window displays. So they were producing dummy watches with no movement inside, just a bit of metal to add weight, in other words an item that was not functional. I have heard that sometimes watch companies, especially new ones, might show the same type of item as a demonstration piece for reviewers. I don’t think of such as item as a watch.

So while a watch does have overlap with jewelry and the traditional functions of jewelry can be part of its function, if it doesn’t tell time, can’t tell time, and never could tell time, it’s not a watch, IMHO.