Welcome to the Talkosphere
posted in Word of Reason |
I was at a movie the other day when a woman sat down next to me five minutes before the film ended. Five minutes. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she then started talking. To me. She leaned in close to me and in a loud whisper asked me how long ago it had started. So I told her, “an hour and forty-five minutes ago” barely able to hide my disgust and anger. She could only muster a weak “Oh” in return and then I went in for the kill. “Yes,” I told her, “I hope you enjoy the end credits.” Then she told me I was a rude young man and the guy behind me asked me to quiet down. And I spent the last five minutes of the movie wondering why there aren’t enough 19 year-old kids to monitor the halls so people can’t just wander in and out of theaters at their leisure.
I’m a pretty big moviegoer and I spent my walk home ranting to my girlfriend about the various different snags that invariably ruin any movie-going experience. There’s pretty much no way to avoid being aggravated at the movies, whether it’s because tickets are so inordinately high priced or because people can no longer behave in public. It’s a real problem, but it’s never the same problem and I think that makes it harder to solve.
I like to get to a movie a good amount of time before the movie actually begins because I’m kind of high strung and can’t take the anxiety of whether or not I make it to the theater (my church) on time. I much prefer to get to the theater with plenty of time to spare and have all the “let’s get a cup of coffee slash let’s get a drink before the movie” conversation sitting in the theater. I mean, it’s the same conversation anyway, right? As a result of this personal tick, I have become keenly aware of the way people walk into a theater and scout for the best seat. They walk in, have a little conference with their friend and then settle on something. Usually people like to sit in the very middle or the very back of the theater, on an aisle or in the center of the screen. Except this does not apply when I am in the theater, in that case the most desirable seat is directly in front of me. 
This happens every single time, even when the theater is still ninety percent empty. There can be a hundred available places to sit but the one right in front of me is apparently so attractive that it is never left unattended. I don’t even know why I continue to lament the loss of my view at the movies; at this point, it’s practically a requirement that I can only see half the screen at a time.
Moral Grey Areas in the Dark
Here’s something that I’ve spent some time wondering about. There’s a real moral grey area to saving seats. Somehow this is a practice that has been ingrained in us since grade school when the cool kids congregated at a particular table in the cafeteria or in the back of the bus. In theory I should probably object to it on principle, not having been one of those cool kids, but I just can’t. Because the reverse is simply too terrible. I understand that for someone to walk into a movie theater and claim five seats for five friends that are yet to, and might never, arrive is awfully questionable. But, for someone to tell you that they don’t care that your girlfriend is in the bathroom, or getting some soda, and they’re gonna sit in the saved, always valuable aisle seat is worse. It’s kind of like how you’d rather let ninety-nine guilty people go free than wrongly imprison one innocent man. You can let people fudge the rules sometimes, but you can’t allow this sort of blatant disregard for the mores of morality. Can we maybe agree on a saved seat limit? One per person. Can we agree on that? Either way, saving seats and being the person designated to save them always gives me heartburn.
I know it’s weird to us, as young people, but some rules actually do need to be followed. Most don’t, like speed limits and blood alcohol levels, but every once in a while you come across one that does. 
Within the realm of the movie theater, the rule that most needs following is the “no outside food or drink” rule. I know, at first glance it seems fascistic and makes you want to tell someone that you can eat whatever you please, but reconsider that for a sec because it only takes one viewing sitting next to a family of four who have just picked up some McDonald’s to understand. The whole theater smelled like Big Mac for the duration of the show and by the end, I was beside myself. Then after the show I got one for myself.
But, of course none of these inconveniences are as bad as what happens when the lights go down and the commercials, then the trailers, then the movie begins. Because that’s when the talking begins. And, of course, it doesn’t stop. What I really can’t take about this is the extreme arrogance within the person who confuses the theater with their living room, though the reverse might be somewhat realistic in the future. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself.
I want to stress that there are no racial undertones here; all races talk in movie theaters, whether it’s to the screen or the characters (“don’t go in there, girl!”) or to their friends (“what soap was that guy in?”), and of course everyone can hear them. Big surprise. What is a surprise, at least to me, is the way that people react to the talking. It’s almost perfectly acceptable nowadays. Which is to say, hardly anyone really bats an eye at talkers. Maybe you get a sharp turnaround or two, a couple of pointed “Shhs” and occasionally a “do you mind?” but it’s all way too genteel for me. I think theater-fulls of people should rise up and scorn the talkers, but instead they seem to be defended. When I went to see a recent blockbuster, the woman directly in front of me took a cell phone call during the show and explained to her friend that she would have to call her back because she was in a movie. This situation is so aggravating it must have happened to everyone at least once. When I disgustedly and rhetorically asked if she was kidding the woman behind me asked if I minded being quiet. 
The whole experience was so absurd I thought I was living in a Buñuel film and desperados were going to raid the theater, start shooting people and then I would find myself walking along a deserted highway road with both of these women, which, ironically, would have been preferable to sitting through the rest of the movie.
A New Realm
It’s one of these things that separates people, some people can behave in public and some people can’t. It’s almost enough to make you want to stop going to the movies entirely, especially with the advancements in home theaters these days. Gigantic and beautiful hi-def TV’s can be had by many, and really soon we’ll all have blu-rays and HD digital cable. And one day, movies will come out on DVD the same day they do in theaters and one wont have to leave the house to be part of the zeitgeist. Then, without the theaters having a stranglehold on great picture and big sound, the movie industry will crumble like the music industry did. Except that will never happen, because going out to the movies is an essential part of the experience. We all know that what makes the movies different is that the film doesn’t change, but our experience of watching it does, and that a group of strangers sit through something universal is paramount.
But we must also accept that our nostalgia for the old days doesn’t work anymore. The experience is no longer what it once was, all drive-thrus and handjobs. It’s filled with ego and chaos now, and general rudeness has corrupted what it once was. But that’s ok, it just means we have to move on.
It’s not the Fifties anymore, morals and values have changed. The rules have been wiped out and we just have to accept it. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can write new ones. I guess in the last little while I’ve come to accept that if one of those rules is that people talk in the movies, I’m gonna have to learn to live with it. It’s a symptom of the Internet age. Some people have a hilarious and unexpectedly insightful online magazine at their disposal, others have an insipid personal blog to rant through. Clearly these people have neither, yet they need to get their thoughts out there just the same, because to talk is to be. We have to accept that we’re in a new era of emotive ramblings, and, here in the theater, the audience is trapped. They can’t click away, they can’t resist at all. And so people will engage in movie theater discourse to let the world know that something is going on between their ears; no matter how inane the thoughts themselves might be, this is their time to pass judgment on something. Welcome to the Talkosphere. Consider it progress.
