Sunday, February 5, 2012
The fall of movie theater edequette
People do not know how to see movies any more. The younger generation has lost the ability to just sit for the duration of a film without chatting with friends or constantly texting on their phones. I recently saw the movie woman in black. It would have been a good movie had the 30 people sitting behind me and the 7 next to me, all of whom looked to be no more than 12 to 13 years old, had not been constantly chatting amongst each other like they were the only people in the theater. The movie started and people in the row in front of me just got up, stood there, turned to his friend and in a normal talking voice, not even trying to be quite, mumbled something and left the theater yelling "this movie sucks.". Theater etiquette, the norms that dictate cell phone use and talking in the theater is gone for the younger generations. Everyone sitting behind me had a cell phone out, at one point in the movie one of the girls was on speaker phone with a friend sitting on the other side of the theater, another person in the theater had a laser pointer which periodically made its debut on the screen. The girl directly behind me had text messages coming in every 2 minutes, her phone was not on silent, I turned around and told her in these exact words, "your phone has a thing called silent, use it." she said her phone was broken and did not go on silent, I replied with a simple question, "can you live without your phone for just 1 hour and 34 minutes?" I determined that they cannot. They live in a fairly "rich" town, they did not pay for the movie out of their pocket and they do not pay for the iPhone 4s or droid that they are carrying, why should they care about the people in the theater that did pay for the movie because they want to see the movie and not text on their phone or talk. I went with a group of people from stage crew, we took up 3/4 of a row; the kids behind us took up two entire rows only they were staggered amongst the theater so they would yell in a whispering voice across the theater to their friends sitting in the front row. The person that left the theater saying, "this movie sucks," had left the theater only ten minutes into the film making an effort to stomp his feet as he walked all the way down the stairs and out of the theater, he returned to watch the rest of the film, yelling something every time he left; a faction of the group behind me, who were all sitting in the front, were running in and out of the theater with squeals and giggles. Why can't people watch the movie they came to see without talking or having a phone in their hand to light up the theater or make noise? Why can't theaters kick out these people who do not follow the simple rules of be quite and don't kick the seat of the person in front of you? Do parents teach their kids anything about how to behave in a crowded theater or anywhere else?
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