I'm on a quote of the day list, and today's was this:
"The larger question: Has our culture become so private that no one knows how to behave anymore in public? Is selfishness the rule rather than exception? Are people who say, "Shut up and turn off your phone" today's version of "You kids get off my lawn"?"
- David Edelstein, movie critic, on people who make noise in movie theatres.
It was taken from this article:
[http://www.vulture.com/2013/06/david-edelstein-on-texting-and-talking-at-movies.html]
The article asked for responses, and I sent this:
Dear David,
I'm an English teacher who
occasionally gets assigned a film course to teach. I love movies, and
going to the cinema used to be one of my favorite ritualistic
activities. Because of my teaching schedule, I usually have Fridays off.
I used to "sneak off" to the theater and catch two movies. (I put that
phrase in quotes because my wife knew what I did on Friday, but feeling
like I was on the sly made the movie that much more fun -- Woody Allen
makes a similar point in Crimes and Misdemeanors.) Movies in the
late morning/early afternoon of a suburban Cincinnati Friday were
blissfully desolate. Still, I didn't like how ticket prices kept inching
upward, and I fumed that commercials ran before a feature I'd paid to
see. (I saw these ads because I liked previews and also wanted to ensure
that I got a spot in the back row. I like to see the whole screen, and I
hate having people behind me.)
What eventually got to me, though, was the proliferation of
smart phones. I tell classes that opening your phone in a movie theater
is like letting off an air horn during a concert. Film is a visual
medium, and that infernal light is damn distracting. Our animal eyes
can't help but be drawn to it, and we not only miss parts of the movie,
we're -- as you express it so well -- pulled out of the experience. And
that's what I miss. Buying a ticket was fun. I liked to go to the
bathroom before the movie to ensure I wouldn't have to miss any of the
story. I loved the long walk down the hall, the walk into the
semi-darkened theater, and the climb up the stairs to the back row. I
ritualistically entered another world, and I liked being absorbed in it.
But, increasingly, even on Friday afternoons, knuckleheads with their
phones pulled me out of the cinematic world I'd waited all week to
enter. The final straw for me came in the autumn of 2009, when I was
completely absorbed in what may be my favorite Cohen brothers film,
A Serious Man.
The movie has taken a turn toward its conclusion. Finally somebody gets
to see and sit with the old wise reclusive Rabbi. The movie is reaching
its big scene, the one it's been building toward, Joseph Campbell's
innermost cave. Here comes the wisdom, here comes... The guy in front of
me opens his phone and checks his messages. I hear the Rabbi quote
Jefferson Airplane and ultimately tell his visitor to be a good boy, but
it's from a distance. I'm not
there, or
in there.
I've gone to one movie since then. I was in a big group, and I had a gift certificate in my pocket. It was for
The Kids are Alright,
at the same theater, actually. The crowd was actually polite. But it
was over for me; I knew a polite crowd was now the exception rather than
the rule. Anyway, my final thought on all of this is a half-baked one,
but one I've been working on for a while now. Movies, concerts, plays,
public readings, hiking trails and a host of other things don't seem to
belong to the people who really love them, who honor them, who recognize
that they contain the possibility of transcendence. They belong to the
half-assers, the barely-there people whose narcissism is fed by their
ability to recognize themselves only as customers. They're there to get
whatever it is they think they paid for before they move on to the next
thing they're going to consume. It must be an empty, spiritually
bankrupt existence, and perhaps their behavior is an attempt -- I assume
unconsciously -- to pull others into their hell. But I'm doing what I
can to keep out of their reach.
Sincerely,
[my real initials]
