Rudeness at the Movies

In June of 1982 I accompanied several of my friends to my first ever movie outing without adult supervision. It was part of the birthday celebration for one of my friends and it made us all feel very grown up. Most of us had turned ten within the year and were excited to get to see Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on the biggest movie theater screen in the county. The theater was far from packed but there were enough people around to complain if we made too much of a commotion. When we arrived at the theater, we were dropped off by my friend's mother armed with more than enough cash for tickets and snacks. We bought our tickets, managing to be polite to the nice lady working at the box office, stood in line for our concessions, walked down the aisle to seats that were way too close to the screen and gave each-other a collective, "shhhh..." when the movie started. Did I mention already that the average age of person in that group was ten? Five ten-year-olds managed to conduct themselves far better at the movies that day than most adults do now. Did we talk before the movie came on? Of course we did. There were no sedatives in the Pac Man birthday cake we'd had earlier and we were still kids. When the movie came on, though, it was just an understood rule that it was time to be quiet. That, as they say, was then. In the past decade, this issue of rudeness at the movies has become far too common and seems to afford no particular bias to age, race, location or any other demographic you may wish to add to the statistical stew. Past generations seemed to have a much firmer grasp of the manners and behaviors that are acceptable within the movie-going experience than do today's. Is there a logical reason for it? Have we really, as a society, become so self-centered that we have stopped even noticing, much less caring about, how our actions affect those around us?

We've all been there: the lights go down, the screen comes to life with trendy product ads and promos for the next must-have game for the current must-have game system. Maybe somewhere along the way, the twenty-year-old print informing us of where the exits are located will remind us to make our next Optometrist appointment. Beyond that, though, most of the audience couldn't possibly care less about watching commercials at the movies and who can blame them? They just paid ten bucks to get in to see the current installment of their favorite big-screen franchise, not to find out how to save money on their auto insurance. So how do people deal with the un-engaging nod to commercialism unfolding before their eyes? Simple: they talk. They make the last minute call to the babysitter or take their date's concession stand order from eight seats and three rows away. Some engage in a bit of banter about the previous installment of the franchise. The trailers can be a little more engaging but not very, especially after sitting through eight or nine of them. Only after a good twenty minutes of being indoctrinated to buy products and watching all the best parts of the next six months worth of cinematic offerings, the movie you actually came to see starts rolling. There's just one problem: people are still talking. They're talking loudly, rudely and without giving a single thought to their surroundings. Back when my friends and I sat there watching Star Trek II I can remember seeing one trailer, a reminder about the concession stand and the signature emergency exit strategy reel. My parents' generation was favored with not just the movie they came to see, but cartoons, serials and newsreels as well. There were no commercials, no lengthy trailers promising that your next ten bucks will buy you five seconds of nudity and some big explosions. In short, people were engaged by the event that going to the movies was; they didn't spend half an hour being talked-at about where their money is going to be spent when the lights came up. They also weren't conditioned to focus their attention on anything but the screen because what was on the screen was actually entertaining. I don't feel cheated having not grown up in that generation but I do miss the way a two-hour movie used to only keep you in the theater for two hours and how those two hours were packed with entertainment, not commercials.

Even if theaters didn't go so far out of their way these days to focus our attention away from the reason we're there in the first place, we manage to bring our distractions along with us. How many times have you watched the lights dim only to become acutely aware of the baby crying ten rows back as well as the cell phone conversations that are flanking you on all sides? When did it become acceptable for people to bring infants to movie theaters? More to the point, when did theaters start putting up with it? I can't help but realize that if the local cinema refused to sell a ticket to an eight-month-old (or to the two taller people with it who really should know better anyway), mom and dad might re-assess whether or not they can wait for this movie on DVD. I also can't get past the logic that dictates that if you can afford to drop $26 on movie tickets and another $15 or 20 on concessions, you can afford to get a babysitter, too. Granted, babysitters are expensive these days. You can't find a kid to babysit for a buck an hour and full unrestricted access to the fridge anymore. They want twice what I made when I first started working at McDonald's in 1988 and they get testy if you don't tip. That's still no excuse for exposing children to adult language and violence, I don't care how badly mom and dad need a night out. Even if parents have managed to act responsibly enough to not have brought junior along to the latest installment of the heartwarming Saw series, they have still managed to bring along something that they probably regard more highly and protect more fiercely: their cell phones. The cell phone has only been a staple of contemporary life for a short time and yet somehow we can no longer live without it. Rewind even just a decade and mom and dad made sure that the babysitter had the number for the theater and the name and time of the show they were in so that in the event of an emergency, they could be contacted. I'm constantly amazed at the trifles that qualify as emergencies nowadays. It used to be that most of life's problems could wait until the credits rolled but not in this age of unlimited nights and weekends.

Some things can be even worse than the extraneous distractions. How many times have you sat within earshot of someone who either thinks they can manipulate the plot of a movie by loudly giving the actors advice or can make it more enjoyable for the rest of the theater patrons by offering the value-added luxury of running commentary? I blame the DVD industry for this. I like the director's commentaries from time to time but at least I can shut them up if I just go to another audio channel. People have but one audio channel and I don't suppose I need to tell you just how easy it isn't to get some people to flip their own switches to the off position. A word to the wise (and unwise alike): this isn't your living room, no one wants to hear your internal monologue and you are not filming an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I can distinctly remember a time when you could walk out of a movie theater and eavesdrop on fifteen different conversations about the movie that people had the good sense to save until it was over. Why bother with that now? Chances are you've already discussed it thoroughly with your date and a number of uninterested innocent bystanders (who are hopefully not literally standing) during the show so why not get up, walk out and run headlong into me, knocking me down into a row of recently empty seats because you were too busy immediately starting to dial your cell phone when the lights came up to bother watching where you were going?

With the example set forth by today's movie-going public it's at least small comfort that so few people still let their ten-year-olds out for the kind of unsupervised outings my friends and I enjoyed that warm June afternoon. Going to the movies just isn't what it used to be and society is responding to that change with some changes of its own. Those changes all revolve around a growing self-centered mindset that not only allows but also justifies all kinds of bad behavior. It starts with traditional values being traded in for convenience and ends with disgruntled folks like me wondering if we will one day look back at today's society and ask ourselves what we were thinking. Ideally, I would hope that we would also care.