Movie Going Experience Gauges Society

Every has their horror story of going to the movie theater with rude people all around. I have had the occasional talking person behind me, and even some seat kickers. The stories I have heard from others are horrible, ranging from talking on cell phones to taking pictures of themselves with their cell phones while the movie is playing, to fights breaking out.

I have always been the one to not talk during a film, unless I had to ask a question of someone I was with concerning the movie's plot. One of the first films I remember seeing in a theater is Jurassic Park. By then I was around the age of ten. Today, there is a huge market for very young kids to go see movies, and by very young, I mean in the 3-4 range. There is plenty of blame to go around from the culture, to bad parenting, and to the movie industry itself who markets to these young children.

This is a problem that has slowly become a major issue which could be linked to people not going to the movie theater anymore (the other being inflated prices in our current five-year Depression). By the mid-nineties, I had already matured enough to know etiquette while in a theater. It was also a special event to go to the theater, much like it was to eat out at a restaurant, so I would not treat these places like I would at home (i.e. having the best manners).

Children today are spoiled, and the line between how one would act at home versus acting elsewhere is blurred, or in some cases, not even present. Children who have grown up going to the movie theater at such a young age are now teenagers or adults with the same mentality. Maybe they were never taught manners, or maybe they were never shown what empathy is towards other people in the theater who want to watch and listen to the movie rather than listen to them talk during the whole film.

Lack of manners can be blamed on parents up to a point until it is your own responsibility to behave in public. Lack of empathy can be blamed on the culture at large, but unless you are a psychopath or sociopath, you can still have empathy. Children too young being introduced to movies can be blamed on the marketing of the movie industry, but part of that blame lies with the parent who pays for the ticket in the first place.

While the movie going experience is not a major issue that effects the country, it is a way to gauge what the society is like as a whole. When you can care about the people around you in a movie theater, you can care about people half-way around the world what atrocities happen.