by Jessie Roberts
Casey N. Cep views moviegoing as “a collective escape: something we do with others, something we experience together”:
Just as we go looking for the lives of others on the screen, we get to look at them around us in the theater. In the age of bowling alone, when so many community organizations and spaces are in decline, the movie theater remains a place where the many become one: various ages and varied professions all watch the talkies together.
That mix is what I miss most when I watch a movie at home:
The chatty teenagers near the concession stand, the gossiping couples who are always first in their seats; the collective sighs and gasps and enthused whispers of commentary during the film; even the hokey clapping at the movie’s end. I suppose we have comment sections and message boards as digital surrogates, but I live for the unexpected conversations that follow movie screenings; even if I’m only eavesdropping, those conversations are as memorable to me as the movies themselves.
But as technology shifts us away from the cinema, Cep worries that “cinemas are well on their way to making moviegoing a luxury experience”:
It might be that in a few years only a limited number of movies debut in theaters and the rest of what’s on offer will have already proven itself in the direct-to-video market, or that everything on cinema screens is a few years or even decades old, screened not as a test, but as a celebration of popularity. Our cinemas will become something like museums, displaying what has already proven popular or earned acclaim, instead of galleries, where new art appears first for assessment. The picture shows won’t end, but they’ll become the last rather than the first stop for Hollywood.
The Dish 