There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
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In a much-linked-to article this week, Roger Ebert sets out several reasons why box office figures are down this year — most of which can be summed up by saying that the moviegoing experience has deteriorated. I can’t disagree with that.
At the same time, he heaps part of the blame on young people and technology:
“Moviegoers above 30 are weary of noisy fanboys and girls. The annoyance of talkers has been joined by the plague of cell-phone users, whose bright screens are a distraction. Worse, some texting addicts get mad when told they can’t use their cell phones.”
In my recent experience, there is definitely a plague of people who talk and text and ruin a movie theater’s atmosphere. But they are never the easy-to-blame under-30s.
They are almost universally over 50.
Almost every movie I’ve been to in the past year has been disrupted by older people talking at high volumes, fumbling with their devices and generally being disruptive with no awareness of the people around them.
On one occasion, I had to twice ask a man sitting behind me to be quiet, only to be met with a string of curses and threats.
Over the past few years I have definitely noticed that as the average age of a movie crowd increases, so does the likelihood of a disruption.
But by all means, go on and keep blaming “these kids today” and their “crazy new-fangled devices” as the problem. It’s the Boomer’s world. We just live in it.
