I’m taking a little time off, but instead of going silent, I’m publishing something I wrote a few months ago for a pop culture writing class I took last fall. You’ll probably notice that it seems a little dated (because the world we are living in seems to change dramatically every week or two), but I don’t think it’s so dated that it’s not still relevant. A few of the facts and figures are old, but I added one parenthetical aside that addresses the momentous, awful events of this week. Please enjoy, and please be kind to each other. I’ll be back next Friday with a new review.
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Let’s start with some unpopular culture.
The current novel coronavirus – it hardly seems “novel” now, after nine months of watching the world either simultaneously do everything it can to combat the infection, or obstinately do nothing – has infected 55.6 million people worldwide, and killed 1.3 million. Here in the United States, cases are raging as people either tire of the scientifically recommended restrictions or relentlessly politicize them. Our country represents 4.25% of the world population, but we account for 20% of total COVID-19 infections. We just topped a quarter million deaths.
In American politics, our president – who worked tirelessly on that politicization I mentioned, when he wasn’t focused on absolutely bungling any kind of effective response to the disease – is doing everything in his power to overthrow the results of our latest democratic election. What’s scarier are the members of a political party that have made it abundantly clear they are ready, willing, and able to subvert the will of the people and aide a fascist in a coup attempt, if it means they can hold onto power.
I woke up in a cold sweat a few nights ago after the Secretary of State of my country joked about there being a smooth transition to Trump’s second term, despite him having lost in the election. Trump and his inner circle seem too inept to actually pull off the coup, but he has etched in stone the blueprints for how a more competent autocrat can accomplish the job. The Republican party have proven themselves more than happy to help whatever tin-pot dictator comes along next.
So, it seems, even to me, that to lament the near total shutdown of the movie theater exhibition industry isn’t even close to the most important thing to focus on right now (I’m doing one last round of editing on this piece in the aftermath of the armed insurrection that took place at the US Capitol, and news just broke that the first Republican member of Congress is calling for Trump’s cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office immediately; it seems even sillier to me now than when I wrote this that I should care about movie theaters still being (mostly) closed).
Movies are entertainment, after all, and they seem pretty inconsequential when stacked up against all the other, more urgent problems of the day. Besides, I can still watch anything I want on my shiny 65’’ wall-mounted home-theater system (I insist on referring to the room where we plop ourselves down to watch a movie or even the latest episode of the Supermarket Sweep reboot as our “home cinema,” which drives Rae nuts because it’s so, so pretentious).
I and every other cineaste thought we were living at the height of access to film history and world cinema twenty years ago when DVDs were just coming into their own. We had no idea. Now we can unlock almost any title imaginable by entering our Amazon Prime Video PIN to authorize the purchase. Surly teenage Blockbuster employees working part-time for weed money are a thing of the past now.
But still, I do lament the closing of theaters.
Some chains are doing their damnedest to stay open. AMC is doing private theater rentals. You can rent an entire auditorium and watch whatever you want for a hundred bucks. (I keep meaning to do this, but you know: work, pandemic stress, attempted-coup-by-a-fascist-shithead… my dance card has been full, y’all.)
I lament movie theaters going away because the pleasures of seeing a movie projected onto a 40’ screen are unique and precious to me. The shared experience – one of the last we as a culture have, since every possible audience segment has been cleaved off and siloed into our own bunkers – of sitting in a dark room as light and shadow are projected onto an impossibly huge wall is magical.
Seeing a movie in that environment changes you. It overwhelms you, in the best possible way.
Some of my most treasured moviegoing experiences:
Munching on fresh, hot popcorn as Danny Ocean and the rest of his crew put the pieces in place to pull off robbing not one, not two, but three casinos. Transcendent.
The transgressive, artistically rich world of David Lynch blossoming before my eyes as 100 of my closest strangers took the journey with me of watching Eraserhead and Blue Velvet at two different Inwood Theater midnight screenings. There is no escaping Lynch’s nightmare worlds when you’re in a pitch-black room and his idiosyncratic sound design is pumping through the surround-sound system. Mystical.
The first of two trips to my Mecca, Hollywood, USA, when I attended a Kubrick double feature with a college friend. It was 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange at the famous New Beverly Cinema, and it also started at midnight. Mind-bending. (My second trip to L.A. included seeing Beetlejuice with a packed crowd in a cemetery. Delightful.)
My first date with my now wife. Another midnight screening at the Inwood of the classic comedy Airplane! Hilarious.
There are easily a hundred more. Instead of rattling them off, I’ll close by saying I have a little bit of faith that this magical experience will come roaring back. Many people sounded the death knell of the movie theater during the last once-in-a-century pandemic: the 1918 Spanish Flu. That proved not to be the case, and hopefully the experience I love so much will prove stronger than this life changing virus, as well.
To paraphrase Red in The Shawshank Redemption:
I hope to experience the work of hundreds of artists projected onto a screen that is larger than life.
I hope to sit in a giant dark room again one day and have the craft of cinema wash over me.
I hope cinema lives on longer than I do.
I hope.