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7/7/2021 ProQuest :: SIRS Issues Researcher ~ Movies Bring Us Together. But Should We Get Used to Viewing Them...?

https://explore.proquest.com/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2475175156?accountid=64634 1/5

Movies Bring Us Together. But Should We Get Used to Viewing Them...?

Newspapers | Humphries, Stephen. Christian Science Monitor. Sep 3, 2020. | Lexile Score: 1520L

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Summary:  "Shared experiences at the movies may diminish in the wake of the [2020] pandemic, as

Hollywood releases more films straight to streaming services and video on demand and people partake

of debuts in a new way....The sidelining of big-screen entertainment comes at a time when music and

sports venues remain shuttered to crowds, too. But some pop culture watchers say that thanks to

technology, physical proximity isn’t the only way for people to share culture. By some accounts, pop

culture has never been more diverse, dynamic, and available for people to connect with." (Christian Science Monitor) The trend "'towards fragmentation and towards a reduced number of universal experiences'" in popular culture is discussed.

For Duane Miller, seeing the blockbuster “Tenet” on Monday was a kind of homecoming.

Anticipating his first big-screen outing in six months, the film buff says even the elevator

ascent to the AMC South Bay Center 12 in Boston was exhilarating. The only thing missing

was the smell of popcorn – state pandemic regulations still prohibit concessions – and a

regular audience. Due to social distancing, the sold-out late afternoon show included just

25 masked viewers scattered about the 241-seat IMAX auditorium – and an eerily quiet

lobby.

“It’s not the same feeling, you know, as when you see it the first time with a bunch of

people,” says Mr. Miller, founder and host of the “Cinemania World” podcast. “A crowd

environment makes the moment better because, like, when I saw ‘Avengers: Endgame’ for

the first time, that crowd was crazy. I saw ‘Endgame’ in theaters eight times.”

Shared experiences at the movies may diminish in the wake of the pandemic, as

Hollywood releases more films straight to streaming services and video on demand and

people partake of debuts in a new way (consider “Mulan,” arriving on Disney+ tomorrow).

The sidelining of big-screen entertainment comes at a time when music and sports venues

remain shuttered to crowds, too. But some pop culture watchers say that thanks to

7/7/2021 ProQuest :: SIRS Issues Researcher ~ Movies Bring Us Together. But Should We Get Used to Viewing Them...?

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technology, physical proximity isn’t the only way for people to share culture. By some

accounts, pop culture has never been more diverse, dynamic, and available for people to

connect with.

“The trend is towards fragmentation and towards a reduced number of universal

experiences,” says Peter Suderman, a features editor and film reviewer at Reason

magazine who just wrote an article titled “A Summer Without Summer Movies.” “There

may be some downsides to that, but there is an upside as well. There’s so many more

things out there for us to watch and look at and experience. And they are more likely to be

individually tailored towards our particular interests and niches and desires.” 

Movie theaters are hoping that Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet,” a science fiction story as

nonlinear as an M.C. Escher illustration, will remind viewers that the communal setting of

a big screen is still the optimal way to experience a high-octane blockbuster. Its car chase

scene, in which vehicles drive in reverse on a busy highway, would make even Dale

Earnhardt Jr. flinch. 

That movie, which officially opens today, and the few other new releases could play for

months on end given that there’s less in the pipeline from Hollywood. Even before the

pandemic, multiplex fare was increasingly action-oriented and targeted at creating shared

experiences mainly for the demographic most likely to go to the theater: men under the

age of 25. Now, comedies, romances, and midbudget movies such as “The Old Guard”

starring Charlize Theron, Tom Hanks’ “Greyhound,” and “Eurovision Song Contest: The

Story of Fire Saga” with Will Ferrell are more likely to premiere on Netflix, Amazon, and

Apple TV+. 

Anne Thompson, who writes the blog “Thompson on Hollywood” for Indiewire, says that

you can’t easily replace a theater experience, and the shared response and empathy you

feel watching a movie. “That is how a movie like ‘12 Years a Slave’ can have an impact on

a culture. ... Because that movie became an Oscar contender and ultimately an Oscar

winner, everyone had to see it and then share that experience and understand what those

characters went through.”

Due to the limited seating in theaters, it will be a while before they can fully meet the

demand to view the current movies that are available. That’s reminiscent of an earlier era

when the original “Star Wars” played in single-screen theaters for an entire year. And it

7/7/2021 ProQuest :: SIRS Issues Researcher ~ Movies Bring Us Together. But Should We Get Used to Viewing Them...?

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echoes Steven Spielberg’s prediction in 2013 that movies may become like Broadway

plays – just a couple of spectacular big-screen events playing on a screen for a whole

season. 

“It’s possible that Mr. Spielberg will be right in the long run, but I think that’s a long way

off,” says Mark Gill, producer of the Russell Crowe thriller “Unhinged,” which was the first

major new release to debut in reopened theaters. He says the pandemic has accelerated

the trend toward Hollywood often bypassing the big screen for the small one. “What

happens going forward,” he says, “is [studios] will still make some films for theaters, but

less of them, and they probably will mostly be the bigger ones.” 

For millennia, shared cultural experiences depended upon physical proximity. But the

arrival of electronics introduced new forms of communal gatherings. Radio broadcasts

created a sense of national cohesiveness and unity. Television kindled a new kind of

family hearth. As people began talking about the shows they watched, it created a strong

community outside the home, says Paul Levinson, a professor of communication and

media studies at Fordham University in New York. With each new technological

advancement, it’s the sharing of information that has created a sense of community. 

“The World Wide Web has greatly expanded and accelerated this process,” says Mr.

Levinson. “The watching of movies online in our COVID age is just another part of this

evolution.”

One advantage of home-viewing: You don’t have to worry about kids in the back row

pelting the audience with Jujubes. Another is the sheer variety of specialty options

available on a proliferation of platforms. Mr. Suderman points to Starz, with its app and

cable channel, as an example of a company that produces stories for minority viewers and

women over age 25, audiences that bigger Hollywood studios don’t regularly serve.

Meanwhile, fans of art house movies can access rich libraries available from companies

such as the Criterion Channel and Grasshopper Film.

Some cultural observers suggest that the sense of community created during a two-hour

movie is more fleeting than what can be experienced at home, where technology is

capable of facilitating richer connections with strangers and acquaintances. When a

community is online, it’s often easy to find out more information about others, discovering

7/7/2021 ProQuest :: SIRS Issues Researcher ~ Movies Bring Us Together. But Should We Get Used to Viewing Them...?

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common interests and perspectives that help deepen relationships. But the decline of in-

person communities doesn’t mean the end of them. Seeking out interpersonal contact is

still a fundamental part of humanity.

For that reason, theaters aren’t going to completely disappear, says Mike S. Ryan, who has

produced art house movies such as Amy Adams’s breakout movie “Junebug” and director

Todd Solondz’s “Palindromes.” Some may become even more communal.

“I believe that we are going to eventually, soon return to the Cinema Club situation that we

had in the ’60s, where people are able to gather together in small clubs to show films that

do not exist on streaming and thus it will be like live music or a singular experience,” says

Mr. Ryan, who now teaches at Emerson College in Boston. “I think that eventually that

might go to a subscription model,” much like the season tickets people buy for some live

theater companies, he says.

The sheer plenitude of options can often feel overwhelming to consumers. But unlike

earlier decades, constrained by a narrow band of available media, there’s more opportunity

now for the misfits, the outliers, and overlooked talent to find an outlet and create fresh

communities. Case in point: the thousands of user-made viral videos on TikTok.

“We have discovered that our creative possibilities as a nation, as a society, and the world

are so vast that the future from that sense looks bright,” says Timothy Burke, a cultural

historian at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. “We are not going to run out of things

worth seeing together and apart.”

Copyright (c) 2020 PQ - Christian Science Monitor

Related subjects:

Coronaviruses Entertainment events Entertainment industry Epidemics

Experience Fans (Persons) Internet Motion picture audiences

Motion picture industry Motion picture theaters Motion pictures

Popular culture Sports facilities Streaming technology (Telecommunications)