Nyburg: Experience creates
a false sense of community
Continued from page 5
theater make me some kind of
bizarre, postmodern, fragmented in
dividual completely disconnected
from his fellow human beings?
Bullshit. Watching a movie in a
theater is a community experience
like staring at a car wreck from a
moving vehicle is a community expe
rience. I get no sense of interaction
from this. A hundred people sitting in
the dark watching flashing lights and
hearing loud noises is more akin to a
psychological experiment than it is
to human togetherness. At least at a
concertyou can talk, move around
and be vomited on, activities that
connect to the rest of humanity bet
terthan sitting around like a pack of
hypnotized herd animals does.
So let me make a radical sugges
tion: Let's burn down the multiplex
es. Hell with them. They rarely show
independent works; studios only use
them as launching padsforfilms,
and even that practice is proving
less profitable. Studios make all of
their money from other media, i.e.
television broadcast rights and
video sales. Theaters are hardly
worth the trouble anymore. They ex
ist to give a false sense of legitimacy
to a film, make it seem like more than
a direct to video fare. But production
values are all that distinguish high
class Hollywood films from the non
theater-screened drivel. Why not
just cut out the middleman?
I'll make an exception for certain
cases: revival houses, some art the
aters. These serve a purpose for the
community, giving a mode of expres
sion for upcoming filmmakers. And I
actually like seeing old movies with
an audience of respectful film snobs.
It carries that community experi
ence the big theaters lack. Also,
there are some things that just need
to be seen on the big screen.
So maybe we can reach a com
promise between what we have now
and arson. First, eliminate the ads
before movies. I have never heard a
positive response to these, though I
know advertisers are banking on the
factthatthe next generation will just
accept them because they won't re
member a time without them. For
now, I actively do not buy products I
see advertised before a movie (as
for ones that are advertised in the
movie itself, keeping track of those is
a little more difficult).
Second, theaters should start offer
ing movie passes. For, say, $20 people
could see as many movies as they
want This would get people in the the
aters more often, which means more
concession sales, which is where the
aters make real profit But studios
might not like the idea because it would
cut into their slice of the pie (though
that slice getting progressively
slimmer anyway).
I'm not going to make a grand pre
diction about the decline of theaters
over the next few years or for direct
to-video/on-demand rental being the
wave of the future for movies. I make
no claims to clairvoyance. But if you
want a definite trend toward home
viewership rather than theater go
ing, look at the horrorfilm genre. A
good chunk of the most interesting
horror films are released directto
video or with such a limited theater
run they might as well have been.
"Dagon," "May," "Ginger Snaps,"
"Bruiser," "King of the Ants," "Dog
Soldiers" etc. Each one betterthan
the last Wes Craven film and each
one more intelligent than the remake
of "The Amityville Horror."
How's that for a wave of the future?
ryannyburg@dailyemerald.com
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