The fact that you pick your seat at the theater by poking a pictogram on a small screen, rather than by physically sitting down in a seat is one of the myriad ways we've become alienated from our neighbors and the physical world.
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@ajroach42 so now that this thread’s percolated a little I am reminded of the theater in which I first saw “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) among many other films of that era, namely the Cannonball Run Theaters of Little Falls, NY.
At the time, Little Falls had a population of somewhere around 5,000 folks in the city, and was the only city in the county. The theater, which had no competitors, had two screens and would play first-run releases, but like a couple months after the big cities had gotten them. It was attached to the Best Western motel downtown, and it probably could seat 400? 500? per screen, in old narrow flip-down theater seats.
It cost a couple bucks as I remember it, but I was a kid and didn’t have to pay for shit yet, so what do I know.
But attending a film there was absolutely a social exercise with joys and frustrations and consequences and backchannels and all sorts of community stuff. What showing to see to avoid the neighbor you’re arguing with, where to sit so you don’t have to hear Mr. Tolliver explaining every fucking joke to his wife and then wheezing his way through a laugh while missing the next three. It was all the social politics of going to church without the morality play and at times absolutely more fascinating than the film that was sandwiched in the middle of the social interactions.
@djsundog this is basically my childhood theater experience as well. Two screens, middle/end of first run movies, bigger room than would make sense at a multiplex, complex social navigation, major part of the social scene.
Of course you were there 45 minutes before the movie started, how else would you see all your friend's?
@ajroach42 and with such a limited selection of movies available to see at any given time, and a limited window of opportunity in which to see them without waiting for an eventual home video release, it was a pretty safe bet that a lot of the city went out to see any given film, because who doesn’t love a movie, and everyone is gonna be talking about it anyway, and it’s another case of people building third space community in commercial properties that end up commercializing the people right out of the experience in the name of shareholder profits. I’m so ready for the revolution already, goddamn.
@djsundog It's funny, that's what this movie was about.
@ajroach42@retro.social I dunno man letting people race for the best seats physically rather than through a layer of abstraction seems more unseemly somehow
@ajswritesthings are you going to movies busy enough that there is contention over the best seats? In a theater that holds people out until a specific time, so that there can be a race?
aside from a handful of special screenings, or opening night of a big movie, I've pretty much never been in a full theater, and I've definitely never seen a race for the best seats, or even consensus over what constitutes a best seat.
@ajroach42 the first time i did this it was for a shadowcast of rhps and it felt so wrong. I didn't even end up going. Waste of a ticket. :(
@semitones especially for rocky. Whats the point of rhps if you're not pressed up against random strangers with bright red lipstick Vs on their foreheads?
@ajroach42 i found it refreshing to go to a theater without assigned seating recently
@seacow it hadn't occurred to me how much I hate it until tonight.
@ajroach42 no room for serendipity when everything is maximized.
@swelljoe everything planned within an inch of it's life.
This is a shitpost
@ajroach42 and part of a system of shitposts
I mean, it sounds like the kind of bullshit I would say, but its a shit post.
@ajroach42 You could tag that after a lot of your posts.
