Aug 13, 2023 3 min read

It’s been said that movies no longer have the central place in the cultural conversation they once did, and for evidence consider that neither Washington, Greene nor Fayette counties have a multiplex cinema anymore. There is a drive-in Dunbar, but if you want to see “Oppenheimer” or “Barbie,” you’re going to have to travel farther afield if you live in any of these communities.

And it seems that people are willing to go out of their way to see both blockbusters on the big screen, which has been a tonic to an industry that has been reeling since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and has been further upended by strikes from writers and actors. Even before the pandemic, audiences were slowly edging away from going to movie theaters, partially due to cost, partially because movies turned up on streaming services or video-on-demand so soon after their theatrical runs, and also because there are just so many more distractions now than there were in, say, the 1930s, when 80 million Americans would troop out to the movies each week. As of 2022, only 8% of American adults went to movie theaters frequently, with 59% going either rarely or not at all.

One apparent downside of so many people being eager to see “Oppenheimer” or “Barbie” with an auditorium full of strangers is that some customers have forgotten the fundamentals of moviegoing etiquette. Two major newspapers — The Washington Post in the United States, and The Guardian in Britain — have both published stories in the last week or so about wretched audience behavior at those movies. And some of the anecdotes are doozies.

One man at a “Barbie” screening in Denver decided to strip down to his birthday suit for no discernible reason, causing a fairly obvious disturbance. Fights have broken out at “Barbie” showings in Britain and Brazil. There have been drunken outbursts at assorted “Barbie” showings in various locations, and, in one instance, disgruntled patrons poured drinks on a woman who was using her phone during “Barbie.” Stories of moviegoers obsessively checking their phones, texting, or watching videos on TikTok or YouTube were legion before the pandemic, and it the practice of “twin-screening” has apparently not subsided.

Of course, the multiplex is not the only place where a breakdown in civility is on display. Television newscasts will occasionally report on meltdowns on planes, complete with video of a passenger or two lashing out or being restrained. More than 80% of drivers have admitted to feelings of road rage at one time or another. Concertgoers have pelted performers with objects. And one need only look to Montgomery, Ala., and the already-notorious riverfront brawl that happened last weekend, when white boaters refused to move their pontoon out of a spot reserved for a riverboat with more than 200 passengers. When the Black boat captain confronted them, a fight broke out. The white boaters are now facing assault charges.

There’s an argument to be made that these bursts of bad behavior are perhaps a byproduct of the stresses that run through society right now. In the United States, we lost more than a million people to COVID-19, there’s a numbing succession of mass shootings, and that’s on top of inflation and political polarization. Perhaps we’re taking out all that bottled-up rage and angst on each other.

But an obvious way to bring the temperature down is for everyone to be kinder and more considerate of another. And doing so at the movies would be a good place to start.