Writer's Choice: "Flicks"

Flicks
There is an ongoing and protracted war by home entertainment technology to challenge the tradition of going to the movies. My family, like many in America, loves to go to the movies. In his essay, Timeline of Influential Milestones and Important Turning Points in Film History, Tim Dirks wrote, “Throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, America has had a love affair with motion pictures.” Going out to a movie was a tradition in my family that started long before my birth. My grandfather started going to movies when he was a child and it continues to my children. For many years a theater seat would see my butt over 35 times a year and I was not alone in those auditoriums.
Like many Americans in the earlier part of the twentieth century, my grandfather would go to a matinee every Saturday at a small theater by his home. All of his friends would scour the neighborhood for milk bottles to turn in for deposit and then beg their parents for the remainder to pay for admission. They would spend the morning with Popeye and The Lone Ranger, The Little Rascals or Buck Rogers. Then they would re-enact the movies for the rest of the weekend. My grandfather told me, “Shoot, we’d even watch the news-reels!” He said he learned about the world through those reels, from Lindberg to Hitler, Africa to Washington. He took my father to the movies all through Dad’s childhood. My father continued the tradition throughout his life and became a bit of a connoisseur of movie theaters.
My father would travel all over just to sample the inside of another theater. He passed the ardor to me. When I was a boy, my father would take me to drive-ins on warm nights. I watched the movie Woodstock from the back of a pick-up on a balmy California night with eight other kids. My dad and I would go to matinees on Saturdays. He took me to a “retro-theater” that showed old movies complete with old cartoons, previews and news-reels. The very same news-reels my grandfather had watched. We went to midnight shows on opening nights in huge theaters downtown. He even took me to Grumman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood to see To Kill a Mockingbird when I was small. I still remember the smells as I scrunched into my seat as Scout and Jem were being attacked in the forest. It smelled of wool, wood polish, popcorn and magic. The decorations were magnificent to the point of distraction from the screen. The chandelier was breathtaking and a little intimidating in earthquake country. My father told me how he met the actor Mickey Rooney in person in the very same theater when he was my age. When I was an adult, I met the actress Shirley Temple (Black) in a theater in San Francisco. During my childhood a new challenger for our leisure dollars arrived, home entertainment.
Home entertainment technology fired its first shot; television. However, television was small and was not able to broadcast in color. Movies were interrupted many times for advertisements and roughly edited. This had little effect on most people’s movie theater patronage, including my family. However, home entertainment technology escalated with “color television” and the war began in earnest. This is where my grandfather stopped going out to movies in favor of staying home to watch his “programs.” Fortunately, my father and I kept going. Soon theaters responded with “Widescreen” format presented in auditoriums like the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, and with movies like 2001; A Space Odyssey or Born Free. These movies were grand vistas television could not match. This however, is a war of attrition and home entertainment technology was not deterred. Soon an insidious weapon was invented, the video tape.
In the later part of the seventh decade of the twentieth century the “Video Home System” recording device or “VHS” was invented. The home entertainment business aimed this weapon directly at the movie-going population. My father succumbed. These machines could bring a movie right into a home and even had a convenient slot to store peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches in. Theaters responded with even more spectacular movies, such as Star Wars, Out of Africa, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. These were presentations with a vast amount of special effects and were visually dazzling. Later, a new type of sound system came to theaters, the “Tomlinson Holman’s experiment” sound system, or “THX.” Just when I felt the threat to theater viewing had been met, home entertainment technology rolled out its siege weapon, the “Digital Video Device” or DVD.
With the invention of DVDs and later BlueRay players and LED/LCD televisions, the home entertainment technological juggernaut gave one of its most powerful challenges. Also arriving was the internet. Home entertainment’s nuclear weapon so to speak. As Steven Johnson notes in his essay, Everything Bad is Good for You: Games, “…we’re going out to the movies less regularly. We’re doing all these old activities less because about a dozen new activities have become bona fide mainstream pursuits in the past ten years: the Web, e-mail, games, DVDs, cable on-demand, text chat.” (467) Even with new technologies in theaters, such as digital projectors, 3D or ultra low frequency subwoofers, home entertainment technology has become a true threat. But home entertainment many not be all bad.
There are distinct positive aspects to home entertainment technology. Often going out to a theater is difficult due to logistical obstacles, such as children or simply not enough time. Theater ticket prices can be very expensive. New technology makes everyday viewing much more enjoyable. Television screens, both in size and quality, and home sound systems have improved to the point of astonishment. There is the ability to pause and replay missed parts of a show. Almost any type of entertainment is available at any time in the home. These things are a wonderful benefit to me and everyone. That being said, there a few things home viewing cannot provide.
One important aspect of going out to a movie that home viewing cannot match, is the experience of completely immersing oneself in a movie. There is a communal energy watching a movie in a crowd. Being in an audience that breaks into explosions of laughter or spontaneous applause can be a very emotional experience. Hearing a collective gasp from an audience can be unforgettable. Ask anyone that saw Alien in a theater. My arm still bears the scars from my wife’s fingernails. Somehow donning my cordelière, fish nets and stilettos, arming myself with a squirt gun, stale popcorn and a newspaper, then watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show at home alone, feels anticlimactic. There is a difference between watching a movie and experiencing one. Another problem is word-of-mouth. Plot lines are almost always completely known to the viewer before a movie ever gets to the home. It takes some of the enjoyment away already knowing who Luke’s father is, or which dead person Haley Joel Osment sees before ever starting the movie. Traditional movie patronage is more of an experience than just viewing, and it may be threatened.
This battle between the home entertainment industry and movie theaters is not over. My family still carries the fervor started by my father and my father’s father. My family intends to continue the tradition of going to movies. My wife has been converted and the passion has been bestowed to my children. Even though we own a home theater system, we still go to a movie theater 20 to 25 times a year. However, nationwide theater attendance is declining. (MSNBC) The war by home entertainment technology to challenge this tradition continues.
Works Cited
Johnson, Steven. “Everything Bad is Good for You: Games." Latterell. 459-467. Remix: Second Edition. Comp. Catherine G. Latterell. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin. 2010. Print.
Dirks, Tim. “Timeline of Influential Milestones and Important Turning Points in Film History.” 2009. Filmsite. American Movie Classics Company LLC. Web. 3 Mar 2010
“Survey: Theater, Museum Attendance Declining.” 27 Dec 2009. MSNBC. The Associated Press. Web. 3 Mar 2010