How the Oscars made me realize I felt lonely
Ok, I will admit upfront this title is a little clickbait-y. But if you’re like myself, and misses going out to the theatres, you should read this article!
Prelude
This week I decided to do something a little different, and insted of just bringing my oppinion up — notice the just, don’t you dare think I won’t be talking abot myself today — I decided to talk about more metter of fact topics, such as accessibility and how socialization happens.
So, brace yourselves for some data and quotes, and let’s dive in to the story!
Act I: A call for adventure
My friends and I love going to the movies. Therefore, when one of them sent a list with some of the nominated titles for the Oscars, I thought it would be a fun activity to try to watch as many films as I could before the ceremony.
With that in mind, every night I would make myself a snack, head to the TV room and hit play. I did that for a couple of days before an epiphany hit my lazy quarantine head: “I’ll probably never watch this films at a movie theatre”.
The second the idea hit my mind, I felt a strange sense of loss. As if something about the experience was missing. It made no sense.
So I decided to make sense out of it.
Act II: The stakes are higher then ever
I can not talk abot the lack of movie theatres without mentioning the pandemic. As a mesure of protection — one that I earnestly ask you to follow — many bussinesses had to shutdown or try different ways of functioning. One of these bussinesses were movie theatres.
Look, I don’t think I need to explain how sad that is for the people who run this places, specially for local and independent theatres, we all are very aware of that. So if you can, help them out.
Ok, with that out of the way, lets retourn to our topic.
Once these movie theatres were shutdown, alot of productions — and the Academy — realized that the only way these films would be able to be released was to opt for the streaming rout.
However, this migration for digital releases is nothing new, right? For years we have being discussing the effects of technology on the way we consume audiovisual products. Hell, Henry Jenkins has being talking about the Convergence Culture for almost two decades now!
Not only that, attendence to the movie theatres has being dropping significantly for many dacates. As Lisa Marx talks in her essay Making cinephiles: An ethnographic study of audience socialization (2014), the numbers of outings to the movies has decreased immensily due to several social, cultural and economical resons.
However, this decline has not affected all social groups equally, as repeated surveys on cultural practices have shown. While people in managerial and upper intellectual professions go to the movies as often as they did forty years ago (about 80% went to a cinema in 2008), those in lower socioprofessional categories visit movie theaters much less frequently nowadays (only 62% of office workers and 56% of manual workers went to a cinema in 2008) (Donnat 2009). (…) This provides evidence of an ongoing gentrification process among cinema audiences: Cinema outings have become a socially selective activity, practiced mostly by the upper classes, who are even further overrepresented among arthouse audiences (CNC 2006) (Marx 2014, p.89 apud Donnat 2009 apud CNC 2006)
I can not talk for other countries, but here in Brazil, going to the movies has become a vary expensive activite. With tickets prices constaly rising, what should be a popular entrainiment option, has transformed into an exclusive club, reserved solely to those that can afford it.
And for that reason I adore streaming platforms!
By now you might be going: “WTF! Lívia, just now you’re talking on how watching movies on streaming services wasn’t good!”. First, I never said it wasn’t good, it’s just… different, and I’ll explain this in more detail soon. But for now, I have some important observations to make.
First, I’d like to make it very clear that, unlike alot of filmmakers and cinephlies purists — who think that is not cinema if you don’t watch the damn movie at a theatre — I think streaming services have being a blessing to the movie industry. And if you don’t think so, you’re being classist (I told you my opinion was coming!).
As I said previously, streaming services have become much more affordable, allowing for people who might never have the chance watch some incredibles films at theatres, to have access to them.
But that’s not all, because other factors, such as disability, might also play a role on how much people attend the movies.
Even though it is emberrassing to admmit, but some movie theatres are not even close to being accessable! They might have a reserved area for people who use wheel chairs, but sometimes not even that is present. And lets not even start with the lack of a visual and auditorial aid for deaf and blind people. For that reason, streming services might be a better option (even though they are not perfect, as this super interesting article shows).
As you have noticed by now, I could stay here for days on end, talking about all the advanteges of streaming over movie theatres. Affordbility, accessibility, reduced gate keeping for filmmakers… However, at some point I will have to talk about the one factor that I has brought me to writting this whole thing: socialization.
Act III: Returning home
The concept of socialization is a long and complex one. As explained by Genner and Süss (2016, p.1).
Socialization is a process across the life span through which individuals acquire and interact with values and social standards of a specific society and culture. (…) Major agents of socialization are the family, the school, peers, media, religion, work, the ethnic background, or political climate. Agents of socialization shape our norms and values regarding appropriate behavior and how we interact with others and highly influence our views and perspective on our community, our country, and the world at large.
For this reason I will be focusing on the socialization that happens through the mediation of media, more specifically the movies.
What happens is that, watching a movie is a form of implicit or encoding socialization. What that means is that when you watch a movie, you implicitly learn the messages implemented to the story (GENNER and SÜSS 2016). However, the movie by itself is not the only factor that will influence on how you percive this message.
This means that your cultural background, the place you watch the movie at and, most importantly, who you watch the movie with, will have an impact on how you understand the story and the themes of a movie.
In order to understand media, taken collectively, as an agent of socialization sui generis, it is essential to consider how other agents of socialization interact with the media. The role of media in socialization processes is hardly quantifiable, as it depends on the interplay of a wide range of influences such as content, context, family, peers, personality, motivation, educational and cultural background. (GENNER and SÜSS 2016, p.2)
I believe that by now you have an idea where I’m trying to go with this, right?
What I realized was missing from the experience of watching these films at home, was not the watching itself, but the community aspect of going to the theater!
The ideia of setting a time, the expectation of meeting your friends, the time finally arriving, the lights dimming down and, best of all, the hours after the show is over, that you spend at the food court discussing whether this production you just watched had all that was necessary to win the awards and recognitions.
This an experience that I truely miss. Sure, I can schedule a time to talk to my friends through Zoom, or Google Hangout or whatever. But the feeling of having a specific moment of the day, of transitioning from a home/work enviromment, to a place reserved solely for telling stories, is a feeling no stremming services will ever substitute.
At least to me.
Post credits
Ok, after this very dramatic ending, I’d like to ask what is you opinion about all this? Do you think it makes any difference to watch the movie on the theatre, or it might just be the fact that I have been isolated for over a year and I crave for physical human interaction?
Let me know in the comments!
