A Slice of the Silver Screen

Movies are an American tradition; we invented them, and almost a century later – whether rightly or not – we still dominate the industry. Francis Ford Coppola might have the nerve to say that movies are like “American Pie,” his metaphor sweating the same cinnamon-sugar as his screenwriting. I’m inclined to compare movies to a crisp red and white paper bag, popcorn glistering with fake butter, the colorful flash of the M&Ms that we dumped in, but alright, Coppola, I’m with you this far.

For a few days of spring break, I had been moping around the house, dying for a bit of human interaction with my two younger sisters. In one room, the dull blue light of Tumblr reflected off the worst RBF I’ve ever seen and in another, my littlest hermanita binge-watched “Supernatural,” one of a generation of iPhone zombies glued to the world of pixels. I thought Tumblr was supposed to be funny! I thought TV was meant to be shared! I thought there was something better than an endless scroll of gifs!

When, with a combination of ASL and smoke signals, I managed to talk them into removing their earphones, the conversation turned to social media. Have you seen this video? Check out this Pinterest recipe. Look at this Tumblr post. Let’s stalk so-and-so on Facebook. Desperate to prove my own tech savvy and provoke any sort of conversation, I stupidly introduced them to the one Internet phenomenon they hadn’t heard of – 2048.

So as a last ditch effort, I offered to shell out three $14 tickets (tragically, the nickelodeon has ceased to exist) if only they would grace me with their presence for two hours. We could have rented a movie on iTunes, illegally streamed from Megashare, or hacked a friend’s Netflix account, but I didn’t want to watch a movie. I wanted to go to…the movies. The phrase transports customers to the fantasy worlds of cinema. The movies don’t fit in two dimensions on a silver screen; they pulse and roar in their guests, beautifully, even viciously, alive.

The movies used to be sacred. I remember how each exploding car shook the walls until the audience became a cluster of survivors huddled in a war bunker. Only when that extra large Icee broke the spell did I realize there was a spell at all: I remember stumbling blindly through the darkness on my way to the bathroom, remember how quiet the outside world felt, and how I felt lost, alone, and slightly misplaced.

Going to the movies is a physical experience. I remember dressing up in Hogwarts robes for the midnight showing of Harry Potter, coming to The Great Gatsby after prom with my five best friends, all dressed to the West Egg. Action movies called for dark boots and jeans, dressing up like Bond or Rogue or Bourne because anything could happen.

It is the soft red plush seats and the rustle of everyone’s best jacket, the collective gasp, that one excruciatingly awkward screamer, the flicker and dim of the lights, the cold air. It is total immersion in the story, not with IMAX glasses or surround sound, but with darkness and a compact between 150 people to turn a 2-dimensional image into something real. When you hear that octogenarian’s gruff chuckle, you look twice at something that might not have seemed funny before. When the five year old breaks down crying, your heart melts. Movies are our American Dream, a soul-shocking promise that whole cities of people collide to share. There is magic, true love, high adventure, and humanity.

The excursion with my sisters, though, was unextraordinary. My eyes itched and I wanted to sleep. A dark corner of my mind flicked through the faces of the other moviegoers, screening for potential terrorists. My stomach counted down the minutes, anticipating frozen yogurt as soon as the credits rolled. We didn’t even order popcorn. Worst of all, I couldn’t quite suspend my disbelief. After months of Netflix and Megashare, the movies didn’t feel special anymore.

Movies really get their magic when they end, when we first wriggle and stretch and come back into our physical selves and find a new purpose in each movement. We walk out of a netherworld of pixels, carrying some of its power with us, but remembering its essential otherness. We need the distinction between the magic of the movies and the humdrum of real life in order to believe in the Dream. Only now, we take movies everywhere, like a pack of brain-gum to litter on the sidewalk and stick under your desk in lecture.

In the same way the towering wall of pixels has compressed to a 3 by 5 touchscreen, the movie-going experience has shifted from a rare Saturday night adventure to an everyday phenomenon, and its value has diminished. It has become more instant, immediate, and yet perfunctory. Commercials celebrate catching up on favorite shows on the subway or the bus. Why? You can’t sob. You can’t call a friend.

I guess we don’t make time for a lot of things. We work hard, work harder. We overextend ourselves, spread the whipped cream too thin on our ‘Murican pie; the concessions stands jip us on the butter. We want to make that little iPhone screen into our slice of the American Dream, but the larger-than-life version is so much better. Go back to “the movies,” to “once upon a time,” before they invent digital retinas to save us the physical strain of watching films, too.