Unruly Behavior in Cinemas: Disruptions and Clashes Caused by New Moviegoers

The cinematographic combo Barbenheimer is filling cinema halls these days. But not everyone is happy with this sudden influx of people. Some of the new moviegoers seem to have forgotten how to behave in such a cinema. To the chagrin of the more experienced film buffs.

Pieter Dumon14 August 2023, 19:01

Crackling chips and candy wrappers, begging and slurping gourmets or cinema neighbors who continue to chat even when it gets dark in the room. Small annoyances we all know. But this summer in cinemas worldwide, it goes just a little further than that. In The Washington Post, visitors to the Regal Cinema in Denver tell how security had to remove a naked man from the room during the Barbie movie. During the same film, a man in a pink top appeared in a movie theater in Washington and started shouting loudly every time Ken appeared on screen.

And in a video that is doing the rounds online shows how a fight breaks out in a Brazilian cinema because a woman made her granddaughter watch YouTube videos during – yes – the Barbie movie at a pretty disturbing sound level. A short search on social media yields a whole series of stories about cinemagoers who walk in and out of the cinema, chatter loudly and scroll almost continuously on their smartphones. Much to the chagrin of their roommates who do want to see the film.

Context: The lady that pushed the girl brought her granddaughter to watch the movie all she did was be loud and watch YouTube videos at full volume throughout the entire movie the girl threatened to call the police on them and that’s why they’re fighting https://t.co/PEYaffEysG

— Mari 💖 (@ComicLoverMari) 25 July 2023

Part of the explanation for the culture clash in the cinema complexes is quite obvious. The cinemas are currently experiencing one of the best film summers in a long time. Thanks to the film studios who dared to launch two major blockbusters during the summer months with Barbie and Oppenheimer. The weather gods also played their part. While it rained old wives for weeks with us, it was scorching hot in other parts of the world. Both climatic conditions that made the prospect of spending a few hours in a dark, perfectly temperature-controlled cinema very attractive. Only, the more people you pack into such a cinema room, the more likely they will get annoyed with each other.

Increasing resentment

“The number of complaints we receive does indeed increase in direct proportion to the number of visitors to our cinema complexes,” says Anneleen Van Troos of Kinepolis. Although she hastens to say that the Kinepolis complexes have not received more complaints than usual in recent weeks. “If there is an international trend, it has not blown over yet.” We hear a similar story at the Ghent arthouse cinema Studio Skoop. Although owner Walter Vander Cruysse also notices that a film like Barbie attracts both younger visitors and a traditional cinephile audience, this has not yet led to incidents. “On the contrary, the atmosphere in the room is usually very good during that film.”

But the rising visitor numbers are not the only explanation for the increasing resentment in the plushness of the cinema seats, thinks Lieven De Marez, professor of new communication technologies at imec-UGent. The stories about mobile phone use and other disturbing behavior in the cinema do not surprise him. The Marez is one of the driving forces behind the Digimeter, an annual survey of our media use. Year after year, this shows how the smartphone is gaining importance, with disastrous consequences for our ever-shortening attention span. “Since corona we spend 38 minutes more per day on our smartphone. We have twenty extra apps on it and on average we hold the device eighty times a day. Then it is not surprising that we fail to keep that thing in our pocket in the cinema.”

That phone and the constant stream of notifications that come in on it are also a disaster for our ability to concentrate. “Concentration is a skill that you have to train. But that hardly ever happens these days.” And we now also notice that in the cinema. “A lot of people just can’t sit through a full movie without doing something different now and then.”

Long-winded work

According to De Marez, solutions lie mainly in education, where he would like to see smartphones and laptops banned at least a few times a day. But parents also need to teach their children healthy smartphone use and, above all, set a good example themselves. But that long-term work is of no use to cinema operators for the time being. At Kinepolis they call on their visitors with a video during the pre-show to turn off their phones, or at least put them on silent.

In the large complexes, a telephone number is also posted to which you can text in case of problems in the hall. But in the messages that come in, it is usually about technical matters, according to Kinepolis, “such as the light that has not yet been extinguished while the film is already running or people who turn out not to be in the right seat.” At Studio Skoop, they mainly try to avoid problems by working preventively. “For us, the film is always central,” explains Vander Cruysse. “For example, you can’t get popcorn here. By running the cinema in this way, you will attract a certain audience anyway. And we know from experience that the public has nothing to do with correcting those who do not comply with the unwritten rules.”

Both ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ attracted a huge number of people to the cinema during the past quail weeks. Not everywhere did cinephiles and occasional visitors do this in harmony. Image Twitter / @ohseanofnoise

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2023-08-14 17:01:02
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