The joys of cinema
"Where do you want to sit? Middle?" says the bored-looking ticket-seller at our local cinema. She doesn't look up from her cash register.
Almost everyone, it seems, opts for seats somewhere in the middle of the seating area. Why this flight to the middle? Is it a safety thing? Is that where you get the best view? Personally I quite like sitting at the front but I am as programmed as everyone else to seek the middle ground. "Middle," I bleat like every other sheep.
Armed with our numbered tickets we grope our way down the darkened aisle trying to find our seats. Once upon a time there were people with torches who showed you to your seats.
I recall that in France at one time it was customary to tip the usher. I did not do so once in a Paris cinema, either out of ignorance or meanness, and received a sharp jab to the ribs from the "assistant" who fled in the dark.
Today, however, there is no usher so we get down on our knees in the gloom, trying to make out row J. I count the seats to numbers 12 and 13 that are already occupied so the people must get up and sit elsewhere. We claim our places to find that the cinema is almost empty.
You can't win in these circumstances. To avoid accusations of churlishness we have gone to sit elsewhere in the past only to be confronted by another pair of "anal retentives" who move us on. And once you have joined the ranks of the voluntary itinerant you are condemned like the wandering albatross to scavenge from seat to seat, always glancing sideways, waiting for that "tap in the dark."
So we claim our seats in the middle of a small clutch of other cinema goers tightly bunched around us, ignoring the swathes of empty seats elsewhere. The Afro haircut went out with the Ark but it is enjoying a temporary revival in the seat in front creating a dark "grassy knoll" that obliterates any foreground action in the film. They should sell scissors at the ticket desk.
The cheap adverts for local tailors' shops and "everything for your wedding" have finished but the main feature hasn't started yet and we're watching one of those entertaining Orange telephone advertisements that remind us to turn off our mobile phones lest we disturb our fellow cinema goers. That's rich, that is.
You couldn't hear a mobile phone ringing above the noise of rustling crisp packets, the scrunch of popcorn and the slosh of Coca Cola that is spilled in such quantities, your feet stick to the floor. There is a fart in the darkness and sniggering. I am conducting a silent duel with the bony elbowed woman beside me for mastery of the arm rest.
Meanwhile my neck has stretched to giraffe proportions creating similar discomfort for those behind me. By the end of the film I'm ready for physio but I'm not going anywhere because we're hemmed-in on either side by people who like to watch the credits. Why do people watch the credits in cinemas? I blame those trendy comedies that put a funny bit at the end.
In spite of all this, possibly because of it - some innate perversity that defies explanation - I still love the cinema. All human life is there, anonymous and anti-social, yet clinging to an even stronger social programming that primes our urge to belong.
Another Donkin on cinema.
Almost everyone, it seems, opts for seats somewhere in the middle of the seating area. Why this flight to the middle? Is it a safety thing? Is that where you get the best view? Personally I quite like sitting at the front but I am as programmed as everyone else to seek the middle ground. "Middle," I bleat like every other sheep.
Armed with our numbered tickets we grope our way down the darkened aisle trying to find our seats. Once upon a time there were people with torches who showed you to your seats.
I recall that in France at one time it was customary to tip the usher. I did not do so once in a Paris cinema, either out of ignorance or meanness, and received a sharp jab to the ribs from the "assistant" who fled in the dark.
Today, however, there is no usher so we get down on our knees in the gloom, trying to make out row J. I count the seats to numbers 12 and 13 that are already occupied so the people must get up and sit elsewhere. We claim our places to find that the cinema is almost empty.
You can't win in these circumstances. To avoid accusations of churlishness we have gone to sit elsewhere in the past only to be confronted by another pair of "anal retentives" who move us on. And once you have joined the ranks of the voluntary itinerant you are condemned like the wandering albatross to scavenge from seat to seat, always glancing sideways, waiting for that "tap in the dark."
So we claim our seats in the middle of a small clutch of other cinema goers tightly bunched around us, ignoring the swathes of empty seats elsewhere. The Afro haircut went out with the Ark but it is enjoying a temporary revival in the seat in front creating a dark "grassy knoll" that obliterates any foreground action in the film. They should sell scissors at the ticket desk.
The cheap adverts for local tailors' shops and "everything for your wedding" have finished but the main feature hasn't started yet and we're watching one of those entertaining Orange telephone advertisements that remind us to turn off our mobile phones lest we disturb our fellow cinema goers. That's rich, that is.
You couldn't hear a mobile phone ringing above the noise of rustling crisp packets, the scrunch of popcorn and the slosh of Coca Cola that is spilled in such quantities, your feet stick to the floor. There is a fart in the darkness and sniggering. I am conducting a silent duel with the bony elbowed woman beside me for mastery of the arm rest.
Meanwhile my neck has stretched to giraffe proportions creating similar discomfort for those behind me. By the end of the film I'm ready for physio but I'm not going anywhere because we're hemmed-in on either side by people who like to watch the credits. Why do people watch the credits in cinemas? I blame those trendy comedies that put a funny bit at the end.
In spite of all this, possibly because of it - some innate perversity that defies explanation - I still love the cinema. All human life is there, anonymous and anti-social, yet clinging to an even stronger social programming that primes our urge to belong.
Another Donkin on cinema.
Labels: Ark, cinema, Donkin on Cinema, grassy knoll, Orange, Paris, physio, ushers
posted by Richard Donkin at
12:31 PM
1 Comments:
Couple of reasons why one may want to sit in the middle;
a) as things are presented in stereo you want the sounds to reach your ears at the same time - if you sit off to one side one side will reach the ear first... Being picky, but audiophiles [sp?] do this in their living rooms and usually cinema halls are bigger (but not the cinema in Ambleside...)
b) (gleaned from my father) is that as the light is being shone directly at the screen if "reflects" best directly to you giving a better (probably just brighter) picture...
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