“That’s so stupid – they’d be TEXTING in real life. Not talking.”
It’s funny. I find myself saying this every time I can bring myself to give a new movie a try. But, then, when I recently saw “Disconnect” and then one half of “The Fault In Our Stars” (which I couldn’t finish because it was taking too long to move the subplot about the blind-kid along so I got bored and anxious and left and did something else), I realized that maybe stupid’s better. And that bringing text to film’s way worse – especially when they’re now adding in interactive texing with the audience.
In an effort to be more realistic, some films started doing that on-screen text pop up thingy (while putting it side by side with the emoting character) several years back. And now, it’s going an IRL step further for your opining purposes – by involving the actual viewers – adding in their real time Youtube style commentary sent via text too.
Yes, Chels. On both counts, but more so the second.
For the first element – the artistic one – it puts a lot of pressure on the director and actor alike to step up their game and teleport the emotional machinations silently to the audience – which is great if they can. Actually the chick with cancer in TFIOS (not a terrible movie – just couldn’t keep my attention) did a great job of showing what it’s like to keep checking your phone for crush-validation, get upset about no message receipt, and all the little micro-expressions you’d get as a teenager of trying to hide your elation when that climactic ding finally sounds. Also, the cartoony portrayal of an iphone convo was kinda cute, too, I suppose.
But for film – which many enjoy as being more of a break from reality – I feel like these relevant-to-real-life touches should be accessories. A cinematic icing to the escape cake that is the movie going experience. It’s funny and relateable for a while, but for the most part, we want to play voyeur to actual human connections and all the stuff we should be doing outside in daylight (instead of watching an un-reality of other people do it from a darkened theater and hunching over our own phones the rest of the time). We don’t really want our movies to be reminders of our everyday tiresome overstimulation.
I mean, I was devastated when I learned Master Shake’s really a man called Dana.
Living a lie.
Inside of a cup suit.
Keep these facts far from me when I’m unwinding, you soulless bastards.
Still, I could condone text messaging being over-written into scripts with minimal facepalm.
Where my palm morphs into a mug covering Mardi Gras mask, though, is when I hear this new thing being started in Chinese theaters where on-screen texting goes on throughout the show. It’s like Youtube except live and I suppose you can look around and try to guess who’s the douche typing the same meme about Darude every time the background music comes on. While I don’t go to the movies that often anyway, something about this rests uneasy with me. We’re so unable to focus on real experiences that we go to a movie. Then we can’t even focus on the movie, so we text in between. And because we’re not even listening, we don’t have anything worthwhile to say. But we say it anyway. To be part of it all.
(You’ll know the guy who types “FIRST”, ’cause he’ll do a victory rise every time)
(And look nada like Leo).
This is ridiculous.
It’s information bulimia.
We barf back the stuff of others’ brains without taking time to process it with our own.
One artificial attention stimulant after the other is turning us into the consciousness version of the Russian Sleep Experiment. So mayhaps let’s calm down with phones in film and on film and throughout the effing film. And if we must sit on our asses to be enchanted for two hours, let’s at least have a real conversation with real people about it afterward instead. That’s the better idea. Movie theaters where you all sit and talk about it with strangers once it’s done and the lights come on and hope somebody doesn’t blow your brains out because you called it derivative. Whatever that means. That said, I’m still curious about how this sad cancer kid movie ends, so feel free to tell me.
I mean message me.
‘cause… ya know. I can’t be bothered to use my vocal cords.
Gotta preserve them for talk-to-text.
Nevermind. Gif santa gifted me with all I needed to know right there.
If they get laid before they get laid to rest, that’s good enough for me.
Sidenote: I wonder how soon before in-theater virtual reality headsets with “choose your own adventure” style alternate endings will be a thing?