When I was younger, watching a movie was usually a pretty big deal. My whole family would go together. There are 4 kids in my family and we are all only one year apart. So, as you can imagine, a trip with 4 kids to a movie theatre was quite the adventure. It was basically impossible to pick a movie we all wanted to go see. So the process of picking out the movie would start days in advance. Each of us constantly making the case for the movie we really wanted to see, trying to convince the others to switch their opinion on it. In the end, my mom made the final decision. No matter what she chose, at least one person was very unhappy and grumpy for the whole day. Someone was always begging for a snack. I always asked for the big jawbreaker. But I think I only ever actually got to have the jawbreaker once or twice. There was always a lot of complaining and fighting, but those trips to the movie theatre stick out as a good childhood memory for me. My family was all together, and that almost never happens anymore.
So, as you can see, watching a movie used to be a communal experience. The whole family would watch together, and then we would talk about it for the whole ride home. Who liked the ending? Who didn’t? Who predicted the big plot twist? And it always left us with some inside jokes or lines we would like to quote consistently for the next month or so. Now, as we grow up, going to the movies is not as much of an adventure. It is something you do with a couple close friends when you have nothing else to do. Most of my movie consumption in the past couple of years has been a solely individual experience. Just me and my computer, sitting on my bed, watching on a streaming platform.
A night (and a morning) at the movies
This is funny because this is where movies started. We finally came in a full circle. When Edison invented the moving image, it was made for a single viewer. This then evolved into the big motion picture which allowed for multiple users. Now, we are back to a single user medium.
Mass Media and American Life 