Embarrassed by fellow movie-goers
You’re sitting there, minding your business, trying to enjoy the whole movie experience, waiting for “The Twenty” to start and all of a sudden it begins. The room dims, the screen lights up. That’s when your fellow man decides to embarrass you.
The audience around you starts clapping and cheering at the movie screen.
It happened to me when I went to the sneak preview of Harry Potter just last weekend. People came wearing Potter’s nerdy glasses or wearing Gryffindor’s signature maroon and yellow scarves, but that’s to be expected.
People were excitedly laughing and joking around before the movie started, that too is obnoxious, but I can handle it. But when people give a standing ovation to the PG-13 rating box at the beginning of the movie that’s going too far.
And why are people so willing to cheer at a movie screen and so hesitant to applaud at live performances? Where is that hesitation at the movies?
That’s not the worst part though. Halfway through Harry Potter there is a scene where Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) gets undressed and hops in a bathtub. Even though they only show him from the bellybutton up, almost all the females in the theatre started making cat-calls at him, most of them high school students or older.
Come on ladies, if he wasn’t “Harry Potter” and was just plain old Daniel walking down the street you wouldn’t even give him a second glance. He’s what 15 or 16 years old? That’s gross. But even the cat-calls weren’t the most embarrassing part.
The most embarrassing part was the end of the movie. Everyone applauded the movie screen again, even louder than before. There were random cries from the audience, “Best movie ever!” and “That has Oscar written all over it!” Give me a break. The movie was good but it was far from the best movie I‘d ever seen.
Then the 15 or 16-year-old girl sitting next to me literally whimpered, “No. Oh no, no, no. It can’t be over already,” and she had tears welling up in her eyes. I was so embarrassed for her. I got out of my chair as fast as I could to get away from her and out of the theatre when some eighteen-year-old girl sitting behind me yelled out in a nasty voice, “Sit back down it’s not over yet!”
Not over yet? The credits were rolling! I escaped from the theatre and headed for the door only to be trampled by people young and old alike throwing elbows and wrestling over free movie posters at the Guest Services counter.
People, it’s okay to be excited about something, but calm down. It’s just a movie.
-Jennifer Palmberg
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