[Reading Response] Leaving the Movie Theater

This article mentioned the dazed and weak feeling when walking out of the theater, which is described as just waking up from hypnosis. In which the darkness of cinema is considered an element that provides the audience with a sense of intimacy, body freedom, and anonymity. I could very much resonate with this, and I also feel that such experience might become increasingly pronounced under today’s social context. There is a lack of this sense of privacy and anonymity when socializing and working with others nowadays, leaving limited outlet for emotions. In a movie theater, cell phones are turned off, the surroundings remain quiet, and the movie plot is coherent and undisturbed, which helps the audience to escape from messy real life to a space somewhere between the real world and fantasies for an immersive sensory. It is hard to get such a sense of privacy and security in places other than movie theaters and late-night bedrooms. In the dark it’s as if inner thoughts become less vulnerable to prying and guessing, and feelings can be unleashed with impunity. Just like the author mentioned the satisfactory feeling of peering through a keyhole.

Another Cinema What keeps the viewer enthralled, as if hypnotized, comes from the content of the movie itself. The movie plot comes from life, but jumps from it in a way. The movie plot is more idealized but still retains elements of reality. The viewer, the ordinary, common man, can always relate to a trait or behavior of a character. The idealistic plot, in turn, helps the viewer to escape from the frustration-filled real life and bring themselves to the happy ending of the movie characters. As the author says, “I am pressing my nose against the screen’s mirror, against the “other” image-repertoire with which I narcissistically identify myself”.

Shen Leyan (3036100117)