What is the charm of a movie theater? What leads people to enjoy movies in the cinemas? These are the questions that I’ve always wondered about but couldn’t find the answers. However, after reading “Leaving the Movie Theater” by Roland Barthes, I was able to find the answers.
The dictions “hypnosis” and “darkness” were constantly mentioned in the reading to show that theaters are the only places that could lead us to solely focus on the movie. I fully sympathize with this and was able to recall back the days before the epidemic; the time when I frequently visited the cinemas. In the cinemas, we are being hypnotized by the big screen and the sounds that are loudly played in the dark. But at home, movies can’t hypnotize us. Although watching movies at home is more preferable due to the epidemic nowadays, I still miss the cinemas, where I could actually focus as if I were the characters in the movie.
Hyokyung Nam, 3035740764
I appreciate how you relate your personal experience with Barthes’ piece. Yet, I would encourage you to analyse his piece more rigorously, if Barthes really found cinematic experience ‘charming’ and ‘enjoyable’? How is the ‘darkness’ of a cinema, apart from allowing us to focus on the film, ‘hypnotizes’ us? Hypnosis does not necessarily mean focus only. Moreover, how did Barthes think of being ‘glued’ to the film? Did he fully encourage this? If you are able to enter the cinema again after the pandemic, you could try to ‘take off’ from a film using Barthes’ technique and see how it is different from thinking that you ‘were’ the characters in the movie.