Leaving the Movie Theater offers an interesting insight to the essence of cinema through an imagery of someone, an audience after watching a movie, walking out of the theater. The speaker is described to be silent yet not thoughtless, but “sopitive, soft, limp” and even “irresponsible.” What Barthes is exploring here is not only the mere picture of a man after watching a movie, but what the aftermath of a film could be.
Films can make people (which encompassed the action of coming and, unsurprisingly, leaving the theater and walking down the dark street, in Barthe’s time) “[dream] off” and hypnotize them. The essential aspect of this hypnotic magic is how the theater itself is built—i.e., its architectural characteristics.
Darkness of the cinema reflects the long tradition of a black box, where theatrical performances are performed. Under the vail of darkness, people relax their postures, The noises muffled by the soft cushions and carpets all eventually contributes to the maximization of sensual (as Barthes even describes it as eroticism) experience of a movie. Even decades after Barthes, people still refer to certain movies as the ones that must be watched in cinema. The experience of going to cinema (and leaving it) cannot be replaced, for the audience can only enjoy the “amorous distance” between the movie and them by going to the theater. Barthe’s essay, though a short excerpt, shines a light on often neglected components of cinema and allows us to thoroughly appreciate what it means to go and leave the theater.
Park Junseo 3035859929
References:
Barthes, R. (1986). Leaving the Movie Theatre 1975. In The Rustle of Language (pp. 345-49). New York: Hill and Wang.