This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: July 10, 2008 - The Internet as workplace, library, and moving-image content provider. The DVD paired with the oversized TV screen. Escalating crime on the streets, global warming, and now the outrageous oil price-gouging and the overall inflation that follows. All of these have left us hopelessly cloistered in our ever-more-secure home places. A large and fast-growing percentage of our population essentially has no good reason to venture from their locked and burglar-protected domiciles. As a matter of fact, the more we stay inside, the less we have to worry about an invasion of our chosen place of isolation.
There is no wonder that DVD rentals and sales far exceed cinema revenues. You heard me: There is no wonder - or at least very little wonder - in our new movie world. Where is the wonder we once enjoyed with the purchase of a movie ticket? I wouldn't doubt the typical reader of The Lens still finds a bit of wonder at the alternative cinemas, the few that are left for the adults that actually show movies mature enough for the over-13 crowd. In this regard, St. Louisans are lucky. Many other communities as big or bigger than our own do not have as many so-called art screens.
There used to be wonderment at nearly all the cinemas, particularly the giant movie palaces, which served the same function for the masses that our present multiplexes do. Those venues were often designed to provide a sense of wonder even before the lights went down. We can still see a hint of that in the Tivoli on Delmar. But even that rarity of wonder suffers badly for business on any night except for Friday and Saturday. A Sunday-night screening in one of the little side rooms at the Tiv may even be a solo experience at times. I am sure a common dilemma for many cinemas is what to do if no one shows up when it is time for the feature to start.
And what about the wonderment on the screen itself? Wonderment seems to be replaced by the predictable, the kind of fare designed for youngsters who have no imagination beyond what was proven acceptable to be remade or sequelize. Screenwriters themselves seem bereft of wonderment, hoping to cash in on rewriting what has been written before in a way that does not readily appear to be rewritten. This production phenomenon reminds me of infants who beg their parents to tell the same bedtime story they heard before. Unfortunately, even the propensity to simply remake rather than invent new movies feeds into our new cloistered environment, too. For those people in search of something new, NetFlix has become the most likely place to find it.
I understand that I am juggling a couple of pet peeves here, but I think they are related. We may well become a society of isolationists that only leave the house out of desperation, which probably means an attempt to get away from the parents (thereby keeping the cinemas alive) or possibly a visit to the hospital to keep one's self alive.