Relative Something

I went to a movie theater Tuesday evening and was pleased to find tickets at half-price. Yahoo! On the way out I saw barriers up for the queue of people for a new movie opening at midnight that night. Young folks were already waiting there. The feature I was seeing was attended by about 7 other people. It is strange to be in big theaters with hardly any people in them. It is harder to be lost in a crowd when there is no crowd. I felt like every time I shifted in my seat or made noise with my bag of popcorn it was much more irritating than if there were a hundred other people contributing similar sounds. And of course my chair ended up being a squeaky one. I had just complained to Cyndie that my car door had developed an irritating squeak since I returned from my bike trip. Now the seat in the theater. It feels like the squeaks are following me.

The movie was all gun waving drama and threats and for the umpteenth time I found myself frustrated by the victims automatic response to criminal demands. Maybe I have a death wish, but from the spectator seat I find myself much more inclined to want the victim to choose not to give in to the threats. I completely accept the possibility that I would feel quite different if I were to find myself actually in a real life threat, and if so, that is probably a good thing. However, maybe as a result of a life-long practice of thinking about my death and feeling quite comfortable with the prospect, when I hear, read, or watch scenes where a criminal gets whatever they want, I can’t help wondering how things would change if the victim becomes more of a participant in the situation and less of a puppet in the criminal’s plot.

The scenes that are much harder for me to tolerate are when the criminal turns the threat of harm to someone else to get their subject to comply. If I was commanded to do something I didn’t want to do, with the threat of death, I can see myself challenging the order. “Go ahead, shoot me. Then where does that get you?” But if they threaten me by offering to injure or kill my family, I can’t picture myself being able to refuse to cooperate. When that happens in the movie, then I squirm.

I’m one of those movie viewers that notices peripheral details. I find it very distracting when they are brought into a scene and then not used, like pulling out a suitcase to pack, but leaving without taking it. Or when the focus is on ordering a drink, but then the character never drinks it. Drives me nuts, but doesn’t even make it onto Cyndie’s radar. Cyndie’s movie watching quirk is her involuntary tendency to blurt out questions about what she sees on the screen before the scene is allowed to play out and present the answer… “Why did he pick up that broken bottle?”

We are quite a scene of our own walking out of the theater bickering over our different issues we have watching movies. Go ahead, shoot me.