Should cin­e­mas pro­gramme screen­ings for avid phone users?

At the risk of sound­ing like an irri­tat­ed school ma’am or an unin­spired come­di­an: what is it with peo­ple mak­ing dis­rup­tions in cin­e­mas? Mobile phones are turn­ing adults into chil­dren who can’t bear to stop play­ing with their toys. A devout few cru­sade against noise-mak­ers and phone users, inter­ven­ing where both occur, but the tide is def­i­nite­ly with peo­ple that treat cin­e­ma like a big­ger, stranger pop­u­lat­ed ver­sion of their front room. The belief that we must receive the Sev­enth Art in absorbed rev­er­ence is dying out.

As guar­an­tees of a qual­i­ty (as in, pure­ly peace­ful) cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ences go down, prices are going up. New cin­e­mas, Pic­ture­house Cen­tral and Cur­zon Blooms­bury, have set peak prices at £18. We fear that it’s becom­ing more tempt­ing for audi­ences to stay at home and use stream­ing ser­vices as a way to sate their movie hunger.

But films’ true homes are cin­e­mas. It’s rare you’ll hear a film­mak­er say how chuffed they are to see their new prize project on a 3.5 inch dig­i­tal screen. It’s true that those of us who wor­ship at the alter of movies guz­zle them through all chan­nels, includ­ing lap­top screens. This is because, as well as being dis­cern­ing snobs, we are rabid junkies. Just because low-atmos­phere, low-res­o­lu­tion pri­vate screen­ings are ubiq­ui­tous, it doesn’t mean that we let go of the best that cin­e­ma can be.

Why is it impor­tant that cin­e­ma con­di­tions are pre­served? It’s hard to answer this ques­tion with­out com­ing across as preachy and there­fore irrel­e­vant. Mark Ker­mode and Simon Mayo of Wit­ter­tain­ment fame have a Code of Con­duct which has long since become a resource for com­i­cal­ly lament­ing the fact that each list­ed behav­iour hap­pens. All the time. Through­out the land.

It is con­sid­ered to be buz­zkill behav­iour to be seri­ous and to speak seri­ous­ly about what many con­sid­er to be ​‘pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment’. There is a men­tal­i­ty of, ​‘I paid for my tick­et, I can do what the hell I want,’ as if the oth­er peo­ple who paid for their tick­ets will be unaf­fect­ed by dis­tract­ing behav­iour and if they are, well… you know where they can go. It’s aggres­sive and self-right­eous, and yet peo­ple who dis­agree with my belief that they should shut the hell up may well plas­ter me with the exact same labels.

In short: we are oper­at­ing under dif­fer­ent, irrec­on­cil­able philoso­phies. The answer? Divi­sion. In the same way that cin­e­mas sched­ule moth­er and baby screen­ings, they should sched­ule cinephile church screen­ings in which dis­trac­tions are express­ly for­bid­den and we – who suck­le our life’s mean­ing off the teat of the finest art in the world can be fed and nur­tured. They should also sched­ule play­ground screen­ings in which shh­hing is express­ly for­bid­den and audi­ences can chat­ter and update Face­book and gen­er­al­ly con­tin­ue with life with the added bonus of a movie flick­er­ing in the background.

Want to talk to your mate all the way through the screen­ing? Fine – just do it in the right space. Want to have an art expe­ri­ence? Fine – just do it in the right space. If cin­e­mas want to jus­ti­fy their ris­ing prices then they need to take an inter­est in where the frac­tured cli­mate of film-watch­ing is at and serve their audi­ences accordingly.

What do you think of this scheme? Is it genius or stu­pid? Let us know @LWLies