The Weirdest Thing About Seeing a Movie by Myself (transcript of audio post)
There are certain activities that I prefer not to do if I can’t do them with other people. For example, I don’t enjoy going to a restaurant by myself. I’ve also learned over the years that I don’t really like to travel by myself. For me, eating out and traveling are such inherently social experiences that I find myself feeling a bit isolated and lonely if I do them on my own.
Going to the movies is often a social experience as well, but for some reason I’ve never had a problem doing that on my own. I’m still happy to go see a movie with friends, of course, but I often go by myself.
The other day, however, I was really by myself at the movies. It was a Wednesday afternoon, and I was seeing Send Help, the new Sam Raimi movie about a woman and her boss who end up stranded as the only two people on an otherwise deserted island after their plane crashes. As it turned out, the theater was even more deserted than that island, because I was the only one there to see the movie.
I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve ever gotten a “private screening.” I remember a couple of previous times when it looked like it might happen, but then another customer scurried in and sat down just as the movie was starting. I was expecting that to happen again this time, but it didn’t. It was just me and the actors on the screen.
I liked the movie, so it was easy enough to get engrossed in the story and not think about my surroundings. But then something interesting happened: There were a few lines in the movie that made me laugh out loud, and I immediately had this feeling of how weird it was to be laughing in an empty theater. That’s because laughing at a movie is usually at least somewhat performative and also somewhat participatory. There are lots of unspoken, almost subliminal elements at play: self-expression, encouraging others to join in, following the lead of others who’ve already laughed, giving and receiving tacit permission to break the usual veil of silence in the theater, and so on. It’s not so much that we intend any of this; it’s just the natural group dynamic of shared laughter.
By contrast, laughing by myself felt more like the moviegoing version of a tree falling in the forest with nobody there to hear it. It was the only time during the screening that I felt acutely aware of being the only person in the theater. (If it had been a horror movie, maybe I would’ve felt the same way if I screamed or gasped during the scary parts.)
Of course, I laugh by myself at home all the time — while watching TV, or reading a book, or listening to the radio, or even just watching my cats. But solo laughing in one’s own home is different, because there’s no expectation of a group dynamic. In fact, if I had streamed Send Help at home, I probably would have laughed at the same parts that made me laugh in the theater and it wouldn’t have felt weird at all, because the context for that laughter would have felt completely different.
So what have I learned from all this? Mainly that while I’m still fine with going to the movies by myself, actually being in a movie theater is another one of those inherently social experiences that I’d prefer not to do alone.
Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. You can contact him here.