Phone etiquette in the theatre

Maybe it's because I grew up in the last age before everybody in the world had their phone in their pocket, but I was always just a bit too militant about the use of mobile phones in the sanctity of the movie theatre. 

I used to insist that everybody I went with turned off their phones as soon as things got projected on the screen, because this was the time to concentrate. I obviously got more lenient on using them through the advertisements before the start, especially when sometimes the ads are more than 20 minutes before an overlong film starts, and are the same crass slices of capitalism every time. 

But I do think the movie theatre is a slightly sacred place, and it is somewhat profane to sully it with an outside distraction, and that the phone should go away once the trailers start, and the experience begins. 

Like almost everything in life, parenthood changed everything. I have always used to turn my phone off. Then I had kids and it just wasn't responsible to go out of contact for so long, when you have small humans depending on you, and you need to be reachable for any kind of emergency.

I still mute the fucking thing, and turn the screen glare all the way down to the bare minimum. I don't check the phone during the feature presentation, but I will know if somebody is trying to call me by the vibrations.

Unfortunately, we do live in a deeply selfish age, and I know there are so many people out there who can't bear to be away from their feeds for two whole hours, and blithely don't care if they are fucking off everybody else in the room. It's everywhere - I had to tell someone to put down a whole goddamn iPad during a fucking Jim Jarmusch film, and they seemed genuinely baffled by how remarkably annoying they were being.

It's much more noticeable when I go to a Saturday night film in a crowded house at the multiplex, although many of the films I watch at the cinema are with the weekday morning crowd, where it's much less of a problem (and much easier to move about to avoid annoying distractions).

So it might be a losing battle to keep the auditorium dark, but I keep to my own standards and keep my phone off. Unless the school is calling because one of the kids has fallen over in the playground. That'll always be more important.