Movie theaters are where film-goers communally experience America’s greatest, most inclusive art form. In these public spaces, history, dreams, fantasy and adventure come to vivid life on a massive screen for all to see. It is a tradition I hope is never threatened by the acts of a few madmen.
I am a film critic for The Advocate daily newspapers in Louisiana, which have circulation in Lafayette, Baton Rouge and New Orleans. It’s possible some of my readers were at the screening when an unstable drifter shot and killed two people and wounded nine on Thursday night. After the news broke, my brother in Oklahoma City called to see if I’d been at the screening. I just told him, no, I wasn’t and not to worry.
Working as a movie critic, I attend film screenings every week. Recently, security has crossed my mind, especially with the trial of James Holmes, who opened fire onto moviegoers watching The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado. Still, I always thought that I would never let such tragedies stop me from going to the movies – a source of so much entertainment since I reveled in Walt Disney’s animated classics as child in the 1950s. Even with this latest shooting, my mind has not changed.
I’ll never forget when my father took me to the movies in 1962 to see Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean’s Oscar-winning masterpiece about the World War I-era British hero TE Lawrence. My 7-year-old self was swept away by the glorious orchestral score and the cinematography of Lawrence struggling over the infinite desert landscape. I realized the power of cinema that night.
Since then I’ve spent countless hours of entertainment in movie halls. I delighted in watching Groucho Marx woo Margaret Dumont’s society lady character in the Marx Brothers’ classic comedy Duck Soup. I witnessed Orson Welles’s dying newspaper magnate mourn for Rosebud in Citizen Kane. And when Marlon Brando’s misunderstood youth broods in a small town in The Wild Ones, I understood.
How many of us have remember seeing Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong swing together in a jubilant ode to jazz in High Society? Or Forrest Gump, a simple, good man, who runs through decades of American history. This is entertainment that Americans have known through more than a century of movie-going. And future generations should know it too.
We shouldn’t have to think twice before attending movies, plays, musical performances, a child’s dance recital, or visiting galleries and museums. These are rights we must ensure for ourselves. Fear should never keep Americans from their right to assemble, in a movie theater or, for that matter, any other public place.
Our national character would be tragically diminished if we hesitate to assemble in public places were we can be enlightened, entertained and inspired by the ingenious works our artists create. Without this freedom, our poverty of spirit will be inconsolable.
