Movies

Why?

Clapping in the theater at the end of a good movie is as effective as yelling at your television as you watch your team play poorly, yet if I had to pick one of the two that bothered me, it is the applause.

It does not happen frequently; at least not in my experience (and I attend my fair share of movies). But when it does, boy does it get under my skin. The last time it happened was when I saw The Aristocrats! and before then was The Polar Express.

Do people expect the director and/or lead to come out from behind a curtain for a bow? Is there a subculture of theater clappers? Is this something learned from parents? How does one develop into a theater clapper? Is there an elaborate recruitment process by which new generations of theater clappers are selected? I think answers to some of these questions might lead to a seedy underbelly of cinema. Maybe the path to the theater clapper elite would reveal organized crime and corruption that goes all the way to the top! Imagine the possibilities...

Leave well enough alone, you say? Not me.

Oh how I would love to pick the brain of one of them. Do you think it would be frowned upon if I began to go to the movies with a harpoon in hopes of capturing one? Imagine the studies that could be conducted. All in the name of science! I wonder if my prisoner would then be able to be reconditioned. Could we train them to NOT clap after movies? That certainly would be ideal.

Maybe it is not even for the movie itself, but rather the projector operator. This I can get on board with, I guess next time I will applaud you, too. You sure switch the reels well.

Did I really lay out parallels between clapping at the end of a good movie and La CosaNostra? Ok, maybe I am a little too hung up on this.