Film nerds, my people, it’s time to rethink our widespread rejection of the movie theater playground idea.
After a Los Angeles Times story about a movie theater chain building opening in-theater playgrounds at two Southern California locations, the movie web world reacted with spasms of revulsion. As a gut reaction it makes sense. Kids playing on a jungle gym while I’m trying to watch The Fate of the Furious would be terrible.
NO NO NO NO NO NO FUCKING NO NO NO NO NO https://t.co/NvUUaKBL7L
— Darren Bevan (@geekboy73) March 7, 2017
And it certainly seems in line with other filmgoer horror stories, like the canned AMC plan to allow texting in theaters. But there’s a huge difference between the texting plan and this playground thing.
At these movie theaters, kids can play on a jungle gym next to their parents' seats https://t.co/dSiubU7Qjc pic.twitter.com/JyWmSPDVXY
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) March 7, 2017
The Transportation Security Administration can explain why, but first they’ll need to cup your genitals. Sci-fi novelist Cory Doctorow recently wrote about the inevitable culture creep incentivized by the TSA’s Pre-Check program, which basically allows people to buy out of those invasive airport searches. With a new class of people bringing in profits, it was an inevitability that searches for the plebs would grow more invasive, either in pursuit of more Pre-Check profits or because the moneyed, influential societal class would no longer be in the pool of complainants. And wouldn’t you know it, the TSA is about to get a whole lot more invasive.
Allowing phones in theaters would act the same way. Eventually phones would be the norm in all theaters because of similar market forces to TSA pat-downs. The super-strict “preserve the theatrical experience” moviegoers are already in the minority, so creating a separate pool of consumers couldn’t help but distort the entire market in their direction. We film nerds acted with appropriate horror.
But what’s at stake here? There is zero possibility of every theater turning into a playground theater. You will never have to watch Deadpool 2 from a ballpit. This will remain a bespoke experience for parents to take their kids to a movie theater, without having to worry about bothering normal moviegoers. If anything, playground movie theaters could make normal movie theaters better, by removing a self-selecting group of really noisy people from your screening of the next Pixar movie.
