Old White People at the Movies

This weekend I went to see the film “Elegy” at a theater on 62nd Street and 1st Avenue around 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I was excited to see this film ever since I had seen a segment of Charlie Rose devoted to it. I didn’t want to get screwed out of a good seat, which explains my rather early trip to the movie. The whole experience was somewhat disastrous because I had not received a memo that the early afternoon was the prime time that every person above the age of 70 went to the movies.

I should have anticipated something was up when I had seen the throng of walkers and West Indian women (the caretakers of the 70 and above crowd)  standing in line for tickets. After waiting a really long time to get my tickets (this wasn’ t the fault of the old people moving slowly, the theater staff sucked), I sat down in a reasonably good seat on the right side of the theater. Everything was cool up until then. Shortly after the previews, trouble began to brew. I noticed small red lights above the heads of several older members of the audience. What the hell were they? Upon stealing a few more glances during the opening credits, I realized that they were the lights from headsets that they were wearing. I guess the theater gets SOOO many old patrons that they provide hearing devices for them. At that point, I should’ve known that my movie-going experience would be compromised in some way. But even then, I didn’t think that would intrude upon my situation.

I like old people. I was raised by my grandmother and the Korean-Confucian ethic makes it very difficult for me to swallow how poorly Americans treat their old people. Old folks in America are always viewed with the utmost contempt. They raise us and then we ship them off to Florida. But I guess in spite of all this, I’ve truly assimilated since what would happen next during the film would really just solidfy that fact.

The way that these hearing aid headphones were, I suspect, is through a radio feed. Radio feeds, if people have forgotten, operate through certain channels determined by frequency. If, however, there is a slight issue with the tuning of the frequency, there is a terrible sound made which we call “static.” Now, something with the setup was messed up as I was interrupted several times throughout the film with 20 or some odd headphones with volumes set at 11 that would emit a loud STATIC sound every other minute. Now, of course, this is not the fault of the older people who need these devices. But if that’s not bad enough, the woman who was sitting in the same aisle but further down from me started to yell at these helpless people, “Can you stop that please!?” I look over; she’s not exactly young either (My guess is that she’s in her 60s). And to cap it all off, with about 10 minutes left to go in the film, during a pretty KEY emotional moment, here’s the exchange:

“Move your head!”

“SHHHHHHHHHHHH”

“Well I can’t see and the movie’s about the end!

What’s this crap about black people being loud in movie theaters? Not for me on Saturdays.