What do you think?
Rate this book
Houselights: or, how to stop mobile phones ringing during movies
Mobile phones are everywhere and they have become a constant distraction during movies and plays. Until recently I became wrathful whenever I heard one ring during a movie or stage play: I thought it my job as an audience member to focus intensively on any piece of art so that I can become a better citizen. But, after I did some research and had an experience while traveling, I've since changed my mind:
For a healthy society, we need two things: the forming of opinions and modeling social consent. To have a commonwealth, we have to agree to the terms of the contract as well as opine about which direction we should all go. The way we currently watch movies and plays--silently and in the dark--does not allow us to model social consent. We form opinions in the dark and return home to the isolation and nobility of domesticity. So social movements of the past few generations--like the free love of the 60s, and the counter movements that emphasized the moral majority or family values--, have been flawed because, while they help us form opinions, they deprive us of that other element we need to have a society together: shared, polite behavior. As a result, America is becoming more and more segregated; we have opinions, but no consensus about how to be good citizens together. This is in part because a previous generation treated polite social behavior as a construct of the bourgeois, and therefore something to be killed off. The idea was that if one can just form a strong enough opinion and scream loud enough, "the man" will have to listen and things will finally change for the good, but this doesn't work in society because, currently, there is no way for us to model social consent.
To model consent, we must turn up the houselights. In an indirect way, social media has started this trend by giving us a way to watch the audience as it reacts to an event, but we could help the trend along by turning up the lights and, each one of us, speaking up, reasoning together, and challenging ourselves to reason and reason well. I outline in this essay how Wagner's opera aesthetic shaped how we currently watch movies and plays: silently in the dark. I draw upon some opera history to explain how in the more distant past, audiences participated socially in much the same way we do now when we #hatewatch a show.
While we might not want to literally turn up the houselights when we watch Star Wars in the theater, with the advent of mobile internet, the lights are already up: we are already being interrupted and can no longer participate in the intensive listening Wagner encouraged. But this is OK. We all can join the claque, join the conversation, and help shape our collective attention. Whatever we decide, the days of sitting silently and in the dark--the days of Wagner--are over.
For a healthy society, we need two things: the forming of opinions and modeling social consent. To have a commonwealth, we have to agree to the terms of the contract as well as opine about which direction we should all go. The way we currently watch movies and plays--silently and in the dark--does not allow us to model social consent. We form opinions in the dark and return home to the isolation and nobility of domesticity. So social movements of the past few generations--like the free love of the 60s, and the counter movements that emphasized the moral majority or family values--, have been flawed because, while they help us form opinions, they deprive us of that other element we need to have a society together: shared, polite behavior. As a result, America is becoming more and more segregated; we have opinions, but no consensus about how to be good citizens together. This is in part because a previous generation treated polite social behavior as a construct of the bourgeois, and therefore something to be killed off. The idea was that if one can just form a strong enough opinion and scream loud enough, "the man" will have to listen and things will finally change for the good, but this doesn't work in society because, currently, there is no way for us to model social consent.
To model consent, we must turn up the houselights. In an indirect way, social media has started this trend by giving us a way to watch the audience as it reacts to an event, but we could help the trend along by turning up the lights and, each one of us, speaking up, reasoning together, and challenging ourselves to reason and reason well. I outline in this essay how Wagner's opera aesthetic shaped how we currently watch movies and plays: silently in the dark. I draw upon some opera history to explain how in the more distant past, audiences participated socially in much the same way we do now when we #hatewatch a show.
While we might not want to literally turn up the houselights when we watch Star Wars in the theater, with the advent of mobile internet, the lights are already up: we are already being interrupted and can no longer participate in the intensive listening Wagner encouraged. But this is OK. We all can join the claque, join the conversation, and help shape our collective attention. Whatever we decide, the days of sitting silently and in the dark--the days of Wagner--are over.
23 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 21, 2016
2 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
No one has reviewed this book yet.