cinema anxiety

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Just come back from the pictures with a friend here in the UK. It is getting worse with me, I mean the anxiety about what to expect in the cinema. I hate the crunching and fumbling with popcorn bags and whatever, and the talking even when the trailers have barely started.

I want them to be quiet. My friend says she too hates it, but with me it is worse, I actually get anxious and asked beforehand if she knew it would be noisy, or if cell phones would go off, I think I have become so intolerant to this group behaviour of youngsters, the cell phone generation, they don't come for the movie so much anymore as to have a good time with friends, and I cannot enjoy the picture because of that.

Do you recognise that feeling?

Yes! I have very little tolerance for what I see as a lack of basic manners. When I went to college, as a "mature student", I was horrified to find that school libraries are no longer silent. Students talk, at full volume, and no one seems to think that's a problem. When I was in school, you were silent in the library.

It's not just that they are disturbing others, but it also bugs me because it's yet another change for the worse in our society. I see that you're 50. I'm 42, but I consider someone your age to be more of a peer than someone eight years younger than me, because I think a fundamental changed occurred in our culture after I reached adulthood. I'm not sure if I'm putting that well, but it really seems to me like, sometime after I left high school, bad behavior became much more acceptable. It might be just my perspective, because I grew and changed.

But yes, I recognize the feeling that you speak of. My 8-year-old son went to a friend's house once, and they were going to watch a movie at their house. He was really looking forward to it, but when the movie started, the other people kept talking through it. In our house, we never talk over movies. We only turn on the TV if we have a specific DVD that we want to watch, and if someone absolutely needs to say something, we pause it. None of us would even think to just start talking over it, because none of us are able to pay attention to the story and a conversation at the same time. My son was really bugged by their bad manners, too. He's NT (well, similar to me, I think. Maybe close to being AS in some ways, but mostly NT).

Last time I went to a mainstream cinema was many years ago. I wouldn't be able to endure it. If at all, I go to the cinematheque, with all the other intellectuals and nerds and hippies my age. I love that population, and they're very disciplined because they come to concentrate on the movie.

This is why I go to the movies during the weekday matinees when there's no one there, even if I go by myself.

This is why I have only been to the cinema twice in the past 17 years.

I went about 9 years ago to a midweek show at a cinema which had few patrons, and indeed closed shortly afterwards. I went earlier this year with my son to see a children's movie. We sat at the front, away from people.

Now that you mention it, yes, I went to a movie last weekend with my husband and a group of our (mostly his) friends. First time I'd been to a movie with these people, they are mostly around 10 years younger than us. I was happily surprised that they were quiet and respectful. I expected them to talk and banter, 'cause thats just how most people behave these days.

This drives my 14 year old spectrumy daughter nuts when we go to the movies. She can hear every candy wrapper, every breath. To her it's louder than the actual movie. I had some of her attention/processing issues when I was her age, so I can relate. Then she discovered the magic of headphone and watching a movie on a laptop.

Yhanks. The thing is that it takes the first half hour or more before I can concentrate on the film, the rustling of wrappers and plastic seem to be superimposed on the soundtrack.

So, I cannot enjoy the movie, I constantly turn around to look where the noise comes from, although I know, it has become a tic, as if they would understand why I look at them and they'd hopefully stop eating and talking and...but they don't of course. In other countries I would dare say something, but my friend who took me out said I cannot in the UK, people are aggressive she said.

Just after the movie finished we were barely on the pavement when a madman sped by in a sports car. Obviously to show off, so noisy and dangerous right in front of us, and she repeated the same caution when the youngsters indeed got out of the car, they might have been drunk. But don't say anything she said, nowadays you can get stabbed or beaten up just for spouting your opinion.