Midnight Showing

If you’ve ever said “Nothing ruins a movie more than a screaming baby,” you should look at the headlines coming out of Colorado this morning.
That’s right: someone brought a 3-month-old baby to a midnight showing of the final movie in the Batman trilogy.
Don’t you hate it when that happens?
It totally ruins the movie.
And if you call the ushers in on them, you end up looking like an asshole.
“We can’t find a babysitter this late at night!” they whine.
Why are they bringing a baby to a midnight showing in the first place?
That’s just sick.

4 thoughts on “Midnight Showing”

  1. A three month old can’t tell the content of a Batman movie from Teletubbies. It’s not sick in the way you are probably thinking.

    The baby likely sleeps like a rock at home.

    Parents of infants take their recreation where they can.

    At some point you were this kind of a PITA to your parents. Perhaps you will have your own Burden of Joy(tm) some day. Regardless, every person you interact with daily on a positive basis had to be nursed heroically through the larval stage by long suffering ‘rents.

    Give them the fraction of a break. It turned out to be a bad bet. In the 50s, before TVs were common, theaters had showings for families with infants and crying rooms.

    You are a heartless yuppie without access to media history. Grats. ;)

    1. I’m well-familiar with the history of theaters. I watch a ton of documentaries, did some media classes in college, was in the TV biz for a bit, and studied a few old -style theater blueprints to ponder designs for SL venues. (Ohio Theater was an obsession… Circe’s venue reminded me a lot of it, with missing… yep… crying rooms)

      But all that aside, we’re not in the 50’s We’re in the now. So, let’s ponder the situation based on current conditions and not get all “I had to walk uphill both ways through the snow to pay five cents to see Bambi at the Bijou.”

      Let’s assume 299 seats in the theater. (The ADA kicks in at 300 seats, so most “large” movie theaters are 299 seats to avoid full compliance.)
      Baby might take a seat, might not. Assume at least one parent with the baby.
      So, between 296 (2 parents and baby) and 298 (parent with baby in lap) other people have paid to see this special midnight showing of the movie.
      Price of ticket is T, prince of concessions is C.

      The parent with baby has spent 1T + 1C.
      Rest of audience has spent between 296(T+C) and 298(T+C), plus whatever babysitting costs that the parent with baby didn’t bother to spend.
      One amount is much more than the other. A lot more.
      Does the baby sleep through the movie? Does the baby scream? Does the baby need to be changed?
      Whatever actually happens, the parent is imposing upon the others that *risk* of disruption to the showing.
      Furthermore, it causes social cost and burden to the rest of the audience, because who wants to be the asshole who gets up, calls the usher, and has the parent removed with the baby.
      Finally, the theater has spent a fortune on the digital sound system, whether it’s THX or SDDS or whatever. And the movie producers had Hans Zimmer bleep and bloop up a score while their sound engineers and foley artists laid down an immersive soundscape for the audience… which is not enhanced with “accompaniment by screaming baby.” (I have yet to see that label on any movie soundtrack for sale, even with John Cage and Frank Zappa albums. Have you?)

      So, you’ve got financial cost and social cost to nearly 300 other people, just so that one person can save a few bucks on babysitting.
      Do the math, and you see that the parent is the selfish jerk, not the cold-heated yuppie scum in the audience.

      The proper thing to do is have one parent see one show, hand off the baby, and the other parent sees it. Or watch on video. Or get cousins, grandma, friends, or whomever to do a group babysitting arrangement.

      Instead, you wind up with the potential for a screaming baby, ruined experience for others, and a not-very-effective human shield in diapers when some psycho goes all Hogan’s Alley in the theater.

      ———-

      It would be interesting to see what the Freakonomics folks think of the “Do you take a baby to a movie?” question.

  3. Parents who take an infant to the theater are, of course, hoping that the baby stays peacefully asleep. But unless they’re seeing a midnight showing of Lost in Translation, that’s not a realistic expectation. If going is that important to them, they’d best give Peewee a ‘lude before leaving the house.

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