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Just why is it you yak and yak and yak at concerts and shows? How about using your ears instead? Thanks
By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal pop culture writer
Published on Sunday, Oct 21, 2007
If this was an isolated incident, or simply a function of the many beers the Civic was peddling that night, I might have shrugged it off as a brief foray into the Valley of the Rude. But it wasn't.
The night before, I had been at the small concert Chrissie Hynde held to promote her new restaurant, VegiTerranean. Maybe 100 people in the audience, the music coming just from Hynde and her longtime guitarist, Adam Seymour. Performance in the front of the room, conversation in the back, sounds clashing in the middle.
And I can't even begin counting how many times I've endured others' conversations at the movies, or been distracted by the blast from a cell phone. (One movie, which wasn't very good, remains in memory because of a hilariously unprintable conversation two people near me had.)
So consider this a rant with a basic question: Whatever happened to listening?
Sure, there are some public events where noise is expected. Some concerts include invitations to the audience to sing along.
Sometimes, too, talk is part of the experience. Baseball games come to mind. Not only have I chatted with companions at games, we've ended up talking with people sitting nearby. It's part of the social experience of the game.
But baseball and other sporting events are meant to be social. The lights don't go down in the stands. The field is not like a screen or stage, bright in the darkness, demanding the audience's attention.
So, again, what happened to listening?
An old scapegoat is television. People sat at home, staring at a screen while eating, talking and wandering in and out of the room. Children in particular, seeing this was the way you watched, took that behavior to the movies and were surrounded by other people who had picked up the same habit. Some shows, such as the commentary-laden Mystery Science Theater 3000, were built on the idea of cracking wise while watching a movie.
But that by itself is not enough of an explanation. Before the heyday of the home theater, watching television was still a different experience from watching a movie or show.
You didn't bring the lights down at home, and you didn't have an on-screen message asking you to be quiet. You didn't have someone on a TV screen like a legendary musician who warned his concert audiences, ''If you gon' talk, I ain't gon' pick.''
You can imagine the response that comment would get from some modern crowds. Assuming, that is, they even heard what the musician said.
When I went to a preview of the movie-musical version of Hairspray, a young woman sat near me and sang along with almost every tune in the movie. I say ''almost'' only because some of the songs had not been in the Broadway show. Anything from Broadway, this girl sang, undeterred by the idea of listening to the professionals do their job.
One of my co-workers has several horror stories involving bad behavior at concerts. There are, for example, ''air conductors'' who wave their arms as if leading an orchestra's performance. One time, she sat on the lawn at Blossom, eager to hear performances of songs by Rodgers & Hammerstein. She heard more of the people around her singing along.
And that wasn't the worst of it. A lawn crowd gets some leeway, after all. She pointed instead to a Toronto performance of Les Miserables, with Colm Wilkinson starring, in which a spectator near the front of the hall figured his expensive ticket also entitled him to Les Miz karaoke. Never mind that other people had paid just as much to hear Wilkinson.
But, again, why does this happen? I think there are a couple of things that have added to the problem.
One is that the idea of personal privacy (and respecting others') is in eclipse. Think of cell phones, laptops, MySpace, blogs, Web-driven gossip, YouTube. If you can take your private life with you, or load it onto the Internet, then why would you let anyone else have a secret, a moment of privacy, an unexpressed thought?
My wife, who works with local college students, asked their thoughts about this and found another result of all the phenomena just mentioned. The belief in delayed gratification also is in decline. If you can make a phone call from anywhere, or post a thought on your blog the moment you have it, why would you wait until after an event to talk about it?
So is there anything that can be done about this? One obvious solution is to stay home, to wait for a movie to come to an on-demand channel, a premium service or a DVD. Then the only comments you hear are your own.
But that's self-defeating. Watching a movie at home is not the same as seeing it on a big theater screen, with an enthusiastic (and polite) crowd. A recorded concert is not the same as seeing a band live.
So another method is to encourage audiences to respect the people around them. For example, moviegoers can see Oscar-winning actor-director Forest Whitaker in a spot that encourages people to turn off their wireless devices and pay heed to the movie.
But the spot assumes that people are listening to it.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in a blog at http://www.ohio.com. Contact him at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
If this was an isolated incident, or simply a function of the many beers the Civic was peddling that night, I might have shrugged it off as a brief foray into the Valley of the Rude. But it wasn't.
Get the full article here.
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