How Has the Experience of Cinema-Going Changed over the...

MAS205 Ââ€" Essay #1 Question 1 The film-industry has changed dramatically since its birth over a century ago. With these changes have also come great changes in the cinema-going experience. In the MAS205 unit reader for 2005, a number of the readings aim to address many aspects of the experience of cinema-going. Included in the unit reader are pieces by Barthes, Carriere, Sontag, Moore and Lowenstein. Each of these writers has varying feelings to cinema-going over the past century and this essay will aim to address these different aspects. Roland Barthes in his article ‘Leaving the Movie Theatre provides us with an interesting way of looking at cinema-going. He paints a picture at the start of his article about moviegoers always leaving†¦show more content†¦Sontags article ‘A Century of Cinema describes cinemas cycle over the past hundred years as moving from glorious to dull and is an overall criticism of the industry now. She rightly points out that films nowadays have to really do something special, namely violate the norms and practices which now govern movie-making everywhere in the capitalist and would-be capitalist world in order for us to admire them (Sontag, S. 1997). Cinema has moved in a more commercial direction, concentrating on quantity, not quality, rather than remaining purely an art form. What this means for cinema today is that a movie is less likely to stand the test of time and leave a lasting impression in our mind because all they are good for now is their entertainment value. Another point raised by Sontag was that cinema in its early days had a unique ability to ‘kidnap its audience. She felt that seated in the dark among anonymous strangersÂ…you learned how to walk, to smoke, to kiss, to fight, to grieve as well as losing yourself in faces, in lives that were not yours. (Sontag, S. 1997) This, contrary to what Sontag argues, is still applicable today. There are many audience members, today and in previous years, which idolize certain film actors and/or characters. As a result, they base their actions around their hero would do, such as repeating famous quotes from movies in everyday conversations. SontagShow MoreRelatedEmergence of Television as a Mass Media2924 Words   |  12 Pageswere any other 20th century developments in the media how far do you agree with this judgement as applied to the growth of leisure opportunities in Britain during the course of the 20th century as a whole?† Since the beginning of the twentieth century and before the media has been a principle tenant of British culture, the leisure time and expendable income of the British public has grown in unison with the media empire which facilitates it. 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