The Moviegoers, A Metaphor

Today, my roommate and I went to watch Million Dollar Baby (an excellent movie and my pick for the Oscar). The commercials played, and then the previews began, and pretty close to their beginning (thirty seconds or so), the projector stopped, and the advertisements that had been playing while everyone had been being seated began to play again. My roommate rather loudly commented "That was a good movie!" Since were were sitting right in the middle of the theater surrounded by people, a lot of people heard him, and there was a pretty quiet laughter throughout the crowd. Anyway, since there were a lot of people still trying to sit down and since I was sitting right in the middle of the theater, I decided to not go tell the theater personel that the movie had stopped running. On my left, I would have had to crawl across four or five old people, and on my right, I would have had to crawl across about six rather obese people. The theater was filled (well over a hundred people) and since getting out of the aisle was easier for just about everyone else in the theater, I expected someone else would go to inform the theater people that the film wasn't running. In fact, I expected that somebody had already gone. Most people in the theater were sitting behind me, and so, I couldn't have known if one of them had already gone. I expected that as soon as I got out the door, the movie would start, and I wouldn't be able to find my way back to my seat.

Anyway, I was wrong. The conversation started up in the crowd, and we sat there for over five minutes. Then, I started looking around, and after a while, it just felt ridiculous. It didn't seem as if anyone had left. Certainly, no one was up working on the projector. I finally got up, and I went and told one of the three three people working in the theater this afternoon. He hollered to the other two, and none of the three had known that the movie wasn't running.

The thing that struck me about this little episode was the obvious. The crowd, including myself, had just all sat in that theater for over ten minutes expecting someone else to fix the problem. We could see that there was a problem. We knew that one of us just had to get up and ask for help. But for ten minutes, we just sat there. We were there to be observers, not actors.

Anyway, one of the three theater workers went and fixed the film. Then, we (the crowd) sat there for two hours more and watched the movie.