I’m relatively unfamiliar with “connected viewing” except for being aware of its existence, but based on what I do know I’m as interested as you to see if/where each industry’s justification for its incorporation crosses over with justifications proposed by the other industry.

To your first thought, I’d add that while the mainstream industry seems interested (for the moment) in figuring out how to incorporate mobile technology into its established business model (sell the movie at the movie theater, or just the movie theater), the devices present new means of creating/guiding the “event” experience, too. Things like HeckleVision strike me less as supportive of the big screen than of the audience itself. That is, one pays to have a good time with people, for which one needs this device/app, rather than paying to see a movie, whether or not others are in attendance.

Eating is an interesting one that’s both allowed (and encouraged by theater owners), but only within certain parameters. Those parameters have widened from only popcorn, Coke, and/or Milk Duds, with some theaters (e.g, Studio Movie Grill, Alamo Drafthouse) providing full meals and alcohol. Still, one “sneaks” external food into the theater.

We’re not only talking cigarettes and cell phones of course. Food (and their containers), having sex, talking between patrons, talking to characters on the screen, MSTing, entertaining small children, playing handheld games, going in elaborate costumes, etc. etc. etc. There’s always been practices that may (or may not) be construed as “improper” ways to watch movies in public.

By emphasizing the “enacted” nature of group viewing (and individual viewing, I suppose), I’m also hoping to bring out what may be an easily overlooked relationship between now standard practices and alternatives to them. Both are enacted, though one has the benefit of being expected. Two summers ago, two friends and I went to a midnight showing of KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE. As soon as the credits started rolling, so did our commentary. For about the first 10 minutes of the movie, though, we were the only ones making wisecracks, so it wasn’t exactly clear that anyone else in the audience was enjoying our interruptions. Then (finally!), someone several rows back made a joke, and suddenly what we were doing seemed to become acceptable. My sense, then, is that default behaviors — encouraged or mandated — also need to be thought of as enacted. Foregrounding that idea opens the door to asking how and why various audience practices (the standard ones AND the standardized variations/deviations) (1) came into being and (2) were standardized and diffused.

Thank you, as well, for the PCHH recommendation and link. I’ll definitely give it a listen after I’ve submitted grades.

Granted, this already varies wildly. I’ve long heard stories of Russian cinemas being awash in talking, based on decades of Soviet-era social practice, while someone just the other day mentioned how taking out your phone in Ireland gets you beaned on the head with an usher’s flashlight. These “congregated audiences” aren’t abstract concepts but rather social participatory groups generally adhering to prevailing practices (whatever those might be). I think the resentment of phones (similar to, for that matter, laptops and tablets in college classrooms) comes more from this social space than any puritianical code of “sacred spaces.” There are no such things. There are only spaces with histories of people using them in particular ways. Listen to last week’s Pop Culture Happy Hour for a great discussion of various audience practices.

As widely seen, these ways can and do change. I’ve no doubt that cinema chains’ bans on phones will weaken over the next several years to the point that phone-free spaces are going to be marginal by the 2020s, and that more will be done at textual and institutional levels to integrate devices and screenings. I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence, and frankly, if our still too-often text-centered media studies can’t accept these changes, they’re not really media studies after all.

1) We seem to judge the success or failure of second screen experiments like Minionator by how successfully they sync to cues from the auditorium screen. Even if users are toggling their focus between the film screen and their phones, the primacy of the former is not directly challenged. Almost all of the industry buzz about second screen use in theaters revolves around this assumption/hope — that the extra devices sustain, rather than detract, the viewer from the display at the front.

I wonder if theater owners will ever reach a point of embracing laissez-faire phone policies, and with them, the possibility that patrons may focus more on their personal screens than on the film screen.

2) These developments in cinema spectatorship closely mirror “connected viewing” initiatives arising around television viewing (e.g. interactive apps, second screen platforms, social networking tools). The interesting difference, I think, is that television has long been seen as a site for distracted audience activity, while (at least in the last several decades) theaters are framed as sites for attentive and “polite” modes of viewing. This is probably in part due to the “public” nature of cinemagoing, as you mention. But I also wonder how the rise of second screens is shifting or combining the industry’s different modes of address to theatergoers and TV viewers.