The Feature Presentation

Personifying a movie theater screen.

As vital a moment as it was, the last-minute coughing fits and readjusting of strange bodies in creaky seats would still happen, every time, without fail. The lights would dim, our minds as well. Automated unseen machines roped in the cheap velour curtains to the sides of the now-wider screen. Though it had every last pair of eyes in the theater glued to it like cement—mine included—I now retrospectively wonder to myself, how of all the inanimate objects in the known universe; the immeasurable amount of toys, towels, shoes, and large plastic Starbucks straws, how among the zillions of products one’s mind can imagine, the simple concept of the screen deserves humanization more than any other.

Personifying a screen—more specifically, a theater screen—should be easier than it sounds, and make more sense than it does. Had it only known how many different pairs of strangers’ eyes it’d attract over its lonely lifetime, maybe it would’ve fought harder. To be fair, it did fight. Unknowingly, it fought incredibly hard for its well-deserved attention, many times. A canvas, however, has no say in what color its artist chooses to splatter across its blank slate. It must sit there with a silent smile and accept the work at hand, regardless of personal taste or opinion. Realistically, a giant roll of white vinyl offers up no critique whatsoever, so our own are then perhaps, projected onto its face, shoving for space between mindless dialogue and senseless explosions. The screen—assuming it could—would probably try to hear your thoughts, most likely agree with you that, “Yes, the original was much better.” Though, it cannot and will never possess that humanistic trait, to cease communicating others’ thoughts and ideas and begin belting out its own logic, love stories, and musings. Heart-wrenchingly, the mere ability to possess a skill doesn’t promise it ever being put to good use. A million human beings are thinking the exact same thing right at this very second, and because they know this very fact, will continue to do so, simply because a million different independent minds can’t be wrong. However, how many of them are projecting organic ideas and not merely playing the quiet canvas, sitting idly by, allowing and even encouraging some artist to splotch away at their unique mental-prints. How many of them don’t realize they can be their own artist?

What you aggressively allow no other person to see, the screen takes all in. It devours the tiny details that may have never crossed your own mind. The boy’s shaking arm slowly reaching around the back of the girl’s seat but stopping just short of full-contact, palm-to-foreign-shoulder. The man who’s been fidgeting since he sat down, one moment a ring on his finger, the next, after reaching into his coat pocket, gone. The woman in the next seat over seems to be enjoying herself, as well as having a bare finger all night, not noticing the man’s inability to decide whether he should be here at all.

I’m no different. It’s looked back at me many times before. It’s peered into my wistful eyes, themselves peering at a seemingly safe object. Through them, it’s seen my soul and read every line in my subconscious library of secrets and regrets. I imagine some of the more bold-faced phrases included such gems as: “Do I really love her?”

Its method is absolutely genius. There are lovers embracing on its widened-face, having just gone through an experience that nearly killed off any possible future of them reuniting again, and yet, here they are, on high-definition display for the world to witness. Most sets of eyes are at the very least glazed-over, mine are not only dry, but rolling as well. The screen sees this. It processes it with remorse. It doesn’t want to see that much cynicism radiating from a single person, no matter how corny the scene may be. Perhaps it’s not of two newly-weds at all, and instead shows a short transitional scene of a not-so-happy average person pulling into a parking stall at their not-so- spectacular job. A ritual they’ve performed for many years and will continue on with for many years to still come. Maybe the movie’s supposed to be a comedy. So why is this unimportant scene making me unconsciously tear up? The screen knows, even if I never will.

It’s witnessed my upbringing. It’s been there for my maturation, regression, ups and downs. First dates, excitement for sequels, anxiety-filled precursors to a talk I’ll have to eventually have tonight with a girl who’ll be completely blindsided—the screen’s been there through it all. At sixteen, it saw my blood-shot eyes and unusually stiff demeanor, correctly deducing just how paranoid a few hits off of a water-bong earlier in the day can make an amateur like myself. At eighteen, it saw my date do things no person should ever feel comfortable doing at a midday-showing of Kangaroo Jack. At twenty-two, it saw my expressionless face in vividness it probably wishes it could forget. In hopeless attempts to do exactly what it was built for and distract me from whatever seemed to be weighing on my frontal lobe, it filled its face with bright colors, state-of-the-art visuals, and swirls of different worlds, realities, and lives—to no avail. It’s been beaten down by the very kids who’d come running down its halls, shouting in excitement and picking out favorite seats in front-row sections that parents hated. Those kids grew up into cynics who aren’t impressed by loud, booming noises and superhero costumes like they once were. Fair enough, maybe indie dramas and underground horror festivals? It still comes up short. At least, it did with me. I wish I could look it in its face with pure honesty, at some point before the pre-show or maybe after the credits. Those handful of minutes in- between the very end of the last show and long before the next one’s start-time. I wish I could stare into its dark abyss, let my eyes relax and let the center of itself envelope my thoughts so I could tell it how much it deserves.

“You have always been here for me!” I’d admit. “I do lose myself in your stories!” I don’t say anything though, I don’t even think about it, because the alternate realities I’ve become accustomed to seeing up there is exactly the reason for my disenchantment now, and why it’s nearly impossible for my being swept away at twenty-seven like I was at seventeen, at twelve, and at nine. Much like walking out into the sun after hearing a sermon that sounds like its got your name written all over it, and with even a thousand other people in the congregation, the pastor’s speaking directly to you, the first time walking out of a first-viewing of Jurassic Park, Inception, or Lord of the Rings feels like bathing in a warm, bright, shimmering enlightenment. I envy those who have yet to see those classics and others, as you only get one “first time.” The sermon stays with you for a while, maybe only until you reach your car, but the radio comes back on at some point, doesn’t it? Or a text reminds you of something you’d been intentionally putting off for a while now. One way or another, the sun too, sets and goes away and the cold night air reminds you that while fantasies are fun in temporary doses, reality will ultimately creep back in and cause the dreamers heartache. It will thread its sickness into their mental fabric, and unable to catch it in time, they’ll wake up one day and realize that those are just as they’d feared—dreams, and that the screen is just a screen, that a canvas is and can only ever be a canvas, whether it’s blank or bragging about the Picasso it holds. A canvas could never change the world, likewise, the screen sits alone, late, after midnight when the house lights are all shut off and the pitch black darkness reminds it of just how lonely it truly is. It has the widest and loudest-heard voice, but cannot speak. It’s looked at in awe and wonder by the youth, the magic-drained, dreamless “average guys” of tomorrow. In the darkness though, it sits alone and wonders, if through all the eyes it’d captivated, there wasn’t one pair that would take what it’d just experienced back home, and keep it sheltered, safe from the overreaching sadness of the outside world? If even when they’d age too, like the rest, wouldn’t they still look back to it with the same awe and respect and pure imaginative stare that they’d once had? Maybe today was it. Maybe it was finally the day where it got through to the one mind it needed to. Not with the story it was forced to show, of course, but with the mere fact that it was showing a story at all. Maybe its dialogue was forced, or its car-chases didn’t make logical sense, or its two lovers were never guaranteed a perfect future together so the ending was filled with ambiguity, but—it’s a story. It’s a beautiful, perfect story, because, it’s ours. It may be a hollow copy with little heart, but even those are based on greater, larger possibilities. Those are our lives up there, on the big, shiny, silver screen.

For the moment, I may not be so easily swayed to believe in them again. I, however, still show up, with varying degrees of consistency, but I still show up and find a seat and wait for the lights to dim and the velour curtains to pull back so that I can see my friend again. Depending on what it’s got for its theater tonight, the screen may or may not get the respect it deserves. Attention, however, is a non- issue. For the next two hours, it owns us, will captivate us and try as hard as it can to make us believe in bigger, brighter futures again. Of greater, larger possibilities. It’ll watch us as we watch it. It’ll notice all the small nothings we’d never look twice at. It’ll speak to couples on the verge of divorce the only way it can—not through its immediate art, but instead, the collectiveness of its art. At some point in their relationship, the screen played a vital role, its only goal tonight is to merely nudge them in reminder of it. So I sit and wait, knowing the feature presentation isn’t far off now. Knowing that everything that’s come before it are previews. Knowing I’m not here for those stories, even if I have to sit through them momentarily. Knowing the story I’m here to see is something completely different, perfectly specific and something I’ve waited an agonizingly long time for. I look up at the screen and though I may or may have never seen this unique screen tell a story before, I know it recognizes me, like it does everyone else in the theater. The screen is all of them at once, showing thousands of different stories at the same time. Alternate realities. I inhale a deep breath and feel strangely comfortable, like I’m at home. I’m just realizing how much I envy the screen’s strength, to know how powerful its canvas can be, yet to never be able to have organic, original thought displayed. I’m just realizing that if it could, it would pick my body up and shake me into the understanding that I have the ability to do what it will never be able to. I’m just realizing how thankful I am to it when the lights begin to dim. Someone coughs a few rows back and a smile stretches across my darkened face. Maybe I’m becoming the screen myself.