- We had a lot of online and offline comments sparked by the post on Anthony Pratti, aged seven, who was turfed out of a Loews movie theatre in Wallkill, New York.
Anthony is autistic and also has cerebral palsy and bottom line, he was apparently laughing too loudly for the comfort of at least one member of the audience.
You can read all about it here, together with a follow-up here, but in the meanwhile, the story was picked up by the Rotten Tomatoes review site, producing a stream of forum posts, some of which are unbelievable. One such was from Infinitus Corsair who uses a clip of Alec Guinness’ Obi-Wan Kenobi as his avatar.
“Over here in the UK, that incident would be a contravention of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995,” says David J Hilton.
“The UK sucks then,” responds Obi-Wan aka Infinitus Corsair, going on: “I don't think there's any question you kick them out, and quick. There are potentially a couple of hundred people, certainly several dozen, who have spent money, time, and effort to watch this movie. You can't let one inconsiderate jerk ruin all of that by not realizing just one more limitation of their child's disability. Waiting for DVD seems to be among the least of such a child's struggles.
“This happened to me once. Thank god it was only The Last Samurai.”
Hilton retorts, “I'm sorry but you just don't get the point here - it's not like that kid chose to be disabled in the first place. I can see that their reactions cause unease among other people but he is like what he is because he was made that way & not by his own free will.
“I feel qualified to talk here as I also happen to have a nephew with a disability - he suffers from dyspraxia & has speech and language problems.”
Enter Esoteric_Allusion with, “Regardless of whether someone has a disablity [sic] or not, whether their behavior is freely chosen with appreciation for the consequences or not, that does not give them liscense [sic] to act inappropriately in the community and ruin other people's movie viewing experience that they paid to have. They aren't entitled to attend movie theaters no matter how they act.
“I work with developmentally disabled adults and the mentally ill for a living, so if you're experience with your nephew gives you unique weight to your opinion, my opinion should have even more kick ass qualifications.”
Back to Infinitus Corsair on Hilton’s first post, “That's actually not the point. That would be more along the lines of the inability of a theater to reasonably accomodate [sic] his disability. You can't just admit someone who cannot control their outbursts - it destroys the experience for everyone else. They would rightly demand that the disruption be removed or their money refunded because. I doubt a sound-proof booth is cost-feasible, and a special theater for loudly disruptive individuals certainly isn't either. Since it is not reasonable to ask this business to hemorrage [sic] money to accomodate [sic] a few individuals who are insisting on forcing their disability on others, the alternative is to enforce the theater's policy against disruptive behavior, regardless of whether or not the individual is capable of controlling themselves. Tough break, but as I said earlier, having to wait for the DVD is hardly a drastic alternative.”
“PS,” says Infinitus Corsair who, not incidentally, describes himself as ‘Just a crazy old man’ – “I feel qualified to talk about this because of that Last Samurai experience. That tard was loud.”
Tard? Does that mean retard?
Going to the movies these days is a major pain for a whole bunch of reasons, the ridiculous price being only one of them, and the only hemorrhaging that's occurring is the money that's pouring into movie industry coffers.
Both catflap and Alex H have gone into this in the past, as have others, and there are more reasons for not going that for going.
The most obvious is reasons for not going is: you’re likely to wind up spending good money on something for which the trailer was by far the best part. But other reasons include:
People with big mouths
People with big hair and big hats
Sticky floors and sticky seats
People who won't stop talking
Managers who won’t get the mouthy people to shut up
'Refreshments’ that cost an arm and one leg
People who've seen it before and have to let everyone know they have
Annoying lighting that stays on all the way through the movie
People whojust have to make loud cracks every time something they think is funny happens
And so on.
If these problems were taken care of, there'd be much larger, much happier audiences.
In the meanwhile, although the term ‘disabled’ is disliked by people who, for one reason or another, aren’t like the majority, how far do you take efforts to accommodate them?
Some (most?) cinemas now have wheelchair access to one degree or another because they know they don't have any choice.
But that's OK. The studios are raking it in, which means the theatres must be making a ton of money too. Wouldn’t it, then, be reasonable for a tiny portion of the enormous (some, including me, would say obscene) wealth generated by motion pictures to be spent on special viewing sections for special people? Or at the least, wouldn’t it be reasonable to at least have special performances for people who for one reason or another can't attend standard showings?
The audiences might be smaller than normal, but so what?
(Thanks for pointing out the Rotten Tomatoes forum, Mary)
Jon
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