Kid Theater

My six-year old daughter doesn’t like to go to movies in theaters. She does like watching them at home when we let her. Since I like going to movies, this seems strange to me. What seems even stranger is her reason: she says that at home she can pause the movie whenever she wants to take a break or just go to the bathroom. In the theater she can’t do that.

I don’t know whether she’ll change her mind as she gets older. If she doesn’t, though, it’s an interesting snapshot of a changing relationship to media. She has always had a lot of control, and she isn’t interested in media where she doesn’t have that control.

Along the same lines, we never watch television or cable programming at home–we just use our television to watch DVDs. My daughter still doesn’t quite grasp the basics of ordinary television when we are at a hotel or a friend’s house–that you have to watch the show when it comes on, and if you want to see the whole show you have to watch it until it ends. You can’t start it or stop it. She sort of understands this when we explain it to her, but she never remembers it.

I don’t care what happens to television, but I do like the movie theater experience, and I hope it doesn’t go away. I guess we’ll have to see.