Cinema du Tissue

I don’t go to the movies very often, so when I do it is kind of a big deal. I like to get dressed up and put on some make-up, which is really stupid because I pretty much cry it all off long before the opening credits are finished. I don’t know what it is about being in a darkened theater with reclining seats and enormous sound quality that activates my parasympathetic nervous system, but I routinely weep like a widow through entire movies (which was absolutely exhausting during the three hours and seventeen minutes of Titanic).

It matters not in the least which movie I am watching: romance, comedy, action/adventure – if porno films were screened in Dolby Digital Surround Sound, I have no doubt that every cum shot would send me into spasms of lacrimation. Of course, if there is some sort of emotional draw card associated with the production, then I am likely to be a complete snot-covered mess by the time I leave the theater…which was exactly the case when we saw the new Start Trek movie this weekend.

It was a shock to my delicate system to look back on 41 years of intimacy with a collection of fictional characters, to all-at-once feel the emotional impact that a television show has had on my life. Mind you, I am not one of those insane trekkies (although at one point I was a member of the fan club and I did once attend a convention, however I did NOT dress in character – but if I had, I would have liked to have been that green lady that dances in the end credits) who knows how to speak Klingonese and can recite the technical specifications of the matter/anti-matter reactor…but I am a fan. The episodes of the original series are tangibly interwoven throughout the epochs of my own life, so much so that watching the prequel genuinely felt like catching up with old friends (except that I was drinking a bottle of Pinot Grigio while they were battling Romulans).

The power of any form of media is that it can make you feel things that are not really happening to you – like plunging into an icy ocean or destroying the Death Star. Still, I was somewhat taken aback to realize that I experience very real affection and attachment towards fictitious people. It makes me question the strength of my ability to detach reality from fantasy and wonder how easily I could become one of those sad people who send love letters to Paramount Pictures addressed to “My Beloved Dr Spock”.

So why do I cry in movie theaters? Is it for the same reasons I cry in churches? I don't cry (nearly as much) when I watch movies at home - although I do frequently cry on the bus for no apparent reason...and sometimes in the middle of yoga class...but rarely at times when it might prove useful, like getting pulled over by the police...