Black Swan

I’ve heard that having a boisterous, unbehaved audience actually enhances the experience of viewing horror films in theaters.  For all other films, conversations, texting, guffawing, is always irritatingly distracting and frankly rude.  So, what to make of a plebian audience during the screening I saw of “Black Swan”, a disturbing, brave, profound, entrancing horror movie?  Do I pity them for not having the intelligence to see director Aronofsky’s bold metaphors for a woman’s eternal struggle between Madonna and whore?  When some boorish woman laughs at the unnerving presence of Natalie Portman’s mother in her room as she struggles to assert control over her own dormant sexuality, the reaction is distracting, but more than that sadly inappropriate, like laughing at someone else’s tragic misfortune; there’s something wrong with you.  When another patron giggles at the winged transformation of Portman later, I wonder if they have ever been in a museum or experienced art.  The audience participation of people who are just plain tragically dim themselves is something I have come to expect and dread every time out to the theater.  When someone next to you is texting, and you ask them to please not do that, and they reply “When I’m finished”, what else is there to do?  It feels like its more frequent these days, but give me a dark, empty movie theater over a crowd any day.

PS: “Black Swan” is amazing.