One thing I was not expecting to do in Mongolia was to go to a movie theater that frequently. For the last three months in my stay, I have been there 8 times so far, which means every 2 week! This must be the most frequent pace in my movie life. So today, let me share my experience on Mongolian movie theater.
As is usual with anything, there are pros and cons in this regard.
Pros:
Movies in Mongolian theater are Cheap (7,000 MNT which is about 3.5 USD), Updated (You can watch new movies and I think they come out faster than in Japan) and Accessible without much risk of crowded room (even if you arrive 5 min before new movie starts, you can choose a good seat because there are still many seats left)
Cons:
There is a Lack of respecting manners in the theater. To take some example, there are people who talk on the phone during the movie and no one says anything about it (I try to stop but I don’t know how to say correctly in Mongolian), which occurred to me 7 out of 8 times! Also, there are people entering the theater really late (20-30 min) but speaking out loud and using their phone light to find out their seat in a way that they don’t care others at all. And many of those who lack of manner come with children, who will obviously learn that from their parents.
So when I think about the price and new move coming out with good seat, I really feel joy in my mind. But when I think of those manner lacking people, I feel my anger in me, and when I see them with children, I even become sad.
Yes, I am just exemplifying these emotions to talk about one of my favorite movies I saw in Mongolia, which was very “emotional”. Actually, it is an animation movie (Pixar) which shows the drama of 5 emotions of human beings: joy, sadness, anger, disgust and fear. The movie is called “Inside Out”.
When I saw its trailer, I wasn’t eager to see the movie, until I read NY Times article about this movie, which made it sound much more interesting than its trailer (See the article “The Science of ‘Inside Out’“)
What made me want to see this were the following descriptions:
“…a film, one that would portray how emotions work inside a person’s head and at the same time shape a person’s outer life with other people.”
“….the real star of the film is Sadness, for “Inside Out” is a film about loss and what people gain when guided by feelings of sadness.”
After a quick research, I found 2 different trailers. The first one is the one shown before other movies (so more official than the other) but not showing the depth of the movie (rather, the trailer shows the funny part). But the second one is actually capturing more about this movie, so I don’t know why the first one was chosen as the main trailer.
Anyway, please take a look at them (and compare if you have 5 minutes) , and for those who haven’t seen it yet, it is really worth seeing.
【Official Trailer 1 (Focusing on funny part)】
【Official Trailer 2 (Focusing more on the story)】
From this time, I learned that:
Enjoying movies in the theater has much to do with the culture of respecting manner, and if you tolerate bad manner, be it yours or others’, that will be a culture as well.
Emotion is such a complex matter, and joy is not necessary better than other feeling (although we tend to consider so), and actually sadness can help to balance emotions.
I haven’t seen this film, so I can respond only about general views on films.
In terms of manner, I think it is a phenomenon of developing countries to something coming from outside so they have not developed their common manner. In India, for example, I remember the local audience’s manner was different from that of “developed” countries, and not only forgetting switching off the mobile phone, they respond to the phone talking loudly. Also it is not film, but in a classical music concert in Senegal, which came from Europe, Senegalese locals were not used to this kind of performance and manner, and security guards (probably out of boredom) kept talking aloud, and even after some audience asked them to stop talking, they kept talking. If these are some traditional ritual or something like that, I imagine they have their traditional manner and even kids must be quietly following the rules. Probably the content of the show was not interesting enough to the local audience.
Regarding the emotions, I agree that both positive and negative emotions have an impact on the audience, and both of them can become a motivation to do (or not to do) something.
Akemi san,
Thanks for your message. I also thought it was because the new culture (movie) was brought in to this country. The other day, I also talked some Mongolian people about this issue, and they are equally annoyed with bad manner in the cinema. Then I thought maybe just because others don’t say anything, it doesn’t mean people accept disrespectful manner, and they are just reluctant or hesitant to say something. All I can do is learn how to say “Please be quiet because we want to focus on the movie” in Mongolian.
Also, with regard to the family discipline, it is very common that parents hit their children whenever the later doesn’t satisfy the former, whatever that is, and I have seen many mothers who just hit when kids are not following their order (they are kids!) For this, just like the manner in cinema, people don’t seem to say something.
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