Getting Stabbed over Shutter Island

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When I was running through the old pages of The Movie Blog, I came across a post whose title itself sent my eyes rolling: Man is Stabbed for Complaining about talking Movie Patron. What the? What is this all about? How come a person got himself stabbed just over a slight problem like that? To solely satisfy my curiosity, I then looked for the complete news and found it from the LA Times. Apparently the case happened over a minor problem--just as the title suggested--which is the problem that never ceases to happen: Talking on cellphone during a movie show at a cinema. It started when a man complained about a woman--who was accompanied by two men--during the screening of Shutter Island on a Saturday evening. The woman and the two men soon left the cinema but the two men returned and stabbed the man in the neck with a meat thermometer.

The first thing that pops out to somebody's head after reading this must be how worthless someone's life has become these days (besides the other million dollar question: Why would someone bring a meat thermometer to a cinema?). I don't like you, I don't like what you did, so I'm going to stab you in the neck. It is as simple as that. But I am not here to talk about the moral--our teachers and politicians have talked a lot about it and I don't think I can talk more or better than them.

I am more interested to look at the cause of the stabbing in the first place. It was caused by a problem we are all so tired of: Manner at the cinema. Nowadays, people who go to the cinema don't really follow the manner they should have. The rules in the cinema are simple: No cellphone, no talking, no disturbing others who want to watch. However, in the real process, only some of us seem to care enough to follow these rules. How often do we hear the ring of a cellphone during a movie? (They make cellphones with excellent feature nowadays: Silent mode!) How often do we hear people talking or even chatting loudly? Sometimes they don't even bother to whisper! Yes, it happens a lot and it doesn't show any symptoms of getting better. Seriously now, I don't think that these kinds of people really want to watch the movie. They only need a place to hang out and they believe the cinema is one of the many places for it--plus they don't even care if others are disturbed by them. For these people, they should really just stay at home or hang out at a cafe somewhere else.

When you want to swim, you go to the swimming pool. When you want to read, you go to the library. When you want to talk, you go to some place quiet. A cinema might be quiet, but it is certainly not a place for talking.