SINGAPORE: A well-travelled ex-pat recently took to social media to share how a recent movie theatre experience in Singapore went, comparing Singaporean movie theatre etiquette to that of other countries. The netizen was not happy with the overall experience.
“For some context – I’m an expat living in Singapore (early 30s) and previously was in Hong Kong, London, New York and Canada,” an online user shared on an online forum on Sunday (July 16). “As I write this post, I know that just noting I’m an expat may ‘invalidate my opinion’ to several people, but anyways want to give context. The one common denomination of all these cities (except for Singapore) is that during movies, people respect others and watch the movie from start to finish.”
The netizen went on to share the experience. “I watched Mission Impossible and besides being an incredible movie, I’ve never had such a poor experience in a theatre and have had similar experiences here before. Every time there was an action scene, immediately 8-10 phones pop up across the theatre to film it, and when the scene ends all the phones simultaneously switch to WhatsApp, Instagram, (or) some other messenger to send it around to friends.
“Doesn’t make much sense to me to film all the action scenes, text during the plot-related scenes, then start filming again during the action scenes, all to get a good Instagram story going.”
The netizen also shared an exchange with a girl in the movie theatre. “There was someone sitting right in front of us with the phone screen on maximum brightness, and when my wife nudged her chair the girl turned around with some scowl like we were in the wrong. When some groups started to talk during the movie, other groups would talk louder, then others louder, until it seemed ‘mutually agreed upon’ throughout the theatre that conversation was good to go.”
The netizen’s post also touched on the idea of young children in the theatre as well as the presence of certain individuals with “mental disabilities”.
“In addition and just speaking my mind, I don’t understand the logic of bringing little kids to a movie theatre that are squealing away at their parents that they want to leave and go home,” the post read. “Then sadly to say, I really don’t understand the logic of having a few people with mental disabilities blurt out during all the quiet scenes. I feel bad for these people and it’s not their fault, but I’m not sure a movie theatre is the spot.
“I understand that this is totally an unnecessary rant, but I don’t get how all my prior cities were the same experience and Singapore is so much different. I don’t want to say the location of the theatre, time or day as usually that’s an excellent receipt to kick off a discrimination/race/class war in the Reddit Singapore comments, but I’ve seen similar behaviour across various theatres for various types of movies.”
The netizen then ended with, “Moral of the story…Incredible movie if you can black out a horribly annoying overall theatre experience.”
Movie Theaters / Movie Etiquette in Singapore
byu/Shoddy_Equivalent_16 insingapore