The cinema!
In a cinema theatre
All cinema theatres are the same, having the same screen size and the same number of seats. In a cinema you’ll find all sort of new movies, but if you watch closely, you’ll notice the plot are almost all the same.
The scripts the characters follow are copies of something we’ve already heard. The actors themselves seem to be picked up randomly with a sort of random claw machine. You can distinguish the actors only by their physical characteristics, height, weight, or age.
In a world accustomed to sell everything, even souls, what kind of emotions you could possibly provide with a movie?
They are corners in a wall, small holes behind a shelf, and imagines of shadows of emotions. Even the horror movies don’t scare anymore, but they provoke simple disgust.
They are so similar to reality to become embarrassing replicas. To be fair, most of it it’s due to the patience level, the lowest ever registered. So why spend the time watching a movie, when it’s easier to watch advertisement?
Advertisement is important. How would you know to eat or to think without an ad helping you? How do you choose your clothes, for instance?
Which shoes are the good ones, which hat or furnishings or internal tampons would you pick up?
Definitely, the topic here is not the used and abused idea of free will, nor is the castration of imagination and other dystopian foolishness. This has nothing to do with stories or books; this is all about reality.
By and large, reality works better if some sweet is added.
All things considered, it would be better for this varied mass not to watch anything. They are characters, lost already in their personal movies without any script. With no sounds, they’re wandering and running into each other, saying sorry to each other’s pairs of knees (why get the risk of raising the head?).
All of a sudden, innovation started to be wicked, as uranium and straws in the oceans. The speed of the modernity climbed over the hunched shoulders of the past.
Clearly, nothing goes in the direction of happiness. Speed, success, surviving another day and always forward, forward, forward! Yes or no, simple questions to find simple answers that make us feel right in place.
So, we were speaking about advertisements.
Inside a cinema theatre, movies start with one hour delay to let people enjoy advertisement. Then follows fifteen minutes of film, followed by the second hour of commercials—finally, the last twenty minutes with some plot and a condensed touching endings.
On the seats, the rest of the food consumed by this mass submerged in the dark. Today they’re not good citizens that divide their trash; today, they rely on servants.
The brain is on a paid vacation from any responsibilities.
The movie and the advertisements cannot easily split apart. They melt one into the other—flat 4D illusions, ready to surprise without leaving a trace in the audience’s memory.
In the long run, this is the real success of modernity, a multi-faceted happiness ready to disappear as a bubble joining a needle.
Don’t take my word too seriously.
I’m just a pair of shoes. I speak more about what I overheard than about what I have actually experienced in this world.
The so-called masses are nothing more than jellyfishes, moving between vibrations and waves of history. They’re happy only floating, being part of a whole. In these terms, technology and sensationalism reach magnificent, sublime status until the next day and the appearance of a new sublime, marvelous floating.
Too many words to describe a cinema theatre?
I hope you can forgive me, we shoes can suddenly start being verbose. We lose ourselves in human nature to find out we’ve never advanced, as in a board game in which the table is the only one changing position.
In this case, I think we moved enough to reach 8, as a round sign on the wall says. Close to the coffee machine, a young couple pretends to prepare a lesson reading a book called “Drafting on rotation for the dealing process in an entertainment media field”. One of those useless subjects is easy to summarize in brief “How to advertise a product”.
The woman arrives, her blue with a different shade, but same shoes. They decide to see a movie where many superheroes choose to defend the world from an alien attack.
Oh, finally, something innovative!
They reach the cinema with three tram stops, and this cinema theatre seems to be like all the other cinemas. They pass through a red carpet, they buy some inflated corn and around they start flashing all the advertisements.
Everything has been made to bring the attention level lower and lower as you go. Checking the tickets, a girl and a boy were smiling as they had a facial paralysis and moved their hands as puppets do.
Waiting for the first hour of the advertisement to start, they decide to start a conversation. Both of them have parents, for a start, and both have or had a bicycle and a dog. No, the dog would be impossible right now, with the job and all. But N. has a cactus, and it’s still something. They’re getting more personal, it seems.
<Ah, ah, ah!>
The woman in blue has a sweet, lilting little laugh. They seem to like each other, maybe because S. didn’t say more than two or three words since they’ve met. He’s such a good listener. Inside the movie theatre, the first advertisement starts.
The one with the three comedians making catcalls and the fourth one videotaping them ultimately falls from the roof of the building they’re on. Laughs are spreading fast in the room, meaning that happiness could be as simple as that to be reached.
The public service announcements start, and the Government reminds everyone that smoking is a bad thing to do. The audience tries to get a thoughtful pose and the clever ones wear spectacles and scratch their chin. Right after this small serious parenthesis, it’s time for comedy again.
The same three comedians start throwing cakes with pieces of glass. It seems painful, some of them are even bleeding, but no one seems to care about it.
Then it’s time for advertisements that almost no one wants to watch, such as diarrhea and house cleaning products. It’s an excellent way to give a toilet break or discuss the noble message in the public service announcements when cigarettes started speaking.
The movie can finally start. The story is impressive, with a famous actor two meters tall breaking a rock, that we will discover is his brother. No one really needs a plot or subplots; everybody knows in advance what is going to happen. An actor says some funny jokes, the audience laugh moving their soft bellies up and down and the final battle begins.
It’s time for the advertisements, this time in a reverse sequence. So everybody can go to the toilet right now.
The story ends as you could expect following the title:
“The blond giant is defending the Earth from Urgh”
Oh, what a touching moment when everyone discovers that Urgh the rock is the hero’s brother. Not to mention the special effects, totally breathtaking, with oceans rising up to the sky. And the music, so powerful!
Right outside, S. and N. are eating a salmon ice-cream. This is the most awkward moment of all, since they just met and it seems a kiss would be too much. And yet, a kiss is always a kiss, and they search for their lips, open them, and what follows makes some old man passing by sighing in nostalgia. Over their heads, an advertisement states:
“Play your favorite lottery. You can win amazing prizes. From one million in gold to a white soul. Change your life, change your soul!”
We’re ready to go happily somewhere else while an old man buys a ticket for the souls lottery. Maybe this time, luck is going to remember him.
If you’re curious about what will happen next and want to enter in a restaurant, continue to read!
If you read this post, but you didn’t read the previous part, a woman in blue, please do so. And tell us what do you think about it. Your feedback is always really important.
If you landed on this page, but you don’t have any clue of what this is all about, please read what is this story about. And remember that this is a bilingual project, so you can read it in English and Italian.
This story has been published once per week from October 2018 to October 2019, with all rights reserved for the story and its translations by Flyingstories and in the person of Daniele Frau.
All the graphics are handmade and designed with different techniques by Gabriele Manca, DMQ productions, who reserves all rights.
