Monday, November 12, 2012

Cynicism and Hope

We went to see a movie tonight.  The theater is one of those $3 places that plays movies that have been out for a while. 

What I don't get is that the ladies bathroom has two entrances.  One you walk into before you pay and the other you can go in after you pay.  They're connected in the middle.  Do they think we're that stupid that we couldn't get a free movie if we wanted? 

The fact is that I have no intention of getting a free movie, especially from a place that only charges $3.  I guess they make their money on popcorn.  We didn't order popcorn tonight since we'd just eaten.  We didn't go into the movie without paying either.  Still, what's to keep a whole horde of people from coming in and getting free seats to the movies by going through the bathrooms? 

The problem with that picture is that the theater would go out of business if it happened too often.  My question is why the architects bothered to design it this way.  You can't see straight through.  Was it this colossal joke, that the huddled masses would never figure out the truth of it?  Seems like a joke to me, or a miserable way to put a decent business out on its ass. 

Stupid.

I liked the movie though.  It was the most recent Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, a movie about cynicism, redemption, and hope.  Did you get that when you saw it?  I liked it, especially the hope part.  The bad guy explains the terror of the particular prison where he's put Batman is that there's an escape and people are always killing themselves trying to escape.  Hmmm.  But hope is hope, the movie seems to say, when someone actually does it. 

So maybe the architects designed the bathroom to see what people would do, a way to see the basic honesty of most folks, a way to see that even if people figure out that there's a secret entrance so they could avoid paying, they probably won't.  Now, that might be worth seeing. 

Thank you for listening, jb

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