The New York Times reports that, in these economically troubled times, business at movie box offices is rallying. Better than that, really: "with ticket sales this year up 17.5 percent, to $1.7 billion," the industry is enjoying "a box-office surge that has little precedent in the modern era." And with attendance up "by nearly 16 percent", if the trend continues, "it would amount to the biggest box-office surge in at least two decades." If this is surprising news, it's partly because it means that there might have been something to the immediate, kneejerk reaction to the recession, a reaction that smart people have been debunking in recent weeks. When the economy first went off a cliff, two thirds one heard a lot was that people went to the movies a lot during the 1930s Depression, and also that, if the '30s early talkies and the American movies of the 1970s are any indication, great movie eras are often born of what the old "Chinese curse" calls "interesting times." According to the Times, though, actual statistics pointing to a history of rises in moviegoing during bad economic times tend to be thin on the ground. And besides, J. Hoberman argued in a Village Voice piece a few weeks ago, even if it had been the case in the past, it wouldn't be now: "A reorganized and self-regulated Hollywood bounced back in 1935, but times were different then. Movies were America's universal culture. Now, they're not even close. Like then, the technology is changing—but in a far different way. Movies are expendable. Folks will give up $12 tickets, cancel Netflix, and cut cable to save their high-speed Internet connection."
Talking to people at the multiplex, one finds that there is indeed a connection between the current rise in moviegoing and the current dip in everything else, but people may be using a different calculus than Hoberman envisioned.
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