Last movie we saw, actually, I acted. It was In Good Company, but as is the trend at movie theaters, we were not. A woman behind us, with her date, would not shut up. Most of it was pretty related to the movie, but utterly banal, “Ooh, they’re gonna kiss now,” “the young guy’s gonna be the boss,” etc. After about 40 minutes of tolerating it, I turned around and, loudly enough for the radius of people who were forced to listen to her: “Excuse me, are you going to talk through the entire movie?” Simple, straightforward, said with an edge, but not entirely rude.
Utterly nonplussed by the nerve of somebody actually challenging her, the idiot responded after a pause, “Yeah. I am.” But I thought the words were hollow.
And with the exception of one or two slipups, guilt set in and she was quiet. Didn’t even laugh as much as the other people in the theater at the relevant spots. Sometimes it just takes one person to let the jerk know that they will not be tolerated. Going to the manager would have been next, but it never needed to go to that.
And a bonus, not particularly on topic: Only Mostly Missus and I went to see Ray on its opening weekend in DC, and were, without exaggeration, two of the only four or five non-black people in the theater. As we’re sitting and waiting, the theater’s pretty near full and the lights are about to dim, some godawful country song comes on the theater soundsystem. And I make a smartass comment to OMM as we often exchange, to express my distaste of the song. And a woman in the row right behind us was obviously paying attention to our conversation, and makes a snappy comment directed at me very much along the lines of “you’re the only white people in here. You should love this white music,” which I don’t dignify with a response. The movie plays, and the woman makes comments throughout, but not often enough or obnoxiously enough to really try retaliation. Then, about 2/3 through the movie, there’s a scene where Ray’s success is clearly blossoming, and the music appears in a cheesy 60s surfer beach-party romp movie. At this point the woman loudly exclaims “Good Lord, look at all them white folk!” in response to all the blue-eyed, blonde dancers on the screen. The woman’s comments throughout the movie are all somewhat racist. Like when the producer gives Ray the song “The Mess Around,” she made some comment about somebody who’s not black trying to write R&B music, and how it only worked because of Ray. But anyway, the movie ends, the theater’s clearing out, and another woman comes up to OMM and me, and says “I just wanted to apologize for the woman sitting behind you. I don’t want you to think that we’re all like that.” Like we just beamed down from the planet Aryan and were in our first social situation with a group of black people. But this woman meant well, she was truly trying to make sure there were no hard feelings and that we wouldn’t have some skewed view of anybody except one jerky woman who couldn’t keep her racist mouth shut. I’ll probably remember that nice woman for years to come, because it was just such a small, kind, human thing to do.
