On Performative Spectatorial Wankerdom,

or crimes against a collective morality of film viewing

This was intended as a quick, pithy retort of admiration and empathy in response to

11am Saturday

’s piece The Worst Person in the Movie Theater. But through the fires of inculcated irritation at the phenomenon so aptly addressed, it has morphed into a fully formed invective in its own right.

The dynamics of audience “behaviour” - from the decision to go to the cinema in the first place to how people conduct themselves once inside the sacred apparatus - has been on my mind, both conceptually and practically, for a long time. There are essentially two components to this interest. The article in question certainly speaks to the latter, which itself breaks down into two intertwined concerns:

First, the broader question of cinema-going as a cultural practice, and how audiences are brought into contact with films - how that shapes not only reception, but filmmaking itself.

Second, how I (or anyone), on a personal level, respond to specific behaviours that interfere with my own experience of spectatorship.

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Yes, people enjoy films in different ways - there’s a level of tolerance, even generosity, one tries to extend.

However, I’ve become increasingly unconvinced by the arguments (read: excuses) made on behalf of a significant tranche of moviegoers who, frankly, seem not to know how to watch films on a basic, even functional, level.

What constitutes acceptable behaviour in the controlled environment of the cinema has changed very little over time. Yet strange, contradictory anomalies persist, shaped by shifting socio-cultural norms. Why, for instance, has popcorn become so indelibly associated with film-watching when its mastication is one of the noisiest known to humankind? And of course, phone use is the most easily cited post-digital evil. Both in its immediate disruption: screens glowing like lighthouses in the dark, notification pings slicing through silence, or indeed, people actually taking fucking phonecalls. But also in its more insidious role: a psychological tether to the virtual realm, fracturing attention, pulling the spectator out of the film and back into the curated stream of self-absorption, self-distraction.

That latter effect, I think, connects directly to the even more spiritually corrosive phenomenon highlighted in the article: ironic distancing, smug scoffing, and the seemingly deliberate performance of arch, knowing laughter. A tranche of the contemporary audience now treats the cinema not as a space of communion but as a proving ground for individualised ego projection.

This isn’t just one of the more egregious forms of anti-cinematic behaviour-it may well be the most curious. The culture of derisive laughter - not spontaneous, not joyous, but effortful and self-aware - is a reaction that functions as an ostentatious declaration of not being in the film. Worse still, it reads as a public display of being both superior to what the film presents, and the act of watching. It’s laughter as disavowal. As narcissistic shield. As a theatrical act of emotional alienation.

Or maybe it signals something even more regressive - a culture that has, in its quest for endless interactivity, infantilised itself. Where we require the equivalent of brightly coloured toys to keep us perpetually amused.

And it’s metastasising into a virus.

Last year, I went to a screening of Heat at the Prince Charles Cinema—a film I consider a modern masterpiece, one that still holds up remarkably well some 30 years after its release. I’ve seen it countless times, but I was enjoying the almost physical anticipation of experiencing Mann’s slickly choreographed fatalism on the big screen, channelled through the adversarial yet complementary energy of Pacino and De Niro.

That was, until it seemed like much of the audience thought they were watching a parody. Granted, the (in)famous Pacino outbursts, which do openly flirt with overripe absurdity, offer a comedic characterisation. Indeed, many of his lines push the boundary of what the article rates as between 2 and 2.5 on 11am Saturday’s irony-laughter scale.

But the ironic interpretation extended into the quieter, more introspective elements of the film too. When Val Kilmer’s Chris Shiherlis tells De Niro’s Neil MacAuley that “for me, the sun rises and sets with her, man,” in reference to his wife, a low ripple of sniggering swelled into something audible. This unified reaction was part indignation, part embarrassment perhaps.

But why? Was it the quasi-poetic sincerity of the line that now simply reads as “cringe”? The idea that a man might declare devotion with such unfiltered earnestness? Or is it simply that any moment of emotional nakedness now demands ritual deflation?

My arched curiosity curdled into irritation by the time the coffee shop scene arrived. One of the most iconic actor-character showdowns in cinema history was accompanied by outright, intentional guffawing. Looking back now, I like to think I was nanoseconds away from standing up and yelling: “What the fuck is wrong with you people?” But of course, that wouldn’t have played well.

I can see the headline: Angry bald guy loses his cool during Heat. Cue social media mockery.

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A variation of this occurred during a screening of Wojciech Jerzy Has’ The Saragossa Manuscript at the BFI Southbank. Not exactly the film/venue combination where you’d expect a lack of contextual leeway. Has’ labyrinthine historical mystery-adventure is both “funny, funny” and “dated, funny,” as well as “dialogue, funny” (points 1, 2, and 2.5 on 11am’s irony-laughter scale, ticked). Add to that the film’s representation of sexual politics - several leagues removed from today’s criteria of acceptability. And yet, in my view, Has is so skilful that these tonal registers are being deployed with a kind of arch intentionality, even back in the mid-60s.

Entering late - requiring me to awkwardly manoeuvre just as the terms of the film were being set - were two “dudes,” probably in their early thirties. I don’t want to dive too deeply into aesthetic judgment (actually I will)…they affected a kind of dishevelled preppiness that immediately triggered a red flag. Phones and talking, I thought. I’m going to have to move. But no: they were, to my surprise, immediately engaged with the film.

And yet, soon enough, came the ironic laughter. Partly with the film, partly at it - but also so exaggerated, so ostentatious, that it became its own performance. The laughter was loud enough, and drawn out just long enough, to become attention-seeking. It also had a class-readable inflection. All of this together was accented in such a way that its deliberateness was unmistakable.

Interestingly, about half the time their reactions were “appropriate” to the film. But one of them affected such exaggerated “hawing” - a kind of theatrical, open-mouthed braying - that his partner would regularly match and exceed it in a mutual escalation.

This wasn’t Robert De Niro as Max Cady level of aggressive mania. It more as what I’m going to performative spectatorial wankerdom.

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There are many quotes to take from 11am’s piece. This section encapsulates the “in the moment” indignation and incredulity that I share:

"Meeting uncomfortable moments on screen with ironic laughter to distance yourself from that discomfort is, frankly, loser behavior. You’re deliberately taking yourself out of the moment you paid $18 to sit in, and I find that so performative. What’s worse is that laughter is contagious, so now there’s a bunch of people laughing instead of trying to digest what’s happening on screen, and the whole room’s experience is ruined.

My biggest issue with this entire phenomenon is that it requires effort on the offender’s part. When we laugh at something genuinely funny it’s a reflex, our body reacting before we can even intellectualize it. When we laugh because we decide that something on screen is too sincere, earnest or “pretentious”'; it’s a deliberate decision that says “I think I’m better than this movie”. And isn’t that more pretentious than anything?"

I so get the indignation suffused in the writing here, that combination of incredulity and annoyance. The functional question that continues to baffle me, across all forms of disruptive behaviour we now see so much of, is this: why pay money for a specific kind of experience, and then sit outside it? Or worse, seek to undermine the very parameters that define it?

Funnily enough, I have more time for someone who tries to actively fuck up the entire scenario - as a kind of rebellious or surrealist gesture. At least that’s a conscious intervention. What I don’t understand is the audience member who is ostensibly there for the film, but seems incapable of grasping the communal/individual dynamics involved - or worse, simply doesn’t care about the social environment.

“Loser behaviour” (or performative spectatorial wankerdom) isn’t merely annoying, it’s structurally corrosive. It signals a fundamental shift in how audiences understand their role in the cinematic ritual. Once, you entered the darkened space as a participant in collective dreaming. Now, for many, it’s an arena of ironic self-display, with the film reduced to a prop in one’s ongoing social script. It’s no longer about seeing the film, it’s about being seen reacting to it.

Is this just the inevitable evolution of postmodern culture? Maybe. We might now think of ourselves as post-sincerity. Or post-attention. Or post–general fucking courtesy.

As 11am Saturday rightly puts it, real laughter is a reflex. This is a choice. A curatorial response to a moment deemed “too sincere,” “too dated,” or simply “not cool.” But honestly - what’s more “not cool” or pretentious than signalling cynicism.

There is, I believe, a broader cultural pathology at play. Today’s hyper-individualism - greased by algorithmic media and turbocharged by the platformed ego - has ruptured the social contract of collective viewing. Suspension of disbelief has become almost impossible, as we now exist simultaneously in front of the camera, behind the scenes, in the audience, and inside the continuous scroll of cultural commentary. And in this new landscape, the viewer no longer sees themselves as just a spectator - or even a critic - but as co-author, editor, judge, jury, and above all, personality. Everyone is the main character of their own little reaction video, even if no one’s recording.

I see it all the time in students. Show anything with emotional intimacy, especially anything sexual, and the distancing mechanisms kick in. Nervous laughter. Performativity. Detachment cloaked in critique. “I mean, that scene was kinda problematic, right?” is code for: I felt something I didn’t expect, and now I need to neuter it in public.

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What’s tragic is that the very idea of sincerity has become suspect. To feel fully, without irony, apology, or detachment, is just beyond psychological resonance of todays overly mediated subjects. To spectate in silence is, somehow, antithetical to the expectations our cultural playground. It’s as though every film is now Deadpool, and every audience member a snarky sidekick breaking the fourth wall in their own mind. The cinephilic equivalent of being too cool to dance at the school disco, even when your favourite song is playing.

This is the paradox: in laughing to signal one’s superiority to a film, the spectator reveals not insight but insecurity. It’s the ideology of ironic detachment; a way to avoid confronting the affective truth of the cinematic image. The film dares to feel, so you deflate it. That’s not cleverness. It’s cowardice. A pathological refusal to be vulnerable in front of art.

I wonder if, as a culture, we’ve pushed the lauding of the “active spectator” (as opposed to the passive spectator) too far? The highlighting of this dichotomy was originally intended as a critique of ideological passivity. Of audiences being spoon-fed meaning, anaesthetised by spectacle, and unable to see the scaffolding of representation. But somewhere along the way, this noble impulse curdled into a fetishisation of audience intervention, where the act of spectating becomes a competitive sport of meta-awareness. Now, to sit quietly and absorb a film on its own terms is seen as naïve, even gauche. Instead, we must decode, deconstruct, distance, and - God forbid - perform our critical engagement in real time. What began as a call for intellectual agency has metastasised into a theatre of ironic superiority.

I’m not saying we need to sit silently in reverent awe of every film. There’s joy in shared laughter, audible gasps, the occasional verbalised exclamation of shock or awe. There was plenty of that from me when I watched The Substance. But when reaction becomes routine, when laughter is a posture, and irony a shield, something vital dies in the auditorium: that fragile, flickering sense of togetherness that cinema once summoned.

I can see this being read as snobbery, but I just reject that. It’s time for a new kind of film etiquette. Not a puritanical silence, nor even a return to sincerity for sincerity’s sake. Films can and should be fun, ironic, self-aware, even throwaway. I’m not advocating for reverence as a default mode. But we have, I think, lost a collective morality of film viewing.

I realise this sounds incredibly pious. But I think there is a moral component in our social behaviours. Specific environments such as the cinema space, only function with adherence to a tacit, unspoken code that governs how we share an experience. This understanding, however fragile or implicit, that sitting in the dark together and watching flickering illusions can’t be reduced to just downtime or background, or the same as watching TV on the sofa in our living room. It’s both ritual in and of itself, and imperative to the communal suspension of disbelief. An implicit but defined agreement to submit together, temporarily, to world not our own.

That doesn’t mean we all have to respond in the same way. But it does mean recognising that our reactions don’t exist in a vacuum. Snide laughter, attention-seeking disruption, or performative distance fractures something larger than just your own experience. These behaviours erode the fragile social contract that underpins the act of communal viewing. A silent agreement that, for a couple of hours, we’re all in this flickering dream together.

The problem is, I only see this getting worse. It’s indicative of a broader malaise: the weaponisation of “my truth” as a kind of performative exceptionalism. Music blaring from phones on public transport. Lime bikes gliding with impunity through pedestrian crossings. Vapes in lecture halls. TikToks filmed at memorials. A sense that every public space is now just a backdrop to shallow self-narrativising.

And what’s the answer? In the UK, we shake our heads, tut under our breath, and quietly seethe. Or, of course, we come on Substack to vent. Maybe it’s a minor miracle that we’re still bothering to document this decline at all. The truth is, meaningful enforcement - actual policing of the cinematic space - would require a level of institutional and cultural investment that cinemas can no longer afford to bear, financially or spiritually.

Maybe the only thing available is kind of soft resistance. A refusal to join in the derision. To keep watching, seriously, communally, attentively. To hold the line against this ironic idiocy.

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