In typical fashion, a city councillor in Belo Horizonte - capital of Minas Gerais state - is proposing a statute (.br) regulating reasonable behaviour in movie theaters. Under it, movie trailers and advertising would be limited to a maximum of 15 minutes, theaters would be forbidden to change its programming less than 24 hours in advance, and movies would have to be screened regardless of how many people attended the session.
But that’s not all. The best part is that it establishes a mandatory confiscation of attendees’ cell phones, with fines for the theaters ranging from R$ 3.000 to R$ 3 million (over U$ 1.4 million). Some say this would mean having bouncers frisking people and searching their purses and backpacks, while some say some sort of metal detector should be enough to locate the offending phones.
This, of course, raises all sorts of privacy issues. But it’s the whole practical side of the measure that leaves me wondering what goes on in these people’s minds. First, imagine the effect something like that would have on the already huge lines that form in front of theaters, especially during the weekends and on premieres. And if you use metal detectors or something like that, how do you set it to only detect cell phones? How long before somebody’s thousand-bucks Blackberry is stolen? Or would theaters have to build thousands of lockers where people could leave their phones, like airports?
That something like this would even be proposed goes to show how much the idea of a paternal State is entrenched in this country’s culture. For someone like Ricardo Calil, who’s supposedly an intelligent and educated person, to welcome such an idea is even more troubling. It should be obvious to anyone with two working neurons that how people behave in a movie theater is only the concern of said theaters’ management. But even if you’re enough of an idiot to think that this is an issue that should involve the State’s interference, why don’t you propose something unobtrusive and practical, like blocking cell phones?
Hopefully if the city’s council approves it this statute will be deemed illegal, either because of the warrantless searches or the embarassment of making people let someone go through their purses and belongings. But it really creeps me out that someone would propose something that, like Cláudio Avólio mentioned (.br), would make it more difficult to enter a movie theater with a cell phone than a penitentiary. And that a journalist in a respected site would think it a reasonable and necessary law.
Oh, I almost forgot: the statute says nothing about people talking loudly during the movies because, according to the councillor, “you can’t control each person’s behaviour”. Guess we should be grateful he didn’t propose gags.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Cisco // Jan 20, 2007 at 4:46 am
The effect here would also be, of course, to make operating movie theaters more expensive. That means closing down some screens, cutting movies with marginal profitability (the artsy stuff, mostly, I imagine), hiring less qualified work and raising ticket prices.
(All of this is also true of quotas for Brazilian movies, though I imagine those are even more harmful.)
(Btw, when are you going public with this blog? Or are we allowed to publicizeit already?)
2 solonbro // Jan 21, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Quotas for Brazilian movies are stupid, but considering no one abides by them, and no one enforces them, I don’t really see it as a problem. Much worse is the perverse effect of federal funding leading people to make movies regardless of whether they’ll be distributed or not.
As for the impact on movie theater’s operating costs, indeed. Not to mention the fact that such legislation would probably keep lots of people - such as myself - from going to the movies, thus reducing profits and exacerbating all those problems you’ve mentioned.
In regards of going public with this blog, it’s not something I’ve put much thought into, actually. You can publicize it as much as you’d like, I’m just not sure my other blog’s audience would be interested in it.
3 Cisco // Jan 22, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Well, if you make an interesting point here and there, I might point bigger blogs to you.
Quotas are a kind of subsidy. I don’t how much people abide to them or not, though I imagine they are ultimately a subsidy for Xuxa and Renato Aragão much moreso than for the sucky artsy-fartsy moviemakers who actually lobby for them (and for the direct federal funding, which is indeed much worse). But, y’know, thinking “baptists and bootleggers”, the moviemakers are the baptists. Who are the bootleggers here? Cui bono?
4 solonbro // Jan 22, 2007 at 8:04 pm
They may be a kind of subsidy, but only for those movies that actually get distributed. And movies from the likes of Xuxa and Renato Aragão, I think, only help to make the subsidy even more innefective: they would get the same distribution if there were no quotas, but theaters use them to get rid of said quotas.
I’d much rather there were no such quotas, but I still think they’re not really a problem. So much so that you don’t really see owners complaining about it.
But making filmmakers believe they don’t have to worry about the market, about whether or not their movies will ever be screened, because they’ll get funding nonetheless, seems much more troubling to me. Especially considering this money comes from the taxpayer’s pockets.
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