Why Do I Like Watching A Movie More When It’s On TV?

I already own this one, what am I getting out of it?

A few weekends ago I was flipping through channels on the TV (Or, it’s more accurate to say, I was scrolling through the Guide menu on the TV, as no one physically flips through channels anymore.  There are many hundreds of channels now, so flipping through all of them would take way too long and defeat the entire purpose.  By the time you landed on something, the show would already be over.  Plus, have you noticed that channels don’t flip as fast anymore?  There’s a couple second delay when you go from one to the other.  I think this is a side effect of TV being digital now instead of analog, or something?  Why is that?  Isn’t digital supposed to make everything easier and faster?  Anyway, I digress, to an unnecessary amount), when I stumbled upon Pulp Fiction.  Luckily, it was playing on the IFC Channel, which does not edit out the cursing or violence.  I’ve seen Pulp Fiction edited for TV before, and it’s the artistic equivalent of drinking a flat soda.

As I’m watching John Travolta and Uma Thurman burn up the dance floor at Jack Rabbit Slim’s, a commercial comes on, and I don’t bat an eye.  I watch all the way through the break until they go back to Uma’s house and she accidentally overdoses on Travolta’s heroin.  It’s not until the next commercial comes on, after Uma’s been revived, that I stop and ask myself, “Why am I watching this movie on TV with commercials when I own a digital copy and can play it all the way through without interruption in just a few clicks?”  That’s as far as my thinking went.  I kept watching the commercials until the movie came back and Christopher Walken was telling a young boy about a very important watch that had been up his father’s ass for years in a Vietnam POW camp.

This has happened to me plenty of times throughout my life.  I’ll watch a movie on TV and sit through commercials and possible editing for content instead of just putting on the DVD or playing it on my Apple TV.  The question is, why?  What compels me to sit there and watch an entire movie in what is objectively a lesser state?  There must be something about this type of viewing experience that I perceive as better in the moment I’m watching.  What could it be?

The first thing that comes to mind is that watching a movie on TV is a passive experience.  I have no agency in the matter whatsoever.  When I choose to watch a movie on my own, the whole thing is solely controlled and dictated by me, specifically for my benefit.  This sounds like a stupid thing to say when you’re talking about watching a movie, but there’s a lot of pressure on the movie in that moment to deliver something for me, some type of desired state or end result.  After all, I chose to put it on, so I must want to get something out of watching it.  The movie has to prove its value with each passing moment.

This is not the case when I’m watching a movie on TV.  I didn’t specifically choose to put this movie on, I simply happened to stumble upon it.  It was playing before I turned it on, and it’ll keep on going should I decide to turn it off.  The movie exists with or without my eyeballs on it.  It lives in an almost philosophical state, like a tree falling in the forest with no one around.  The pressure is off in this case.  I can just go along for the ride and take whatever I get from the movie, even if it’s nothing at all.

The second possible reason is operating under the surface of the first.  When I’m watching a movie on TV, I’m not the only one watching it, even if I’m alone in the room.  There are tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of people on the other end of the broadcast, watching the exact same thing at the exact same time as I am.  If you put us all in one place together, we’d probably fill up multiple football stadiums.  That’s kind of insane when you think about it.  Imagine everyone at a Taylor Swift show, all sitting together, watching Samuel L. Jackson scoop brains out of the back of a Chevy Nova.  

Whether we’re consciously aware of it or not, we’re participating in a communal experience when watching a movie on TV.  I think this makes it more enjoyable and fulfilling than simply watching it on your PS5 in a dark room, knowing for a fact that you’re the only one participating.  It also can make it worth sitting through a few commercial breaks and missing out on a handful of F-bombs and nude scenes.

There’s an additional component to watching a movie on TV though, one that doesn’t apply to seeing a film you already know and love.  Because watching a movie on TV can also give you a newfound appreciation for something that didn’t work for you the first time around.  Richard Linklater is my favorite director of all time, but I didn’t quite care for Boyhood when I first saw it in theaters back in 2014.  I knew it was a very special film, but I found it to be overly long and somewhat boring.  It just didn’t move me when I first saw it.  I distinctly remember walking out of the theater wishing I had liked it more, but knowing if I had to talk myself into it, it probably wasn’t that great.

That all changed a few years later when Boyhood began playing nonstop on Showtime.  I would come across it on TV, halfway finished, with Mason already in his early teen years, and I’d watch it all the way through to the end, over and over.  I probably watched Boyhood eight total times, all starting in different places, when it was playing on Showtime.  In this casual setting, I found myself drawn into the movie and finally appreciating its particular charms.  Boyhood isn’t a boring movie in any sense.  It’s hypnotic.  Watching someone’s life unfold, in a movie filmed over 12 years (Time being the one special effect you cannot fake no matter what) isn’t meant to excite or titillate.  It’s simply meant to be experienced, much like life itself.  This is something I didn’t pick up on in theaters, and probably wouldn’t have grasped if I just decided to play and sit through it on my own. 

Film Twitter is decrying the death of movies and movie theaters at the hands of streaming, and for good reason.  Going out to see a movie is a great experience that is impossible to replicate anywhere else.  But the rise of streaming is also eliminating this kind of casual, passive viewing on TV.  It’s such a fundamental part of the viewing experience that streamers are actually trying to replicate it by adding shuffle options to their menus, where the service just randomly picks something for you to watch.  But it’s not the same.  How could it be?  You’re still the only one watching.  There’s no one on the other end, participating with you, unseen but aware that someone else out there is doing the same thing they are, silently telling them that they’re not alone.

I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t think I can ever get rid of cable.