Spirits of Cinema:

I’vebeendoing it for years, but I still do not understand why I—or anyone—would drink at the movies. My practice began shortly after I turned twenty-one, at the New Parkway Theater in Oakland, California, once known as the Parkway Speakeasy. There you could order beer and pizza while watching the big screen from the comfort of an old couch. The couches weren’t all that clean, but they were cleaner than the couches at the student co-op where I lived. I also liked the novelty of drinking legally at an institution that I’d been taught to associate with wholesome family fun. Alcohol and filmgoing are not an obvious mix. Alcohol increases dopamine and endorphin production, which is why people enjoy it as part of a festive night out, but it also disrupts sensory perception, including the aesthetic experience of a film. After one drink, when a person’s blood alcohol content (BAC) reaches 0.02 to 0.03 percent, they begin to experience slight euphoria and lightheadedness. After two drinks, when one’s BAC reaches 0.05 to 0.09 percent, inhibitions start to drop, reaction times slow, and “sight and hearing are diminished because the brain does not process input as rapidly.” Doctors have found that a BAC as low as 0.08 percent can induce “alterations in the visual system that are related, for instance, to color perception, contrast sensitivity, as well as on eye movements,” which correlate with visual attention. Alcohol is also a diuretic, so drinking dramatically increases the odds that a viewer will have to run to the restroom sometime during a show. Alcohol is unique among theatrical concessions in its ability to disrupt viewers’ moviegoing. Popcorn may be loud and hot dogs messy, but they don’t impair a person’s vision or their ability to follow a plot. Nevertheless, more and more theaters are adding alcohol to their concession stands or building lobby bars to encourage patrons to drink before, during, and after the film. In 1997, only 14 theaters in the United States served alcohol in their lobbies or in the auditorium itself. By 2005, that number had risen to 270. By 2017, thirty-two states allowed alcoholic beverages to be sold in approximately 700movie theaters, making adult concessions “the fastest-growing amenity in our industry,” according to George Patterson, the senior vice president of food and beverage for AMC. If a given cinema isn’t serving, it’s likely due to a municipal, county, or state law passed in the wake of Prohibition that proscribes alcohol sales at such establishments. Theater owners and industrial associations are hiring lobbyists to get those laws changed, though, because “adult concessions” are keeping exhibitors afloat, even as they fundamentally change U.S. cinema culture. The twenty-first-century shift toward sodden spectatorship is not without precedent. Alcohol has flowed through cinema history since the Lumière brothers’ first commercial exhibition in the Salon Indien of Paris’s Grand Café on December 28, 1895. Inebriants also infused early film theory as writers struggled to make sense of the intoxicating effects of these new motion pictures—and, who knows, maybe the drinks they were consuming with them. Understanding these histories helps explain the myriad appeal of boozing in theaters today. It not only fosters an air of transgression but also has specific implications for how viewers engage certain films and film cultures. Drinking can enhance less than enthralling movies and help viewers emulate characters’ intoxication, further immersing them in the film’s world. Alcohol sales also support and honor unique viewing environments, especially when the exhibitor in question relies on alcohol sales to keep the projector running. For decades, drinking inmovie theaters was frowned upon because of negative class associations with concessions. As theater historians ChristineWoodworth and Amy E. Hughes observe, such prejudices date to the sixteenth century when theatrical productions in America were frequently staged in “taverns and taprooms.”These unsavory origins would haunt theatrical concessions for centuries as temperance reformers tried to bring tipplers to heel. From the nineteenth century forward, “dismay concerning the consumption of food and drink in the theater was directed especially at venues that openly and proudly catered to immigrants and working-class audiences.” When these demographics also produced early and ardent film fans, the reformers’ suppositions about concessions migrated to the nickelodeon. Nevertheless, fin-de-siècle tavern culture may have facilitated film’s rapid popular rise.