Now Showing: Discursive Struggles in Movie Theater Etiquette

Perceptions of etiquette, involving expected behavioral norms in movie theaters, clash in discursive struggles of contradictory behaviors. This focus group driven research examines social constructions of space, context, and interaction in movie theaters. Using relational dialectics as a lens, discursive struggles along emergent thematic lines of idealizing movie theater expectations, situating theaters as extensions of one’s home, expressing clashes of desires within theaters, transcending theaters into events, and reporting inconsistent behaviors are explored.