Will the Wicked practice of taking photos and videos of the movie screen ever go away?

NEW YORK – During an opening weekend screening of the hit movie musical Wicked in November, a woman sitting in front of me reached for her mobile phone during The Wizard And I, Cynthia Erivo’s first big number as the misunderstood green sorceress Elphaba.

I watched while this person snapped several photos of the British actress-singer as she belted.

This behaviour both bewildered me and distracted me from the film. I became more focused on what was being photographed – and why – than on Erivo’s performance.

And yet this disruption is apparently not unusual if you have seen Wicked in a theatre.

Social media has been flooded with images that people have taken during the movie. One post actually prompted others to share their photos as if taking them was a badge of honour. (Even one of the movie’s stars, American singer-actress Ariana Grande, posted an Instagram Reel of her grandmother watching her sing Popular. That one we can let slide.)

It is not just Wicked. Taking photos and videos of the big screen has somehow become a common practice these days.

For instance, major spoilers from superhero blockbuster Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) were plastered all over X and TikTok shortly after it hit theatres in July, thanks to poor-quality shots from audience members.

Blockbusters are not the only films getting this treatment. Look hard enough and you will find bootleg clips of just about any theatrical release, from the French body horror film The Substance (2024) to the pope drama Conclave (2024).

The problem with mobile phones in theatres used to be mostly errant ringing or excessive texting. Now, it is people holding up their devices so they can get bits of the film and post to their accounts.

For those of us who just want to watch in peace, letting ourselves be completely absorbed, it is another way in which moviegoing etiquette has crumbled in the 21st century.

But why is this happening in the first place? While I don’t think I can ever fully understand the desire to participate in the trend, I have a good guess as to why it exists.

Social media has conditioned people to think they can claim to have had an experience only if they put evidence of it online. In an age of oversharing, you have to have receipts that demonstrate you were present at an event – just embracing the fact that you witnessed it is not enough.

Concerts are a prime example of this. Instead of simply watching the artiste onstage and listening to the music, fans are preoccupied with capturing their favourite song on their phones. I never went to see American pop star Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, but I saw countless moments from her concerts, shakily filmed in a vertical format by those who did.

In 2022, American singer-songwriter Mitski pushed back against this, writing that “sometimes when I see people filming entire songs or whole sets, it makes me feel as though we are not here together”. She argued that it makes her “feel as though those of us onstage are being taken from and consumed as content”.

While films are obviously a different beast from live music, Mitski’s point about “content” stands. Audiences are trained to view everything they watch not as art but as content, and content is meant to be chopped up into digestible little bits that others can consume while scrolling.

You can blame streaming for some of this inclination.

I am not immune to pausing a service – be it the Criterion Channel or Netflix – to post about a joke I find amusing or a performance I find spectacular. Yet, the casualness of the streaming medium means there is little reverence for the tradition of watching films in a theatre. Instead, the activity just becomes an extension of the kind of viewing you do on your couch.

On the one hand, all the Wicked posting should make me feel optimistic. Regardless of how you feel about the movie – I, for one, adore it – its huge success is good news for the film industry, which is constantly weathering fears of its demise.

The fact that people are celebrating their visits to see a movie should fill me, a movie lover, with glee. I even get the sense that studios just see all of this as free promotion.

Still, I can’t help but be dismayed when I see the influx of mobile phone photos.

Going to see Wicked should feel like a trip to Oz, where you disconnect from the modern world and let the crystalline sounds of Erivo and Grande’s voices transport you. Holding up a phone, even under the guise of appreciating the film, means you are creating another layer between you and the story being told.

That is perhaps the strangest thing about this craze. When people post photos from movie theatres, they are ostensibly doing it for their online communities, but they are ignoring the communal experience they are having at that very moment.

Sitting in awe beside other people in a cool, dark theatre watching cinema is incredibly special. You just have to put your phone down. NYTIMES