Please Stop Pausing

Student Guest Opinion

I know there are by far worse people in the world, but something about film bros—the pretentious guys with big opinions—provokes me like nothing else. As someone who was held at gunpoint to watch and critique Seven Samurai by their father at age eight, I know for a fact that your favorite movie isn’t Casablanca. Get off Letterboxd, sit your butt down, and watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs like a real man.

I wouldn’t go so far as to state that social media has demolished movies; however, I will die on the hill that technology destroyed the people who watch them. For most of my life, I only witnessed these film bros online, where they could be easily avoided, blocked, and eventually publicly shamed, Puritan-style.

That is, until the double-drop of Barbienheimer. In real time, I watched a group of six dolled-up guys sit in front of me, watch the first scene of Barbie, and skedaddle after giving it five stars and making a Mojo Dojo Casa House joke (we didn’t even get to that scene yet).

Shortly thereafter, the same teenagers, dressed like extras from Peaky Blinders, strolled into Oppenheimer with Letterboxd—dubbed “a social platform for sharing your taste in film”—already open and ready to rate. Interestingly enough, they stayed until that Florence Pugh scene and then bitterly vacated.

My parents would’ve had a heart attack. Netflix movie nights were considered sacred in the Tarchak-Hiss household. Not the Netflix that churns out nine seasons of Love is Blind faster than the boys leaving after the Oppenheimer sex scene, but the Netflix that sent DVDS in the mail. The idea of streaming was in the works, but our family hadn’t utilized it yet. On Fridays, my mom and I would skip down to the post office to retrieve whatever film they thought was (barely) appropriate to culture their daughters. These movies ranged from Spaceballs to Onibaba: both respectively scarring for a six-year-old.

The circumstances were flexible; we would all watch during dinner with our food in our laps on the floor or bundled up under blankets, clinging to my dad’s arm, yet there was always one underlying rule. Nobody could pause the movie. We lived by the notion from our parents’ generation: time is transient, and in moments together, we had to be present.

At least, up until our DVD player broke.

My dad resented the Roku. At a moment’s notice, my sister and I went from consciously available to consistently weaving in and out of the living room. Whether it was wanting a glass of water or just pure boredom, we didn’t share the same precedence of undivided attention. We could pause, start, rewind, and skip the stories on our screens to our liking.

Our wavering attention spans initiated the shift from household bonding to disputation. It drove my parents up the wall, and fun family nights turned into screaming matches and spilled popcorn.

My parents slowly stopped the dictatorship of deciding what movies to watch every Friday. They started taking suggestions from my sister and me, what we wanted to watch, what stories we wanted to share. We would deliberately pick 10-minute dopey YouTube videos, under the guise of “I swear it’s cinema,” to get the night over with and evacuate to our bedrooms. If we really wanted to watch a movie with them, we could at any time—it’s not like Meet the Fockers would plunge off our TV because we didn’t feel like seeing it at that very moment.

All of this tension resulted in our family giving up. Friday nights became too forced and eventually became fleeting. My sister and I could still feel that our parents wanted to convey their love through lengthy features, but we didn’t care—we had our own mini-televisions in the back pocket of our Justice jeggings. There were endless options. There were endless opportunities.

Until there weren’t.

For me, movies are memories. I can hold onto memories. I can hold onto the initial gut-punch feeling a film gives me. I can hold onto the phone while I give it fewer stars than it really deserves because everyone online hates it and I want to fit in. I can hold onto the remote to replay the same scene for eternity because it secretly speaks to me.

But I can no longer hold onto my dad. In less than a year, chances to hold on to my mom will dwindle.

My message to teenagers my age is to please pay attention. Pay attention to the stories around you, pay attention to the experiences you might not encounter again. Practice actual awareness, not half-heartedly holding your phone while life keeps playing in the background.

Many say to prioritize pausing, to take breaks, but we already stop so much. Pausing the moment never creates memories; pressing play and being present do.

Tess Tarchak-Hiss is a senior at Traverse City West Senior High. She explores the world around her by writing at her dining room table while listening to Wiz Khalifa.

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