For Binx Bolling, movies symbolize the search to understand one’s place in the universe. Binx frequently goes to the movies not to escape from everyday life, but to try to understand life better. He feels that filmmakers always fall short of portraying “the search” adequately—movie characters always end up settling for mundane resolutions to their problems—but he keeps going to movies, just as he continues searching in the rest of his life. That’s because moviegoing involves more than simply watching a film; it’s about having a specific experience in a specific place. Binx prefers to get acquainted with the theater owners and ticket sellers in order to create this experience of being “Somewhere” specific instead of being anonymously “Anywhere.” So while movies are an aspect of American culture that can promote conformity, Binx’s approach to moviegoing—prioritizing the search for individual meaning—subverts that culture.
Movies Quotes in The Moviegoer
The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one met a lonely girl in Central Park and achieved with her a sweet and natural relationship, as they say in books. I too once met a girl in Central Park, but it is not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in Stagecoach, and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in The Third Man.
If I did not talk to the theater owner or the ticket seller, I should be lost, cut loose metaphysically speaking. I should be seeing one copy of a film which might be shown anywhere and at any time. There is a danger of slipping clean out of space and time. It is possible to become a ghost and not know whether one is in downtown Loews in Denver or suburban Bijou in Jacksonville. So it was with me.
A good night: Lonnie happy (he looks around at me with the liveliest sense of the secret between us; the secret is that Sharon is not and never will be onto the little touches we see in the movie and, in the seeing, know that the other sees […]), this ghost of a theater, a warm Southern night, the Western Desert and this fine big sweet piece Sharon.
Movies Symbol Timeline in The Moviegoer
