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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Ethics and Etiquette of the New Forms of Film Spectatorship
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2004-10-01
2022-11-20
2004-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Mariagrazia Fanchi
2004/10/01
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Milano
2036-461X
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Ethics and Etiquette of the New Forms of Film Spectatorship
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4
ETHICS AND ETIQUETTE OF THE NEW FORMS OF FILM
SPECTATORSHIP
Mariagrazia Fanchi, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano




                               Contemporary spectatorship must therefore also be considered
                                            in the light of changing audio-visual technologies.
                        The cinema in its long-heralded specificity now seems to be dissolving
                                            into the larger bistream of the audio visual media,
                                                be they photographic, electronic, or cybernetic,
                                               changing non only the “identity” of the cinema,
                                                         but also that of those who consume it.
                                                               Robert Stam, Ella Habiba Shohat


  At first cinema was viewed on television. Then music was downloaded from the
Internet and listened to on the PC. Today the digital TV decoder is used to connect to the
Internet. In the increasingly near future football matches and, why not, films will be
viewed on mobile phone displays.
  The digitalisation of media environments, the slow but inevitable process of equip-
ment confluence and the mobility and permeability of the borders between mass com-
munication systems, that create ever greater zones of overlap and interference, are
deeply and irreversibly changing the status of what by now we should refer to, with a
generic term, as the final user. No longer spectators or television spectators, radio lis-
teners or internet surfers, but a single hyper-consumer able to access a vast deposit of
information and contents through any media channel. There has been a movement
from the primitive constitution of platforms, that is interconnected systems within
which content could travel from one medium to another, assuming different formats
each time and adapting to specific usage modes to inter-operativeness that implies a
total inter-exchangeability of the equipment both on the contents and functions level.1
Therefore a PC, for example, can also become a terminal for television or radio pro-
grams or, as already happens, the screen with which to view films and so forth. And, in
parallel, digital television can be used as the interface to surf the web.
  A scenario that is still certainly in the future but we can already see its strong signals.
First of all the substantial diffusion of digital technologies that are replacing analogue
equipment, constituting an out and out “re-conversion plan.” Between July 2002 and
January 2004, the number of broad band connections activated in Italy rose from 500
thousand to 2.7 million, with a population penetration of 4.7%.2 In parallel there has
been a substantial increase in the sale of digital equipment: in 2002 in Italy there were
1.5 million DVD players only (excluding players in PCs), compared with 100 thousand
in 1999. A figure that should be tripled in 2004. Still in 2002, the sale of 16:9 TVs grew by

­52                                                                CINEMA & Cie, no. 5, Fall 2004
                               ETHICS AND ETIQUETTE OF THE NEW FORMS OF FILM SPECTATORSHIP

27% compared to the previous year and the sale of Home theatres increased by 222%.3
The sale of plasma screens, liquid crystals screens and digital cameras are also on the
rise. Similarly terrestrial digital has grown rapidly, thanks to State incentives. Even
though the estimates are still provisional, there are a million digital decoders in 2004,
with around 80 % already interactive.4
  These are significant figures that confirm and confer the synergetic process that is
already underway with an institutional authority. Simply using Internet to download,
reassemble and use audio and video files, a phenomenon that is still mainly under-
ground and unregulated, but that has taken such relevant proportions, in correspon-
dence with the diffusion of broad band connections, that it is having repercussions on
the music and cinema industry balance sheets.
  The convergence of functions naturally also determines a transformation of the mass
media usage models. Along with the growth of the equipment’s potential there is the
extension of the wealth of skills required to use them and a, sometimes radical, trans-
formation of the modes, times and styles of encountering and interacting with the
media product. Watching a television program with a digital TV set-top-box can mean,
for example, interacting with the broadcaster by sending in answers or comments or
acquiring additional information on the program or even supervising, without zap-
ping, what the networks are offering in order to navigate through the program sched-
ule and make the best choice. An attentive and focused use and a viewer that is aware
and involved has replaced the monitored or idling viewing and the careless and won-
dering consumption, typical of analogical television.5 The experimental phase in
which the terrestrial digital is in, in Italy (the patchy distribution and especially the
limited forms of interaction available), still do not allow for conclusive assessments.6
Safer to look at another situation whose discontinuity features, in respect to the ana-
logical media system, are less evident but that nevertheless already allows the identifi-
cation of certain directions in which the status of the viewer is evolving.


Dispersion and Multiplication of the Film Viewing Situations

   The transformation of the viewing spaces and conditions in the cinema is a process
that is well underway and part of a general re-launch strategy of the film show.7 Since
the mid 1980s the cinema has introduced substantial modifications to film presenta-
tion, loosening the traditional spectatorship rules (the dark, lack of motion, the exclu-
sive concentration on the screen)8 and configuring unprecedented relations with the
film. These range from the optimisation of the technology used in cinemas and their
refurbishment according to innovative quality standards of audio and video,9 to the
building of new viewing spaces and the promotion of domestic film viewing systems.
   The first and most evident fact that emerges is the multiplication and differentiation
of the contexts in which the meeting between film and viewer takes place. From the sec-
ond half of the 1980s viewing films has progressively migrated from the cinema to
other spaces, starting from the domestic environment, not controlled and disciplined
by an apparatus. The new context for the enjoyment of films has produced heterodox
viewing situations, different both in terms of phenomenology (times, proxemics, style)
and in terms of the relation with the filmic text. Once viewed as a whole without inter-
ruptions (unless introduced by the apparatus) the film is now viewed intermittently,

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MARIAGRAZIA FANCHI

imposing accelerations and pauses to its development, jumping sequences or reviewing
them often (as can happen when viewing a film in VHS or DVD), or even reassembled
(as can happen, virtually at least, when downloading a film from the Internet and
reassembling it on the computer). The viewer moves in numerous situations, no longer
immersed in homologous viewing spaces that condition his actions to a single canon,
dislocated and dispersed in a multiplicity of locations that require different ceremonies
and rules of behaviour.
  This complexity and variability also invests institutional viewing spaces: just think
of the variety of experiences that a viewer encounters inside a multiplex and in a single
screen cinema,10 but also of the experience specifities that the latest generation of mul-
tiplexes aim to offer its public. A differentiation that adopts new strategies. Not so
much the programming selection, that the high number of screens, the restrictions
imposed by the production companies and the need to balance the management costs
for the complex render it difficult to have a precise cultural policy, as the design of a
strongly characteristic space, such as themed bars and restaurants, children’s recreation
areas, shops with strong brand identities that, as Anne Friedberg says,11 build around
the cinema a chain of methodical references that the viewer’s experience follows. The
video walls in the foyer that show images of the “coming soon,” the posters that cover
the walls of the spaces in front of the cinemas, the sophisticated window dressing that
announces the release of a particularly awaited film or the previews and photographic
exhibitions held in the connecting spaces and the many shop windows that enrich and
render the stay in the cinema unique.
  The awareness of the close relationship between viewing the film and other experi-
ences that the viewer can have outside the cinema is nevertheless recent and grown
with the progressive emergence of a competitive scenario. As of today in Italy there
are 69 multiplexes, structures with at least 8 screens, of which 3 megaplexes, com-
plexes with at least 16 screens,12 18 of which in Lombardy, for a total of 153 screens,
mainly concentrated in the urban area surrounding Milan.13 A thriving market con-
sidering that in 2003 multiplex and megaplex cinemas totalled 31.5 million viewers in
attendance, equal to 36.04% of the market, thus containing and inverting the reces-
sion tendency.
  The integration between film and other symbolic products, even if still at an early
stage, defines a complex viewing context, that requires articulated behaviour from the
viewers and that in exchange offers them a rich experience both in terms of emotions
and in terms of expertise. Within the multiplex the viewer learns to manage the over-
abundance of stimuli, learns to relate with technologies, refines expectations and
tastes and defines styles of enjoyment that he then transfers in other environments,
starting from the domestic.


Viewers and Consumers

  The neo-cinema viewer is trained in a protean scenario featuring a maximization of
the stimuli both inside and outside the cinema.
  Dolby Stereo and now Dolby Digital EX and DTS, that through the segmentation of
the acoustic signal and the multiplication of the diffusion channels guarantee an
unprecedented quality of the audio experience14 and the wall to wall screens that enve-

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                                ETHICS AND ETIQUETTE OF THE NEW FORMS OF FILM SPECTATORSHIP

lope the viewer given him the feeling of being in the film, as well as the multiple stim-
uli and incentives outside the cinema all create an hyperbolic, intense and involving
experience for the viewer. However, as previously mentioned, if the improvement of
the visual and audio technologies is by now a given, even for the majority of multi-
screens and single screen cinemas, the synergy between film and ancillary services is an
objective that many cinemas have yet to achieve. The awareness of the potential of the
services that surround cinemas has been rather recent. Even if in Italy the location
strategies for the multiplex took into account the attraction capacities of existing or
neighbouring commercial structures (hypermarkets, shopping malls, etc…), only sel-
dom has this initial care been followed by a policy of interaction and synergy. The lack
of a common regulation, management and opening times of the cinema and the busi-
nesses;15 the limited possibility to influence the use of the spaces outside the cinema
(rarely the manager of the multiplex is also owner of the building), the competitive
relation between services inside the cinema and those outside it, especially refresh-
ments, have often compromised the possibility of a profitable interaction between
structures.
  Despite these difficulties, the collaboration between cinema and commercial and
public businesses located in the same space has steadily grown. This is demonstrated
by the presence of references to ancillary internal and external services in the multi-
plex promotional material (from the leaflets with the weekly program and film releas-
es, to the web site), as well as the references to the cinema and its symbolic universe in
the commercial area. The effort of making the cinema interact with other services is
revealed with greater evidence by the adverts that certain multiplex chains screen
before the film, in which cinema icons (for example famous cartoons characters)
invite the viewer to use the snack bars, restaurants or themed shops located around
the cinema.
  Even when planned, the juxtaposition between cinema and other forms of entertain-
ment, refreshments and purchasing is not always fruitful. Even if in Italy, more than in
the rest of Europe, the entertainment and shopping formula is generally successful (the
Italian consumer visits a shopping centres 14 times a year compared to the European
average of 9 times), the integration between services is functional only when the expe-
rience offered is attuned with the film experience and reproduces its ways, values and
character. Unsurprisingly the most successful public and commercial businesses are
themed shops, that market gadgets or products strictly tied to the film world (from
books to DVDs), followed by businesses with a marked playful-escapist character (for
example, amusement arcades) or ones able to generate identification (shops with a
strong brand reference) or ones that favour socializing (restaurants, bars as well as the
many conversation zones found in the cinema connection and access areas). In this con-
text the phenomenon of the multiplex is an interesting indication of the tendencies
and fashions that shape the social space and is a privileged observational point to recon-
struct the dynamics assumed by cultural consumption. Dynamics that anticipate the
principle of inter-operativeness of the new digital systems: one single content provider
(the multiplex, or rather, the structure housing it) that satisfies different needs and that
demonstrates, at the same time, the establishment of unprecedented consumption log-
ics, no longer tied exclusively to commercial strategies, manageable within traditional
marketing (in which the frequency of contacts is, for example, proportional to the
advertising build-up), but regulated by emotional attraction principles of proximity

                                                                                         ­55
MARIAGRAZIA FANCHI

that are much more difficult to arrange. The concept that is taking hold is the one of
retail entertainment centre, a place in which it is not a product that is bought, even if
symbolic, but an experience or a set of experiences that focus on and rotate around
viewing the film. We must not forget that the multiplex represents the main source of
revenue in the centres it operates in (except for hypermarkets) as well as, as already stat-
ed, the factor that brands and thematizes the consumption experience.
  The combination of film with other goods does not seem to depauperate or distort the
viewer’s experience but, in fact, strengthens the impact of the cinema and films and
their ability to leave a mark on the collective imagination. Emblematic the recent open-
ing in Italy of the first cinema theme park and IMAX Cinema.
  The commodification of film and the risk of reducing spectatorship into pure con-
sumption (consumer spending)16 seems to characterise a different type of viewing con-
text, where there is an elimination of any surrounding element and the neutralisation
of the frame. This is the case of the recently launched Easy Cinema chain that adopts
the tried and tested aeroplane and car formula (Easy Jet e Easy Car) and the hotel busi-
ness (Easy Dorm). The business aims to reduce prices by eliminating all additional serv-
ices (no frills), from the refreshments to the foyer (computerised ticket sales). The com-
mercial strategy is reflected in the basic architectural structure and furnishings: a
Spartan and highly branded consumption space (dominated by the “Easy” group
orange) where films are viewed as some sort of fast food. A concept of viewing space
that recalls the first generation of multiplex cinemas that blossomed in the United
States in the second half of the eighties, that featured a functional logic at the expense
of a spectatorship experience that Douglas Gomery calls “minimalist moviegoing.”17


The Syntax of the Viewer-film Relationship

  The experience that the viewer lives inside the multiplex establishes a relationship
with the filmic text that presents unprecedented features and that can be taken as
indicative of a more complex re-definition of the syntax of the relationships between
consumer and media products.
  First of all the focus of the viewer’s experience is not the film but the viewing situa-
tion,18 the quality of the frame within which the meeting with the work takes place. It
is not simply (nor always) the case of having the best and latest visual and audio tech-
nologies but more trying to find an agreement between the viewing frame and the
viewing experience required by the film. A strong connection is therefore established
between viewing space and types of product. There are films that must be viewed in
specific contexts. Films that enjoy greater success in multiplex cinemas, in terms of
time shown and takings, are not surprisingly, highly spectacular films. A fact that is in
part influenced by distribution logics that tend to favour new viewing spaces to present
the most expensive and high impact products to the public. But this is also confirmed
in other contexts. The diffusion of DVD players and Home Theater systems, for exam-
ple, has markedly modified the hiring logics in Italy. It has increased considerably, com-
pared to the VHS lending market, the percentage of action movies, horror and science
fiction films, that is films that use many special effects, borrowed by families, as against
a reduction for the hire of cartoons, comedies and so called life action films, comedies
that are aimed to a prevalently family audience.19 This is not the occasion for a reflec-

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                                 ETHICS AND ETIQUETTE OF THE NEW FORMS OF FILM SPECTATORSHIP

tion on the consequences that this data foreshadows on the relationship between fam-
ily and media but it is nevertheless evident that the changing viewing situation, under
the pressure of updating television sets and more generally of domestic technologies
has introduced a disturbance in the already delicate relationship between mass com-
munication apparatus and family dynamics, highlighting the tendency for an essen-
tially personal use (or nevertheless destined for specific segments of the domestic
nucleus) of the equipment at the expense of collective viewing moments. The long-
term consequences that the transformation of the cinema viewing spaces can have on
the public’s preferences have still to be assessed.
   The centrality of the viewing situation, as mentioned earlier, does not always coincide
with the technological advances pushed by the spaces. The neo-viewer seems to take up a
profoundly ambivalent position with regards to technology. On the one hand the possi-
bility of using or even better, owning technologically advanced equipment represents a
new fundamental factor of social distinction. Digitalisation, as is well known, is repro-
ducing the problem of “digital divide” amongst those that can access, and those that are
excluded form the new media system.20 Klinger describes the new film buff as a
“technophile”, that not only aims to own the films, but also to collect them in their best
format and manifests technical skills in terms of the latest viewing supports and equip-
ment.21 On the other hand the aim of the viewer is that of establishing a direct and
involved relationship with the text, ideally devoid of mediation, that would be disturbed
by the presence of a bulky apparatus requiring attention. Certain cinemas equipped with
the THX system feature a clip that shows off the sound power of the space (“Audiences are
listening” says the catch line at the end of the clip), some others show the speakers and
amplifiers system located behind the screen. The technology that blows its own trumpet.
The spatial frame is nevertheless literally removed as soon as the film’s images start
rolling. The positioning of the seats, the prevalently dark colours of the walls and furni-
ture, the acoustic isolation produced by the stereophonic sound force, and allow, the
viewers to focus their attention exclusively on the screen.
   Something similar happens on the web. The possibility of downloading films from the
Internet, not only blockbusters, but also products not distributed or works in original ver-
sion (for example with added sequences), comes up against the sense of dispersion and
disorientation due to too many possibilities available. Which file to download? Where to
find the desired films? The presence and the use of ever more powerful means lives side
by side with the need for simplicity and, as we shall shortly see, proximity. It is that para-
doxical tension that Bolter and Grusin try to explain with the dialectic between hyper-
mediation and hypo-mediation, between hypertrophy of the apparatus, “technophilia”
and the search for an authentic and primordial relationship with reality.22


Heterotopies

  Sensory shock, frenzy of the senses, involvement and intimacy, assurance, wellbeing.
From the essential ambivalence and schizophrenic nature of the viewing experience
emerges a final element that contributes to the portrait of the neo-viewer. The effort of
reconciling going to the cinema with one’s own lifestyle, whilst still retaining its spe-
cial and festive character.
  The strategy adopted by certain companies for their spaces of providing stylistic and

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MARIAGRAZIA FANCHI

architectural solutions aimed at making viewers feel at home such as including in their
complexes references from fashionable locations (public and meeting bars) for their
catchment area (as is, in Italy, the case of UCI) or recreating a “living room” atmosphere
inside the cinema, with many sofas and lampshades (as is the case of UGC) is well
known.23 The first multiscreens with an extreme technological feel (with the extensive
use of steel and glass), have been followed by more welcoming environments, warmer
and able to delight and envelop the viewer. The promise is no longer just that of the sen-
sorial stimulation or, as Barbara Klinger calls it referring to the new powerful domestic
viewing and audio technologies, the frenzy of the senses,24 but of an astonishing expe-
rience that will make you feel dizzy and that you can give in to in the certainty of being
in a safe place.25 Safety becomes the key word and the real strong point along with the
spectacular aspect offered by the new viewing spaces. Michel Foucault,26 would define
them as heterotopic spaces, necessary means of escape from the daily order and ordi-
nariness. Controlled suspensions from social rules. A sort of liberation from the alien-
ation and sense of restriction of relationships disciplined by an apparatus (the cinema
too). An emotive revenge, to be more precise,27 that is borne from the possibility of
reducing the overabundance of sensorial stimuli to a personal project. The program
schedule effect, produced by the multiplication of the film offer and their repetition,
contributes to increasing the feeling of greater freedom of action and constitutes, not
accidentally, one of the main factors that attracts the public to the multiplex.
  A need to be reflected and for proximity, therefore, that is also revealed at a macro-
scopic level. Suffice it to think of the numerous projects for the urban migration of
multiplex cinemas and their location within a network of relationships and locations
with an established identity. An interesting initiative has been promoted by some sin-
gle or multiscreen cinemas located in the centre of an important town in Lombardy.
To counter the competition of multiplexes that have sprung up close to the city, 7
businesses have created a consortium called “Città Multisala” (multiscreen city).28 It
is an agreement that allows the viewer to purchase at any one cinema tickets for
showings in any other cinema. The circuit also offers other reductions and services
typically found in multiplex, but at a lower price: for example, the possibility of book-
ing the ticket and seat with no mark-up on the price of entry. The many initiatives
aimed at developing cinemas located in historic city centres are moving in the same
direction, through increased public transport and lengthening of the opening hours
of restaurants and shops. In both cases the most interesting aspect is the reversal of
the relationship between cinema and traditional spaces of interaction (square, his-
toric city centre).
  The initial investments in multiplex as structure able to re-launch the territory by
acting as centre for aggregation and exchange, has now given way in Italy to a more
cautious attitude. The enthusiasm with which the local administrations of the suburbs
of large cities at first welcomed the proposals to build multiscreen complexes, within
the context of re-launching and improvement policies, has often come up against the
superficiality of contacts: an impressive amount of attendances that never translated
into a revitalisation of the social networks and in resources for the community. From
here the change of direction that tends to bring closer, and as far as possible, to incor-
porate the structures in the urban space. The advertising launch of the last multiplex
to open in the area around Milan used the slogan: “The Multiplex goes to town,” to
stress the privileged ties of continuity (not only spatial) with the surroundings.

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                                ETHICS AND ETIQUETTE OF THE NEW FORMS OF FILM SPECTATORSHIP

  The failure of certain territorial marketing projects for the construction of multi-
plexes must be specified. They were often first generation multiplex cinemas, that
sprang up in a general situation of deregulation of licence concession and without a
precise awareness of the characteristics of similar complexes. Before the promulgation
of the Urbani law (January 2004), that in Italy regulates the cinema production and dis-
tribution, the construction of multiplexes was subject to the local town plan and
designed, in an inevitably inadequate perspective, for the potential of the structures
and unable to bear in mind the extent of their range of action. At the same time the
assessment of the multiscreen complexes construction projects was based on the same
criteria used for shopping centres. In the Italian case, it is exemplary the choice locating
multiplex cinemas close to the main arteries into city centres, in order to catch the flow
of commuters or in positions able to exploit the attraction abilities of previous struc-
tures (so called hook up multiplex cinemas).
  We must not forget that the effort to establish ties, create occasions for interaction,
provide locations and means that stimulate comparison undoubtedly represents a dis-
tinctive element of new cinema businesses. Not least for economic reasons, to make
the most of the public’s stay in the complex to induce other consumptions (with the
booking system, viewers are encouraged to reach the cinema on average 40 minutes
prior to the start of the film), the new viewing spaces feature large welcoming and
aggregation structures: connective spaces that become meeting points and places for
exchange and debate.


A Final Comment

  The experience of the Italian viewer today is the expression and a clue to the broadest
transformations taking place in the media system and in the social and cultural con-
text, highlighting some of the directions along which the relationship between mass
communication equipment and social subjects is evolving. A change that concerns
both the etiquette, therefore how one should behave and the modalities of use and
which the most opportune forms of relation with the equipment and its products and
the ethics, which are the moral, but also aesthetic and epistemological, guidelines that
are required to safely explore the new territories opened by the digital realm.
  A change that implies a twofold bet. That of acquiring the skills for an integrated and
synergic use of the media products, that exploits the advantages offered by a unique,
and therefore simpler and more direct, access to the contents, preserving nevertheless
the ability to differentiate them and recognizing their specifities and value. Iter-opera-
tiveness therefore, but without homogenisation. And the ability to exploit the wealth
of knowledge and possibilities of socialization and contact revealed by the communi-
cation systems, knowing how to refer them back to a personal life project. Therefore
globalisation or democratisation but without the loss of identity. Demanding chal-
lenges on which depends the possibility of establishing a form of dialogue, meeting and
exchange with the media that is authentically worthwhile and for the media the possi-
bility of devising development and production policies that have a social, ethical and
cultural aspect and not only an economic value.

                                              [Translated from Italian by Robin Ambrosi]

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MARIAGRAZIA FANCHI

1 Paolo Ferri, Fine dei mass media. Le nuove tecnologie della comunicazione e le trasfor-
   mazioni dell’industria culturale (Milano: Guerini, 2004).
2 Agcom Source – European Commission.
3 Data from the Univideo Report – GFK and ANIE sources.
4 For DTT development in Italy see Lisa Di Feliciantonio, Michele Mezza, Switch Over. Scenari
   e obiettivi della Tv al tempo del digitale terrestre (Milano: Guerini, 2004).
5 James Lull, Inside Family Viewing (London: Routledge, 1990); tr. it. In famiglia, davanti alla tv
   (Roma: Meltemi, 2003).
6 It must also be said that the initial qualitative research on the use of new technology reveals
   the tendency to maintain a traditional style and forms of approach. Also the results of the
   research into satellite television, at least in the Italian case, reveal a resistance to the full use
   of the potentials offered by the technology and a tendency to apply the analogical television
   viewing styles and forms.
7 An exemplary case study about sites of film exhibition and distribution and their transfor-
   mations with social and cultural changes can be found in Mark Jancovich, Lucy Faire, with
   Sarah Stubbings, The Place of the Audience. Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption
   (London: BFI, 2003).
8 Jean Louis Baudry, “Cinéma: effets idéologiques produits par l’appareil de base,” Cinéthique,
   no. 7-8 (1970), pp. 1-8; Id., “Le dispositif. Approches métapsychologiques de l’impression de
   réalité,” Communications, no. 23 (1975), pp. 56-72; Steven Heath, Teresa de Lauretis (eds.), The
   Cinematic Apparatus (London: Macmillan, 1980); Christian Metz, Le Signifiant imaginaire.
   Psychoanalyse et cinéma (Paris: Union Générale d’Edition, 1977); tr. it. Cinema e psicoanalisi
   (Venezia: Marsilio, 1980).
9 The introduction of the THX certification, aimed at guaranteeing an optimal quality of audio
   reproduction, at the beginning of the 1980s.
10 The term multiplex refers to cinemas with at least 8 screens, that are not the result of dividing
   a single screen cinema, and are characterized by high viewing and comfort standards, by the
   ease of access and presence of parking spaces, the availability of ancillary services and the acti-
   vation of booking and prepaid services. For an analysis of the classification criteria of multi-
   screen, multiplex and megaplex please refer to Elisabetta Brunella’s essay in the introduction
   of the European Cinema Yearbook (2003), pp. 121-125. For the stages of the evolution of the
   multiplex on the American market refer to Douglas Gomery, Shared Pleasures: An History of
   Movie Presentation in the United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992). For a
   concise reconstruction see also Kevin J. Corbett, “The Picture: Theatrical Moviegoing, Digital
   Television, and Beyond the Substitution Effect,” Cinema Journal, Vol. 40, no. 2 (2001), pp. 17-34.
11 Anne Friedberg, “Spectatorial Flânerie,” in Ina Rae Hark (ed.), Exhibition. The ‘Film’ Reader
   (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 173-181.
12 Data up to date as of March 2004 (MEDIASalles and ANICA sources).
13 “La mappa dei multiplex,” Box Office. Il mondo del cinema e il suo business (April 2004).
14 Cf. Gianluca Sergi, “The Sonic Playground: Hollywood Cinema and its Listeners,” in Melvin
   Stokes, Richard Maltby (eds.), Hollywood Spectatorship. Changing Perceptions of Cinema
   Audiences (London: BFI, 2001), pp. 121-131.
15 Businesses are regulated by the Bersani law, that limits opening times and days, at a national
   level; public businesses (cinemas, restaurants, amusement arcades) are regulated at the
   provincial level.
16 Gary Edgerton, “The Multiplex. The Modern American Motion Picture Theatre as Message,”
   The Journal of Popular Film and Television, Vol. IX, no. 4 (1982), pp. 158-165.

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                                    ETHICS AND ETIQUETTE OF THE NEW FORMS OF FILM SPECTATORSHIP

17 D. Gomery, Shared Pleasures, op. cit.
18 The viewing situation concept has been examined in-depth by Francesco Casetti. Cf.
   Francesco Casetti, Communicative Negotiation in Cinema and Television (Milano: Vita e
   Pensiero, 2002).
19 In Italy both the Home Video sales and hire percentages have grown considerably from 1999
   to the present day. Between 2001 and 2002 there has been an above average increase com-
   pared to previous years determined, according to the observers by the introduction of DVDs.
   In 2002 the sale and hire of DVDs counter for 40% of the total Home Video turnover in Italy
   (Simmaco data).
20 Reference is made to the digital divide, to highlight the social difference produced by the
   introduction of the digital, an updating of the knowledge gap theories of the seventies devel-
   oped by Tichenor, Donohue and Olien.
21 Barbara Klinger, “The Contemporary Cinephile: Film Collecting in the Post-Video Era,” in
   M. Stokes, R. Maltby (eds.), op. cit., pp. 132-151.
22 Jay David Bolter, Richard Grusin, Remediation. Understanding New Media (London-
   Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999); tr. it. Remediation. Competizione e integrazione tra media vec-
   chi e nuovi (Milano: Guerini, 2002).
23 About contemporary cinema architecture development cf. Edwin Heathcote, “The
   Development on the Modernist Cinema. Sideshow to Art House,” Architecture + Film II
   (2002), pp. 70-73.
24 Barbara Klinger, “The New Media Aristocrats: Home Theater and the Domestic Film
   Experience,” The Velvet Light Trap, no. 42 (1998), pp. 4-19.
25 About dialectic between public and private sphere and the mass media role in the collapse of
   boundaries cf. David Morley, Home Territories. Media, Mobility and Identity (London:
   Routledge, 2000).
26 Please see Michel Foucault, “Des éspaces autres,” Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, no.
   5 (October 1984), pp. 46-49 ; tr. it. Alessandro Pandolfi (ed.), Archivio Foucault. Interventi, col-
   loqui, interviste, Vol. 3, 1978-1985. Estetica dell’esistenza, etica, politica (Milano: Feltrinelli,
   1998), pp. 307-316.
27 Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought. The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge:
   Cambridge University Press, 2001); tr. it. L’intelligenza delle emozioni (Bologna: Il Mulino,
   2004).
28 http://www.monzacinema.it.




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