going to the movies alone
Before the pandemic hit, I loved going to the movies regularly.
It never mattered what movie I was seeing. Whether it was a good movie, a bad movie, or a completely forgettable movie, what mattered most was simply the ritual of going. Buying a ticket online. Walking twenty minutes to the theater. Sneaking in the occasional boba. Deciding whether to get popcorn or not. Arriving early. (Because trailers are very important to me.) But the most critical part of this ritual was always going alone.
I’m fine with going to the movies with other people! I especially love going with close friends who discuss the movie with me afterwards. But whenever I make moviegoing plans with someone, I feel a great deal of pressure. Is this movie going to be good? Will the vibes turn sour if the movie is bad? Will I be able to actually focus on the movie with someone next to me? I find that I can’t fully relax in a movie theater unless I sit alone and know that I myself am controlling how my experience goes. It’s the best thing.
That being said, I was nervous when I bought a ticket to see a screening of a BTS concert in a theater… alone. It just felt wrong. Also this was only my second time going to the movies in two years! My moviegoing ritual that had once been second nature for me was long gone, and I had forgotten how to approach it.
I sat in the back row of the theater, and before long, a girl sat down next to me and said, “Hello!” I panicked because I hadn’t planned for this. (Also because I never leave my house and have no clue how to make small talk with anyone anymore.) But I said hello and she started chatting with me about BTS.
She only told me later that when she was buying her ticket, she saw my occupied seat and after some thought, she reserved her seat right next to mine because she could see that I was alone. She had decided to come alone too.
The concert was three hours long but it went by incredibly quickly. The theater was almost completely packed and we screamed and sang and laughed the whole time. It was all very beautiful. Many people in the theater—including me—brought ARMY bombs, BTS’s official lightsticks that are meant to be brought to huge stadium concerts. A movie theater is probably the next best place for them.
I experienced all of this with my new friend Nune, whose Korean skills are so solid that she was able to whisper translations to me whenever the BTS members made speeches during the concert, because no English subtitles were available. We discovered that we both became BTS fans at around the same time (fall 2020) and that Namjoon and Yoongi are both two of our favorite members. We even found out that we live a few minutes away from each other. When the concert was over, she asked me which BT21 characters I like, and she gave me a Shooky bracelet that she had found on Etsy.
I love going to the movies alone and I will always love going to the movies alone. But if Nune hadn’t reserved her seat next to mine—in hopes of being together in our aloneness—my theatergoing experience wouldn’t have been nearly as special or as miraculous.
Sometimes it is absolutely essential that you know nothing about a movie before seeing it. I remember how impressed I was by how people stuck to this credo with Parasite. For months after its release, I never spotted Parasite spoilers on social media. That’s how you know a movie is mysterious and good.
When my friend Jacki saw the Japanese movie One Cut of the Dead two years ago, she urged people to not read anything about it before watching. I took her advice very seriously, and we finally watched it together this week. All I can say is that if you successfully avoid even reading a synopsis of the film, the payoff is huge. One of the weirdest, funniest, most baffling movies I’ve watched in a while. And it’s a tight 90!
I am famously bad at reading. I’ve gotten better at it in recent years, but that’s because I stick to reading shorter books. For two years, I’ve tried over and over again to read Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. At 490 pages, it’s way longer than anything I normally read. I finally powered through the entire second half of the book this week just in time for the Apple TV+ adaptation that’s going to come out on March 25!
There are so many characters in this book that I was initially concerned that I would mix them up with each other. But Min Jin Lee writes all of them so differently that every character is distinct, even if we only meet them in passing. Pachinko is a story about multiple generations, a humongous family tree of people that all link back to the main character, Sunja. As the book progresses, she grows older and older, and I became incredibly attached to her. I think teenage Georgie would have felt a true kinship to teenage Sunja, so she feels very real to me. I’m excited to watch her and all the other characters in the book come to life on screen!
I’m happy to announce that BTS set Twitter on fire for various reasons this week! Allow me to take you to another installment of:
The BTS concert I saw in theaters was actually a delayed screening; the actual concert happened at around 1am Pacific time earlier that day. When soundcheck for the concert started happening at around 10pm Pacific time, I decided to stay off social media until after I saw the concert in theaters. But in the meantime, I kept receiving texts about “soundcheck Yoongi.” I had no idea what this meant. What was so special about soundcheck Yoongi? What did he do? When I finally went on Twitter the next day, I found out that this 27-second fancam of soundcheck Yoongi was making the rounds. He’s wearing sunglasses and a kind of… suit-like outfit? And he’s swishing water around in his mouth? His face is only visible for 12 seconds total, but that was just enough for people to lose their minds. I’m pretty sure this fancam accumulated two million views in just one day. I can’t really put my finger on the appeal of soundcheck Yoongi, but ARMYs—myself included—simply couldn’t resist.
In late 2021, each BTS member created a personal Instagram account, and ARMYs’ collective mental and emotional wellbeing hasn’t been the same since. Jungkook’s username abcdefghi__lmnopqrstuvwxyz has been the subject of much discussion and memeing because it’s objectively hilarious. (J and K aren’t in the username because his name is Jungkook. Get it? It’s a great bit.) Anyway, Jungkook wreaked havoc this week by changing his username to jungkook.97, possibly the blandest, most basic username he could’ve chosen. In response to this change, I tweeted that I’m “in mourning.” That’s hardly a joke. Alphabet Jungkook will be missed.
BTS’s song “Dynamite” hit one billion streams on Spotify, and apparently whenever this happens for any song, Spotify sends a commemorative plate to the artist. To celebrate, BTS decided to make and eat bibimbap on their plate. Absolutely iconic.
