I say it not infrequently: I hate people.
That statement is far too general to be worth much, but it captures something of a truth, an essence, an extraction. I hate people.
Sometimes it says the obvious: I hate that (some) people will commit violence, etc., will be negligent to the point of inflicting foreseeable suffering, etc., will willfully mislead others to the point of foreseeable suffering, etc., etc.
Often, though, I invoke those three words in sequence for more venial offenses, when no one’s freedoms (of life and liberty, to make choices in an informed manner, not to have suffering foist upon you) are at stake. When you stand across the street from a military funeral and hold a celebratory protest because American deaths is the proper justice wrought by a God who hates fags upon a sinfully permissive nation, I hate people. (Let’s not have any talk about how I should celebrate living in a nation that allows such freedom of expression (etc.). That’s a given—one that’s got nothing to do with my hatred.)
Then there’s harboring what seems to me like willful ignorance: Jews are good with money and are using the blacks as muscle, Israel is not needlessly abusing Palestinian human rights as a matter of course, Darwinian evolution is poppycock.
More venial still: going to a public place and comporting yourself as if it is your own private Idaho to which you have generously allowed the rest of us access. An example, you say? Funny—I’ve got one right here.
Early this month the Art Theatre hosted a midnight, Mondo Celluloid-produced screening of Carl Laemmle’s 1925 silent film Phantom of the Opera, featuring an original live score by Creative Artists Collective.
This was the second such event I have attended at the Art. (Is it okay if I call you “Art”? Are we on a first-name basis?) The first, SOON’s puissant and wonderful scoring of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (see review here) was loud enough (too loud—it’s only flaw) that even if all of the couple of hundred people in attendance (I’m not good at estimating something like that—but most of the seats were filled) had been in unbridled conversation, often this would not have been heard by the performers nor other audience members. (But as it was, we all seemed pretty dialed in to the multisensory journey.)
CAC’s score was much softer, much more delicate, never approaching loud and at times as low as a relative whisper, weaving a texture around the visual action much finer and more strictly complementary than SOON’s oft-concert-like tour de force. CAC’s work fit the film just as perfectly, but by nature and design it was much more tenuous.
And so when two gentlemen entered the auditorium perhaps ten minutes late with a full-voiced “I’m about to do this” and rejoinder of “Watch me,” I was hating people, immediately. As the gentlemen distractingly shambled down the aisle, several attendees (of far fewer than had been at the Caligari show) shushed them. “SHHHHHHH,” one of them scornfully replied, undaunted and unrepentant, “SHHHHHHHH, SHHHHHHHHHH!”
They made their way to the very front—that is to say, as close as possible to the quartet (strings, an electric guitar, something else maybe)—and plopped themselves dead center in the row. They had been seated for just a trice before continuing to talk; a quick yelp was offered in response to an onscreen kiss. “Stop it!” called out some more-proximate, more-assertive, and undoubtedly braver soul than myself. Thankfully, I was sitting as far from these gentlemen as could be and regretting that I had turned my cell phone off instead of into silent mode, because I wasn’t so sure this duo wasn’t here expressly to cause trouble, and that somebody would need to end up dialing 9-1-1.
From the aisle opposite the one they had traversed strode an unilluminated figure (or two?), down to front and center. He leaned in to the gentlemen, then, after a few moments parley, succeeded in having them stand to follow him back the way he had come. One of the men fell hard to the ground as he rounded the end of the row. He was helped up, gently escorted away. I half-expected a ruckus in the lobby, but none came, and soon we all settled back into enjoying the show. (The band, by the way, never missed a beat.)
As the show progressed, four people sitting across the aisle to my right brought themselves to my attention. Their method was far more subtle than the duo’s, and the combination of that relative subtlety and their much greater distance from the screen meant that the performers could not hear them; but they were persistent, ranging from engaging in something that sounded like an argument (oscillating between staccato bursts of whisper and low-voiced grumbling), what I gather was an ongoing texting conversation (or two), giggling, multiple trips to the lobby by each (particularly disruptive when made by the two not sitting at the edges of their horizontal formation), and so on, unrelentingly. It was, in short, as if this was their living room, and that everyone at this gathering had agreed in advance to at exactly what level of engagement the film ought to be enjoyed. When they left about ten minutes from the end, I was only sorry it hadn’t been sooner. Because I hate people.
Because, of course, the rest of us had not made that contract with them. A fact of which the four were well aware. And about which they simply did not care. It was all about them to them, with no deference to the public compact implicit in the event: we were there to experience the film and its accompanying music, whatever it be, however understated, however much silence and attention it required.
There are plenty of places and events to which I go to talk, to be heard, to laugh and say whatever I feel like. And then there are others. They’re not terribly hard to distinguish between. It’s not that I make and respect the discrimination because I’m prim and proper or stand on ceremony or am enamored of Emily Post; I make it because of a baseline respect I give to others—simply because, concerning such a matter, that is what I can do to contribute to creating the world as I want to it be. I don’t think that goes very far toward making me a good person, but perhaps it covers some ground on my being a decent one. If ‘good’ is going above and beyond, ‘decent’ can be said to mean meeting certain voluntary requirements. Good is even better, but decent is enough. If everyone were decent, I would not hate people. But I say, not infrequently…
After the film I walked the declivity to the four Creative Artists Collective members packing up their instruments to tell them how much I liked their performance, and we talked briefly about the early incident with the two men. “The sad thing is,” I was told, “that’s not even the weirdest thing that’s happened this week.”
In the lobby I inquired of the concessionaire as to whether there had been any trouble once the two men were there. “Sorry about that,” interjected a bespectacled fellow standing nearby. “Who threw them out?” I asked. “I did,” he said. My slight surprise may have shown. This was not a large man; he wore no armor, he did not appear to be armed. He explained that he had asked them to come to the lobby, where he was planning to lay out for them what sort of show this was and to request their cooperation—but that when he smelled the booze and saw the one guy fall, he decided he’d better throw them out straightaway. “Sorry about the disturbance,” he reiterated as I was leaving. “Thanks for understanding.”
I didn’t think to find out who this gentleman (and here I use the appellation sans sardonicism) was; I presume he is Logan Crow, Mondo Celluloid’s head honcho. Standing outside, I was taken with the fact that he had apologized to me that there had been a disturbance at his event—never mind that it was in no way his fault and that he immediately and decisively took steps to arrest it.
It’s a great example of why I say, not infrequently: I love people. (That statement is far too general to be worth much, but…)
Holiday postscript: In a theology class I took my first year in college, the professor discussed translational variants in the Bible. One example: a famous line often translated, “Peace on Earth, good will towards men” might more faithfully be rendered, “Peace on Earth toward men of good will” (his emphasis). I don’t know if this is accurate or apocryphal, but, gender-specificity aside, the latter is a sentiment to which I more deeply relate. Because I may love some of the people all of the time, but I hate many of the people much of the time. Good will, decency—is that so much to ask, to give?
Well, I wish us all more of it the coming year. It can’t hurt.