For any of you in Valley City, you are most likely aware of the auction currently taking place to find a new owner for Theater I & II. The building has stood on Main Street for as long as several can remember (i.e. the 1970s) and long provided movie-goers fun and entertainment. Now, with the economy the way it is, Wayne Loberg, owner and operator, wants to sell the property. In an article done by the Times Record (which is not available online), Loberg mentions that it’s time for him to move on and…
All this is fine and dandy. However, we must not bypass a major cornerstone to the movie theater industry; the projectors. In this case, the projectors and equipment at Theater I & II makes it rather difficult to keep up with the demands of the time. In Valley City, the movies are still shown through a series of pulleys and gears (I can remember the process of preparing a movie well) and the actual film is still just that: film. This may not seem such a big deal, except when the rest of the theaters have moved on to digital projectors and digital picture.
So here’s where we ask the so what? What does it matter if Theater I & II in Valley City, ND, cannot afford to update to the digital films? So what if they must shut down? So what if this is happening nationally in smaller theaters that can only show a couple films at a time? We are in a thriving technological society; progress, simply for the sake of progress, is our top priority. To accomplish this, we are willing to let go of the simple pleasures to make room for shiny and ravishing toys.
Okay, so beyond rambling about Valley City potentially losing its movie theater, what is the purpose of this post? I started thinking when I read about this topic about how much we want technology to change how we live. In this case, the technology does not change anything personal for movie goers (except perhaps providing a better picture). Instead, people like Wayne Loberg must suffer as they try to stay operational in a changing world. Think of it as asking if we should “turn off the internet just to keep the libraries open” (iRobot, 2005). While I am all for progress, I do not want to see us destroy what we already have, take for granted where we came from, and find ourselves at the mercy of the technology we so sought over.
Perhaps this is the end to an era. The movie magic we all came to know and love has switched to ultrasound and iMax screens. Yes, they’re good, but they’re not the same. And they never will be. And that’s what we need to remember.
