I think that it usually only takes one person to bring about applause
at the end of a film. Once one person starts applauding, others will
usually follow, particularly at a decently crowded screening, and
particularly after an old film, but neither of those things being a
requirement. If that is true, then in investigating the phenomenon of
applause after a film you really need to investigate two things: (1)
what sort of people start the applause at the end of a film, and under
what sort of circumstances are they more likely to do it (including:
under what sort of circumstances do they feel more comfortable
starting it), and (2) under what sort of circumstances will people
generally join in?
Obviously when the director or someone associated with the film is
present in the theater, there enters in a "point" to the
applause--that there is someone to receive it--which makes it much
more likely to happen and much more understandable. It's more
interesting when the applause happens and there is no one known to the
audience there to receive the applause.
For those of you that don't generally see this phenomenon, I suggest
you try applauding after a well-attended screening of a film that you
liked, and see if other people join in. Try doing it a few times to
see if people always/never join in, and to see if it feels different
from one setting to another (e.g., if it's more comfortable after an
"artsy" film or an old film, or if it's more comfortable after a
cathartic ending, or after a film that closes definitively with the
text "The End", "Fin", "終わり" or what have you, rather than something
like rolling credits or a smoother or unclear transition into the end
of the film). I'd be curious to see what the results are.
Jun-Dai Bates-Kobashigawa
On 1/15/07, Nathan Andersen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This is a very good question, though I think it is not a case of
> applauding someone at all. There is of course the obvious case in
> festivals, when the audience knows that the filmmaker or cast/
> crewmembers are present and is applauding them.
>
> Applause in other cases is fairly rare in my experience, but I have
> generally found it to take place either in response to (1) an
> emotionally overwhelming ending -- in which case applause seems to
> serve as a kind of public emotional response, a way of expressing and
> relieving an overwhelming emotion (and I have seen this in the case
> of joyful endings in say romantic films or feel good triumphal
> endings when someone overcomes in spite of the odds, but also in the
> case of emotionally devastating endings -- I have witnessed applause
> at the end of Bicycle Thieves for example); (2) or the applause is a
> kind of endorsement of the "point of view" of the film -- usually in
> the case of a film with a fairly specific political message -- as in
> the applause I heard at the end of Fahrenheit 9/11 or An Inconvenient
> Truth.
>
> In neither of these cases could the applause be described as directed
> at someone (whether cast crew producers or even "institution") except
> incidentally. The applause seems more to be an easily accessible
> means for the audience to express their own reaction to the film --
> whether this is an emotional response or a cognitive endorsement (and
> these are of course overlapping categories).
>
> Nate Andersen
> Assoc. Prof. of Phil.
> Eckerd College
>
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