I was on the plane when I saw a man slit another man’s throat.
On someone’s iPad, of course—but it was still pretty shocking.
I’m old enough (though barely) to remember when in-flight entertainment was still a thing. When screens dropped down from the overhead luggage compartments and showed popular, inoffensive films during flights. The flight attendants would hand out headphones—the now old-school ones with an aux jack—and you would plug into your seat. There were a bunch of channels to click through, and you would need to skip past the rock station or whatever to get to whatever channel was hosting the audio from the in-flight movie.
I could go on, waxing philosophic about the merits of collective in-flight entertainment, but I’ll focus on something else instead:
The selected entertainment was usually pretty harmless. No PG-13 movies, and even the light cursing was sometimes bleeped or swapped out.
We no longer live in such an innocent time. Today, most passengers on a flight bring on their own private in-flight entertainment on a variety of screens. Phones, laptops, tablets—walk back up the aisle after going to the bathroom on a plane, and you’ll see no fewer than two dozen films or TV shows in progress.
On my flight today, that film was Eastern Promises, a Russian gangster that I’ve never seen but know to be well regarded.
It’s also has an R rating from the MPAA—for pretty good reason. In the snatches of the film that I saw, there was a fairly graphic sex scene, a throat-slitting, and a bunch of fights.
I hate to sound like a prude about this…but this was a pretty dark film. Sure, it wasn’t a slasher flick, but it also wasn’t Finding Nemo. I wasn’t offended, really—I was mostly surprised. Surprised that someone found it a good idea to watch this sort of film in the close, claustrophobic surroundings of a commercial airplane.
Maybe some people get a kick from this weird flex? From forcing a dark, difficult movie on your seat mates and fellow passengers? (We all know how hard it is to NOT watch a film that’s visible from your seat on a plane; it’s like TV screens in bards—you have to stare at them.)
I don’t know. All I know is that it seemed very, very weird.
Taylor Coe 