The first time I’d seen a movie in a theatre alone was the film Pleasantville, when I was in high school. It wasn’t a very enjoyable experience, even though it remains one of my perennial favourite films.
I’d expected two of my best friends — J and V— to meet me in the lobby of our local theatre before the show, and I was counting on their presence to enjoy the experience to its fullest. Earlier in the week, when I’d invited them out, I imagined how the evening would unfold itself: We would all find ourselves thoroughly enraptured by the film’s premise, symbolism, and meaning, leading up to intimate conversations upon conversations that would grow and fill up the endless hours afterward. We’d all be connected with each other in new and profound ways. But the writing, in retrospect, was on the black-and-white wall for me to see: Independently, they’d both given me two half-hearted responses, stuck in a kind of verbal liminal space. An enthusiastic yes, without the enthusiasm. Call it jealously, or call it paranoia, but in that moment I’d remembered how they’d started spending more and more time together without me; little verbal clues in conversations among the three of us leaked details into experiences and in-jokes that I hadn’t been privy to. They were dating each other, weren’t they? And they hadn’t told me? Why?
So there I sat, in a very comfortable soft chair, with a generously-sized popcorn and drink, feeling rather bereft. I scanned the theatre one more time for any sign of my two friends as the lights began to dim. Instead of seeing either of them, my eyes locked on to the sight of couples, hand-in-hand walking up and down the aisles, or parked comfortably in their seats, arms around each other. Some shared handfuls of popcorn and quick slurps of their drinks, amidst quiet whispers and intimate laughs. Some couples let their eyes linger a little too long on me as they passed my seat. I was the only person alone.
Pleasantville is still one of my all-time favourite films, because at its core it is a story about people struggling to discover and navigate the nuanced hues and tones of authenticity and genuine connection, both with themselves, and the world around them. The visual metaphor of finding connection and finding colour — among a world cast in stark black-and-white — is something I find a little on-the-nose and heavy handed now, but at the time the imagery gripped my teenaged brain, massaging together threads that had been running parallel in my head: A desire for connection, an emptiness felt at lacking the connection that others experienced, and an inability to process how they were bridged.
I thought about how I alone I was, how alone I looked. I thought about all of those other couples there, their eyes transfixed on Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon. There they were, wide-eyed, trying to live through a new world they didn’t ask for, and yet had no choice but to navigate. Sitting there, I didn’t just feel embarrassed; I felt small, as if I didn’t belong. Maybe it didn’t even matter if either one of my best friends who’d I’d invited — especially V— were there with me. Because I didn’t have a date, because I wasn’t in a couple, because we weren’t holding hands, or had our arms perched around each other, I’d violated some unspoken norm that was seeded in stale, butter-scented air of the theatre.
Writer Chris Le talked about how he was told he was “a pathetic loser” upon telling a friend he watched movies alone. Were others in the theatre saying the same thing about me? My punishment would be my complete inability to enjoy the movie, no matter how hard I tried to appreciate the visual language of the movie; every frame was a painting, and yet, I’d lost all sense of colour.
The philosopher Elizabeth Brake coined the word Amatonormativity in 2012, to describe a set of widely-held assumptions on how people should exist in partnered relationships. According to these assumptions, people should be in partnered relationships that are romantically coupled, long-term, and exclusive. Hand-in-hand with that is the assumption that if one isn’t in a relationship like that, then that is what they should seek.
Quoting from her book, “Minimizing Marriage”, Brake states:
“The belief that marriage and companionate romantic love have special value leads to overlooking the value of other caring relationships. I call this disproportionate focus on marital and amorous love relationships as special sites of value, and the assumption that romantic love is a universal goal, ‘amatonormativity’: This consists in the assumptions that a central, exclusive, amorous relationship is normal for humans, in that it is a universally shared goal, and that such a relationship is normative, in that it should be aimed at in preference to other relationship types. The assumption that valuable relationships must be marital or amorous devalues friendships and other caring relationships, as recent manifestos by urban tribalists, quirkyalones, polyamorists, and asexuals have insisted. Amatonormativity prompts the sacrifice of other relationships to romantic love and marriage and relegates friendship and solitudinousness to cultural invisibility.” (Elizabeth Brake, Minimizing Marriage (OUP, 2012), Chapter 4.iii)
This is reflected in the word itself: Amato- comes from the Latin amatus, which may mean “beloved”, itself a form of the amo, the Latin verb for love. Amatonormativity is then, the norms surrounding love. If love has a set of societally-defined norms surrounding it, then this can have a myriad of important implications for people who face struggles with getting into, or being in partnered romantic relationships. Like going to a movie alone. Like not responding to messages and emails from friends asking you to hang out, because your partner is the only one you ever spend time with. Like not being able to find connection and meaning with other people, when you wake up one day and realize that the connection and meaning you thought you had with your partner was gone.
The most common cited encounters that people have with Amatonormativity is the phrase, “Oh, you just haven’t found the right person…” which posits that if you are Asexual, or on the Asexual Spectrum (or Bisexual, Pansexual, Trans, Non-Binary, Gay or Lesbian), your non-normal expression of your sexual self is merely just a momentary aberration that will be cleared up in time: It’s just a phase you’re going through. But what if it’s not just a phase you’re going through? What if that momentary aberration is the sign of something much deeper affecting your relationship with your sexuality or how you connect to others? What if the relationship you believed you had to have, wasn’t the relationship you felt you really needed?
Elizabeth Brake says this about Amatonormativity on her website:
“Amatonormativity is a kind of harmful stereotyping. It also encourages structuring law and society on the assumption that amorous relationships are the norm. This discriminates against, and at worst creates barriers to making other kinds of relationships — friendships, asexual romances, some kinds of polyamory — central to one’s life. Amatonormativity and its privileges can also pressure people to enter and remain in exclusive sexual dyadic relationships — even when such relationships are bad for them, or costly, or simply not what that individual needs. Think of all the advice to ‘settle’ for a mediocre mate, just to be partnered or coupled!” (Elizabeth Brake, https://elizabethbrake.com/amatonormativity/)
I think about how I’ve hurt other people, and how I’ve hurt myself, all because I felt a strong, overwhelming need to be in a normative relationship. Because I was always trying to attain the kind of relationship I thought I should have had. I think about all of the conversations I should have had with intimate partners and friends, but been too cowardly to initiate. I think about all of the emotional reflection and honesty I should have made room for in my life, but didn’t. It’s cognitively rational for me to blame Amatonormativity for all of that, but it’s far easier — and emotionally safer — for me to blame myself.
The last time I’d seen a movie in a theatre alone was the movie Avengers: Endgame. It took me a surprising amount of mental exertion to push myself to go, even though there really wasn’t a good argument to not do it. I’d already seen it once before with a friend from work, so the safety of familiarity with the plot’s twists and turns meant that I could enjoy the visual spectacle with completely unfettered enthusiasm. Plus I had a free ticket voucher from some random online promotion burning a hole in my wallet.
The only thing missing was the person with whom I’d grown accustomed to seeing movies with. Not too long ago, the idea of seeing a movie without them was heretical to a mind obsessed with doing things The Way That They Had To Be Done in romantic relationships. Once upon a time, I’d thought that as long as I did everything correctly, according to those norms and standards I’d subconsciously strived to follow for so long, everything would work out fine between us. And they did, until eventually, they didn’t.
The presence of that person’s absence felt like a black hole; a gaping empty maw existing right next to me in the theatre where they would have sat. They likely wouldn’t have gone with you to see this movie anyway, remarked my Left Brain in a half-hearted attempt to stave off loneliness. It felt less like a balm to soothe my feeling of incompleteness, and more like a placebo.
The theatre was huge, easily twice the size of the cinema where I’d seen Pleasantville more than two decades ago. The hoards of children and youth streamed into the aisles and the rows of chairs, squealing with excited glee. Their hands clutched at overpriced bags of theatre snacks and toys taken from home. Couples glided among the squealing mobs, hands intertwined with each other in the hushed lighting, striking me with sharp bolts of nostalgia and envy. I shifted in my seat, unsure of myself, unsure if I could actually defy this seemingly unassailable Law of Movie Watching.
As the lights dimmed and the inevitable sonic barrage of ads lit up the screen, I saw them: punctuated solitary heads. Their shapes were poking out of the rows upon endless rows of chairs that sloped gently towards the front of the movie theatre, backlit by images of new cars and mobile service providers. I wasn’t the only one who’d come here alone.
I looked at the empty seat beside me, and instead of those pangs of loneliness, awkwardness and regret, all I could see was just an empty seat. With the ads shifting into the beloved trailers, I picked up my bag and coat from the floor and placed them inside. I never thought about that empty space again. As the familiar swells of music and the bombastic introductions of the characters flashed upon the screen, I thought about how comfortable my seat was starting to feel. For the first time, in a very, very long time, it felt like I’d actually done something that was truly for myself, by myself. And I’d done it with no shame attached, but instead the feeling that I’d cut loose something that was weighing down my vision with heavy monochrome tones. I could finally see those vivid flashes of colour.
Drake Baer interviewed Elizabeth Brake for their article on Amatonormativity published on The Cut, and said, “With its ubiquity, Amatonormativity lends itself to glorious, self-affirming rebellion.” Those last four words, ‘glorious, self-affirming rebellion’ link to — what else — an article on the virtues of seeing movies alone. And that to me, is a large part of what seeing that movie alone gave me, and what my relationship to my own Asexuality and my place on the Asexuality Spectrum means to me now: glorious, self-affirming rebellion.
