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“You can use the same attitude and ask what's wrong with just letting people half-watch a film while surfing the internet. But the answer lies in the act itself. You're not giving yourself 100% to the film and intentionally introducing something that distracts you from the original experience. The atmosphere and feel of the original work are infringed upon. You cannot say you really watched the film with your best intentions and all the fairness you could give it.”
“Nobody's trying to make it illegal to watch MST3K. But the way we consume art matters. I believe watching films in the MST3K version only is detrimental to one's respect for the integrity and quality (or lack thereof) of the original work and art in general.”
It's easy to lose sight of what this business IS, notably part of the "Entertainment Industry". If it's not fun to go to the movies, or view them at home, I don't know why I'd do it. MST3K is part of the same spectrum that includes seeing Citizen Kane as part of an erudite "Classic Film Series" at the University, mentored by a PhD. I've done plenty of both, and if movies were just CK at the University, I'd have given up on it a long time ago....too much like a dissection of a Dickens novel.
While I've done the academic part, I still personally insist on referring to this form of entertainment as movies. That can take me from Casablanca to The Terror of Tiny Town, which I actually have seen....at the university.
As for "letting people half-watch a movie while surfing the internet"....I do that all the time and that idea of "letting" sounds vaguely authoritarian....it's my darn basement and home theater. If the movie isn't engaging enough to draw me away from social media, then fortunately, I didn't completely waste that brain-time.