I enjoy films. I enjoy snacking. I enjoy putting my feet up. Despite my criticisms of ''multi-tasking'', I like to do all these things at once. So why am I put off by luxury cinemas? Most immediately, they are pretentious (the cinemas, not the cinema-goers or staff).
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''Gold-class'' theatres advertise a ''first-class-quality experience'', which suggests a certain aristocratic or high-bourgeois luxury; a mood of refined taste, in which the best of civilised life is savoured. But it is basically a normal theatre, with recliner chairs, waiter buttons and table-service food.
The chairs are indeed outstanding: large, comfortable, adjustable. But the rest of the ''first-class'' product is quite ordinary. For example, the films are the same: added cost does not mean a ''value-added'' plot or characterisation. Yes, you can drink wine, or have wedges and chilli con carne delivered to your seat.
But the fantasy prices do not match the house wine and fast food reality. And waiters tip-toeing about with plates and glasses are not film-friendly anyway: they puncture the balloon of suspended disbelief. (If I really want to be interrupted watching a movie, I have children to help. For free.)
But these are quibbles - others might see the products and services as high quality, and the prices as bargains. (If this is you, I advise you to see a financial planner forthwith.) More interesting is the very idea of ''gold class''.
Before a recent film began, a short advertisement for the luxury cinema told us (and I paraphrase): ''No matter what the film is, the star is you.'' This message was repeated at least twice.
This is the idea behind the luxury cinema product: ''me''.
This is not about cinema: the spectacle on the screen, however high its quality. It is, instead, the celebration of one's own specialness.
Yet I am not performing; not demonstrating some important thespian talent. There is no expectation that I will even display a critical eye for the film. I am sitting on my bum in the dark, legs out, forking fried potatoes into my maw.
How exactly does this make me a ''star''? Obviously, it doesn't. The ''gold-class'' spiel can be waved off as fluffery - which, of course, it is. But like all fluffery, it is not arbitrary. It is designed to appeal to our vanity and desperate longing for uniqueness. Without actually having to demonstrate cultivated taste or creative skill, we can consume distinction.
In this, ''gold-class'' cinema is an ordinary mass-market product, which sells a little status alongside its services.
There is nothing ethically wrong with this: the cinema chains are free to sell, and we are free to buy. The point is to be clear about what exactly we are celebrating when we fork out our dollars: not high culture (despite the advertising), and certainly not cinema (despite the product itself), but the fantasy of our own specialness.
A fantasy that is undone in the very act of consuming it. The irony, of course, is that this negates one of the few reasons for going to the cinema: a public enjoyment of spectacle.
We are in public all the time, of course, but we often reserve our sensitivity for private: we emote and reflect among intimates. In the theatre, we are cultivating our public face: learning to think and feel alongside others. We can be moved to laughter or tears in front of strangers, and there is something immensely valuable in this: a recognition of common humanity.
But the ''gold-class'' theatre, with its legroom and ''me'' fetish, tries to make the public spectacle more private again: as if we were not among strangers, but back in our own lounge, facing a gigantic plasma screen, with a TV dinner on our lap.
It is possible, of course, to enjoy luxury cinema without the air of pampered egotism. One can buy without ''buying into''. And perhaps this is what most gold-class cinema-goers do.
But insofar as the niche meets some demand, the question remains: what does it mean when the theatre requires more suspended disbelief than the film?
Dr Damon Young is a philosopher and author. His latest book, Philosophy in the Garden, was published in December 2012.