School Students' "Movie Menu"

Abstract

As a result of the current American movie expansionism, it is primarily young viewers who are being drawn into the orbit of Western movies. To a large extent, their movie interests and tastes are being Americanized. As is well known, however, American movies differ radically from European cinema and, even more so, from ours. A special discussion is needed concerning questions such as what school students are viewing and assimilating in the movie theaters, because they will make up the future sociocultural profile of our movie theater audiences. In order to study this problem, a single month in 1993 was taken to be typical in terms of the character of the repertoire of Moscow's movie theaters. On the whole, school students attended movies in the same general audience as adults. Of the 328 films we attended, there were action pictures (18 percent), historical adventure films and fantasy action movies (14 percent each), erotic films (12 percent), comedies (10 percent), erotic comedies (7 percent), and action...