I may be fighting a losing battle, but we should ban looking at phones in cinemas

I was in a sublime concert of choral music the other Sunday, cantatas written by the supreme master of sublime music, Johann Sebastian Bach.

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But next to me on the pew in the cathedral in Canberra were two people glued to their phones. I don't think they were texting, but they were scrolling through endless pictures and messages on, I guess, Snapchat, that ultimate app for the brain-dead.

I finally leant over and whispered to the boy next to me: "You can't do that." He looked at me with utter contempt and kept at it, so I waited a minute and then repeated the message accompanied by a jab. He put the phone away, as did his girlfriend on the other side from me.

I don't think I'm just being a grumpy old man by objecting to people reading phones during performances. It's distracting to see a flashing light out of the corner of one's eyes when the music's the thing.

Or the movie - though I fear I'm fighting a losing battle in the cinema.

I do ask people near me to stop texting, but I feel that my displeasure is less acceptable - and more obviously grumpy - when it's in a Hollywood blockbuster than in a slow French or Japanese art house film (one made by an auteur in homage (with a silent h) to another auteur - you know the type).

I did bang the back of the chair of the man in front of me with a shining phone screen during a cinema screening of a Wagner opera - and I am completely unapologetic about that.

A woman is told off for using her phone in a cinema. Picture by Shutterstock

And I don't condemn the man who pepper-sprayed a phone user in Los Angeles. "A 34-year-old man from California has been arrested after allegedly pepper-spraying a person at a movie theater who was using his cellphone during the film, according to authorities," The Guardian reported.

Arrested?! He might have been given the Medal of Freedom.

And I commend a friend of mine who leant over to a neighbour in the stalls in the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden and said: "Listen, lovie, that may be acceptable in your country but it's not here."

A determined campaign by cinemas to persuade people not to actually talk on the phone seems to have worked so I think we now need one to persuade people that looking at phone screens in cinemas is equally unacceptable. Distractions from the big screen are not acceptable.

The grand, camp, raconteur and performer Quentin Crisp described cinemas as "forgetting chambers" - the lights go down, shutting out the outside world and we are transported to the world on the screen - but not if there's a shiny alternative screen a few rows ahead.

I am heartened, however, by indications that some young people are getting tech fatigue.

Coldplay would once have urged the audience to get out their phones and wave them and create a light show. Not so much anymore: for one song, the band's front man Chris Martin urged the audience to "put their phones in their pockets and their hands in the sky".

If it's good enough for Coldplay, it's good enough for Johann Sebastian Bach.

I shall continue my one-man campaign. I may get looks of disgust from young people with phones glued to their hands but I shall fight on: no phones in cinemas.

It's rude - and you may get a prod from me.

Peter Broelman's view

The editorial cartoon for Monday, October 19, 2026.

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THEY SAID IT: "Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives." - Steven Spielberg

YOU SAID IT: It had been a while since Garry had experienced goosebumps, but a virtual reality exhibition at the Smithsonian in Melbourne did the trick.

"How very sad that after only six decades, the protagonist describes himself as an "old man," writes Malcolm.

"In a way, at 90, I am like your old man, I don't get goosebumps, but on a daily basis I am in awe of the technology of this modern world," a Peter from Victor Harbour writes. "I get a thrill when through my smart phone I discover the beauty of the outside world and through technology the thrill of the universe."

John enjoyed the music recommendation. "Today's piece was all a little above my old white male boomer pea brain lack-of-conscious-thoughts processing capability, Garry, but I loved the track from Gang of Youths. Aussie band. Hadn't heard them before but will add to my playlist."

Maggie's grandchildren aren't prone to awe and wonder, "but watching a lamb being born, get to its feet and follow its mother floored them."

Jennifer recalls listening to her mother's young cousin playing hymns on the church organ: "But then, without warning and just because he could, John launched into Bach's toccata and fugue ... with all the stops out!" she writes. "The low beginning notes vibrated through the floor, the seat, and my body, and rattled my bones! It felt like standing on a sand dune or a cliff edge facing into a stiff sea breeze that blew through every molecule in my body and the spaces in between."

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