“The usherette’s reverie, if any (she may be dozing), centers our involvement. She has seen the film. Wanting to be elsewhere, she is elsewhere. Where are we? I think we are in Plato’s Cave, perceiving layered dispositions of reality—those of the movie, the audience, the usherette, the theatre, and the civilization that must have theatres. I comprehend the picture’s economy when I imagine something that is necessarily absent from it: noise, the clamor of a soundtrack that fills the space and assaults the usherette’s unwilling ears. Life goes on? No, it roars on, indifferent to all who have temporary shares in it. We exist in the middle of a rush so constant that it resembles stillness.” — Peter Schjeldahl, “Ordinary People,” The New Yorker, May 21, 2007