"In some European theaters, it's still not uncommon to have a late start and three LONG intermissions, because people actually eat and drink and converse during the intermissions"
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Nostalgia, sure, but it is also a quiet indictment of how American culture often treats art like a compliance task: arrive on time, sit still, consume silently, leave quickly. Joe Bob Briggs isn’t just describing European theater logistics; he’s pointing to a different social contract around performance. The “late start” and “three LONG intermissions” read like heresy to anyone trained by Broadway efficiency or the cinema’s conveyor-belt scheduling, yet he frames them as evidence that the audience is allowed to be human: hungry, chatty, alive.
The intent is to romanticize a theater experience that functions less like a sacred temple and more like a public square. People “actually eat and drink and converse” suggests that the real show includes the crowd. Intermission isn’t dead time; it’s the cultural glue that turns spectators into participants. That little “actually” is doing a lot of work, implying that elsewhere these behaviors have been disciplined out of us, or priced out, or replaced by the anxious etiquette of not bothering anyone.
Context matters: Briggs is a critic with a persona built on defending communal, tactile pop culture against sterilized prestige. His praise of intermissions is a critique of modern attention economics. When art is packaged to minimize friction, it also minimizes relationship. The subtext: if you can’t talk about what you’re seeing while you’re seeing it, you’re not sharing an experience; you’re just privately consuming content in public.
The intent is to romanticize a theater experience that functions less like a sacred temple and more like a public square. People “actually eat and drink and converse” suggests that the real show includes the crowd. Intermission isn’t dead time; it’s the cultural glue that turns spectators into participants. That little “actually” is doing a lot of work, implying that elsewhere these behaviors have been disciplined out of us, or priced out, or replaced by the anxious etiquette of not bothering anyone.
Context matters: Briggs is a critic with a persona built on defending communal, tactile pop culture against sterilized prestige. His praise of intermissions is a critique of modern attention economics. When art is packaged to minimize friction, it also minimizes relationship. The subtext: if you can’t talk about what you’re seeing while you’re seeing it, you’re not sharing an experience; you’re just privately consuming content in public.
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| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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