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VOA慢速英语2013 Watching a Film in Your Car, Before the Age of the Small Screen

时间:2013-06-04 09:20来源:互联网 提供网友:nan   字体: [ ]
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Watching a Film in Your Car, Before the Age of the Small Screen

From VOA Learning English, welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in Special English. I’m June Simms.

Drive-in movie theaters are considered an American invention. Drive-ins became very popular in the United States after World World Two. They combined two popular loves in America: cars and movies. So why did most of the drive-ins later close? That was a question VOA's Christopher Cruise often wondered about. This week on our program he looks for the answer.

The first drive-in movie theater opened in the United States in 1933. Popular Science magazine described a theater in Camden, New Jersey1, as the first of its kind in the word: an open-air movie theater just for motorists. People could watch a film on the big screen while sitting in their car, eating, talking and relaxing.

Many drive-in theaters opened in the 1950s, as the American economy expanded after the war and more people bought cars.

In the 1960s -- when I was a boy -- there were between 4,000 and 6,000 drive-in theaters in the United States. I lived in the northeastern state of Maine. Not a lot of people live there. Yet my parents could take me and my three brothers and two sisters to any of four drive-ins located within an hour’s drive of our home. But almost as soon as drive-ins were everywhere, their popularity began to fade. Today, fewer than 400 are still operating in the United States.

??April Wright is producing a documentary about drive-in theaters and the special place they held in American culture. The film is called "Going Attractions: The Rise and Fall of the Drive-In as an American Icon2." She plans to release it early next year on the eightieth anniversary of the opening of the first drive-in theater.

April Wright visited more than 400 current and former drive-in sites across the country during her research for her film. Drive-ins, she tells me, were "the perfect blend of entertainment and car culture." They represented the hopefulness that followed the war, when the soldiers came home and millions of babies were born.

"So at the time they flourished, it was after the baby boom, and so there was the convergence of a strong economy and lots of kids and car culture -- people being able to afford cars. There wasn’t really television at that point in all the homes. And so it was just sort of this thing that families did where they saw their neighbors, where they took their kids. And it was this whole evening out that was very social, very wholesome3 for the communities, and that’s when they started."

So why did drive-ins lose their appeal? April Wright looked for the reason.

"The more I looked into it, I realized it wasn’t a single factor, not only that made drive-ins go on the decline but also what made them flourish. There is a common denominator and it’s completely cultural. They rose really quickly -- the spike4 is sort of narrow. And they also declined very quickly -- the spike there is also kind of narrow. They rose really quickly in the late '40s and they declined really quickly in the early '80s, so they had about a 40-year span of popularity."

??In the 1960s, families were breaking up as the divorce rate rose sharply in the United States. April Wright thinks that is one reason drive-ins closed: A shared family experience like going to a drive-in movie lost some of its appeal.

But another reason many drive-ins closed was their location. Many had been built outside cities on land that at the time was not very valuable.

But as the American population grew, more and more people moved from the cities to the suburbs.

Soon, many drive-in theaters found themselves surrounded by houses and stores rather than by forests or empty land. Now the land was very valuable. Offers from developers to buy the land became hard to resist for the owners. After all, fewer people were going to drive-ins, and property taxes were increasing because the land was now worth more.

Also, in some areas, insects, especially mosquitoes, were a problem. They would fly into open car windows during the movie. Some drive-in theaters sold insect-killing kits5. I can tell you from personal experience that these helped, but not much.

In northern areas of the United States, drive-in theaters were open just a few months of the year. In the north, nights can get cold even during the summer. Blankets and portable heaters helped -- but, again, not much.

Even when the drive-ins were open, the theaters often sat unused during daylight hours. Sometimes, the land would be used for open-air markets during the day, but these did not bring a lot of income. What did bring a lot of money in many cases was when the land was sold to build homes, shopping centers and office buildings.

There were other problems for drive-in theaters, especially in the late 1960s. Some of the older theaters were dirty and not well-maintained. The quality of the films declined. And the spread of daylight saving time meant the sun might not set until eight or even nine o’clock. This may have reduced attendance, although some people disagree. But, at the same time, other changes were taking place with popular entertainment. More people were buying color televisions. And more indoor theaters were opening with multiple choices of films.

The 1970s and '80s brought video rentals6 and cable TV with many choices of channels. Television made it easier, and cheaper, to stay home for entertainment. By the end of the eighties, the number of drive-in theaters had fallen by two-thirds from their peak.

Today, we live in a time of what documentary filmmaker April Wright calls "the individualization of the entertainment experience." There are more choices and more ways than ever to experience entertainment. If you really want to watch a movie in your car, you could watch it on a DVD player or stream video on a mobile device. You don't have to go to a drive-in anymore. But some people still do.

An owners group says 42 new drive-in theaters have been built since the nineteen nineties. And 63 former ones have reopened. But not all the news is good. Some of the new and reopened theaters have since closed.

And another challenge is coming. The movie industry is moving to digital distribution of films to theaters. The cost of having to upgrade to digital equipment may be more than many older, struggling drive-ins can afford.

Many of today's drive-in theaters are owned by families rather than big movie theater companies. In many cases the owners are the children or grandchildren of the first owners. Drive-ins seem to be operated at least as much from a passion to keep them open as a desire for profit. The owners believe the theaters are important to their community.

Earlier this year, Donald Brown purchased the Skowhegan Drive-In in the small town of Skowhegan, Maine. He operated a drive-in theater in the state of Delaware for 14 years. That theater was profitable, he says, and he believes he can make a profit with his new theater by focusing on families. Young people, he says, are not going to see movies at the drive-in anymore. For that, he blames video games, the Internet and mobile phones.

"One of the things that we noticed dramatically beginning in 2005 was the disappearance7 of the young adult audience that really sustained us through the fall. The films that would attract that audience just did not bring them in after two thousand four and it seemed to correspond with the availability of the electronic media."

The Skowhegan Drive-In opened in 1954. It has space for three hundred fifty cars. Donald Brown told me he was surprised by the level of reaction in the community when he bought the theater.

"It’s astounding8. We’ve really had an outpouring of support on the Facebook page, the website and just while I’m working up there during the day, the number of people who’ve come in and inquire as to when we’re opening -- ‘I hope you’re not closing this and redeveloping the land’ -- has really been very supportive."

He says it shows that even today, with all the other entertainment choices available, drive-in movie theaters can still be an important focus in the cultural life of a community.


点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 jersey Lp5zzo     
n.运动衫
参考例句:
  • He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
  • They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致,都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。
2 icon JbxxB     
n.偶像,崇拜的对象,画像
参考例句:
  • They found an icon in the monastery.他们在修道院中发现了一个圣像。
  • Click on this icon to align or justify text.点击这个图标使文本排齐。
3 wholesome Uowyz     
adj.适合;卫生的;有益健康的;显示身心健康的
参考例句:
  • In actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome.实际上我喜欢做的事大都是有助于增进身体健康的。
  • It is not wholesome to eat without washing your hands.不洗手吃饭是不卫生的。
4 spike lTNzO     
n.长钉,钉鞋;v.以大钉钉牢,使...失效
参考例句:
  • The spike pierced the receipts and held them in order.那个钉子穿过那些收据并使之按顺序排列。
  • They'll do anything to spike the guns of the opposition.他们会使出各种手段来挫败对手。
5 kits e16d4ffa0f9467cd8d2db7d706f0a7a5     
衣物和装备( kit的名词复数 ); 成套用品; 配套元件
参考例句:
  • Keep your kits closed and locked when not in use. 不用的话把你的装备都锁好放好。
  • Gifts Articles, Toy and Games, Wooden Toys, Puzzles, Craft Kits. 采购产品礼品,玩具和游戏,木制的玩具,智力玩具,手艺装备。
6 rentals d0a053f4957bbe94f4c1d9918956d75b     
n.租费,租金额( rental的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • In some large hotels, the income derived from this source actually exceeds income from room rentals. 有些大旅馆中,这方面的盈利实际上要超过出租客房的盈利。 来自辞典例句
  • Clerk: Well, Canadian Gifts is on the lower level. It's across from Prime Time Video Rentals. 噢,礼品店在楼下,在黄金时刻录像出租屋的对面。 来自口语例句
7 disappearance ouEx5     
n.消失,消散,失踪
参考例句:
  • He was hard put to it to explain her disappearance.他难以说明她为什么不见了。
  • Her disappearance gave rise to the wildest rumours.她失踪一事引起了各种流言蜚语。
8 astounding QyKzns     
adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊,使大吃一惊astound的现在分词)
参考例句:
  • There was an astounding 20% increase in sales. 销售量惊人地增加了20%。
  • The Chairman's remarks were so astounding that the audience listened to him with bated breath. 主席说的话令人吃惊,所以听众都屏息听他说。 来自《简明英汉词典》
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TAG标签:   VOA慢速英语  Age  Screen
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