Cinematic Controversy

Union Station 9, the eponymous station’s basement movie theater, will soon shutter. The failing economy is to blame, but apparently the theater incites some pretty strong emotions—and not just for the pictures on the big screen.

“Some patrons were appalled at how Union Station audiences cheered, jeered and otherwise made noise during the movie, while other patrons felt they were singled out for undue attention from security guards,” writes columnist Marc Fisher in today’s Washington Post. “The divide sometimes turned into a debate about race and class—not exactly what a movie theater operator is hoping for.”

Union Station 9 opened in 1988 as part of the station’s makeover, and each of its theaters are named for the District’s classic old theaters (the Roxy, Palace, Orpheum, Penn, et al). Fisher typically bemoans the “passing of all great old pre-greed movie houses” but seems pretty happy to see this one go, saying there was “nothing classic about the look or experience of the Union Station multiplex.” In part that’s because its unique location put it squat at D.C.’s geographic crossroads between affluence and poverty, in some ways becoming just another theoretical symbol of America’s raging culture war—here, representing “the very different moviegoing cultures in this country.”

Now, I’ve never been to this cinema, so I can’t speak to any of these claims personally. Still, I tend to side with DCist’s conclusion that maybe we shouldn’t be so psyched over the fact that the only District cinema not located in Northwest will soon be no more (though, admittedly, the cinema is awfully close to Northwest). To read the posted comments to Fisher’s column, you’d think Union Station 9 had personally degraded some of these folks’ lives.

Come on, people. Just go somewhere else if you hate it so much. How do you justify glee when it means the latest disadvantage for a part of D.C. already overlooked and under-served?