25 July 2004

At the movies, Finns are remarkably undemonstrative. In the small city of Tampere, I caught a screening of Spider-Man 2 (in Finnish and Swedish subtitles) with a midsized native audience. Having already seen this movie in New York, where the audience was about as vocal and enthusiastic as any I'd ever seen, I had a reasonable baseline for comparison. As far as I can tell, the Finns didn't make a sound throughout the movie: not a laugh, cheer, or clap, and at the end, they filed out in complete silence. I presume that most of them enjoyed the movie (most people of any nation, I think, would have a reasonably good time at Spider-Man 2), but as a rule, they don't seem to be as vocal as their American cousins. For all I know, Finns might find an American audience to be unbearably obnoxious.

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