Here comes the bull

First, I really couldn't hold it in while writing this article, but I finished it anyway, still caught in that state of barely containing myself; looking back, from the perspective of abstract art, wasn't *The Cow Comes* also a successful work? It indeed triggered widespread collective resonance. In this era, spending twenty or thirty bucks to laugh out loud together for two hours without restraint or guard—I feel it's quite a worthwhile transaction.

Rediscovering the collective warmth of cinema through *The Cow Comes*

A friend recently mentioned a movie called *The Cow Comes*, saying he hadn't had such an experience in a theater in a long time. At first, I thought it was some masterpiece, the title didn't give much away, and I even suspected it might be some rural literary film. But as soon as we sat down, it felt like being struck by lightning.

But after actually experiencing it, the feeling changed. It was as if everyone in the audience was hit by something simultaneously. When it was time to laugh, we all laughed—unrestrained, unguarded, roaring laughter. We didn't feel like we were watching a movie; it felt more like participating in some kind of collective game. The barrier between the screen and the audience seemed to vanish. I didn't feel like I was appreciating a piece of art; instead, I felt like I had returned to a more primitive, authentic state.

A group of people gathered around a fire, listening to someone tell stories.

Thinking carefully about it, this kind of experience has indeed become nearly extinct in today's film market. It's not that current movies are bad, nor that audiences don't love going to the cinema anymore. Rather, the way we watch films—and our very mode of existence when sitting in a theater—has undergone a fundamental shift.

What did cinema originally look like?

In 1895, when the Lumière brothers screened *Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat* in Paris, it is said that the audience screamed in terror, believing the train was actually coming out of the screen. Hearing this story today, we find it funny, viewing it as a reaction born of ignorance and backwardness.

However, this humor exposes the massive shift in our relationship with cinema. People back then hadn't yet learned to keep their distance from the screen. They greeted images with a kind of bodily presence. For them, the screen wasn't a wall but a window—a window through which living things could rush toward you.

This state reminds me of temple fairs I saw in my childhood countryside. The climax of these fairs involved opera performances or open-air screenings. Villagers would squeeze together on benches, children darting through the crowd, elders commenting loudly while watching. At exciting moments, cheers echoed skyward. This wasn't a place for artistic appreciation; it was a space for shared life. There were no boundaries between stage and audience, nor between inside and outside the frame. Everyone gathered not for aesthetic education, but simply for liveliness—for that sense of togetherness.

But later, the film industry gradually tamed this folk energy. Cinema was moved into luxurious mall rooftops, enclosed in dark, quiet rooms with plush seats. We were taught to watch civilized films: no talking, no noise, ideally even suppressing the sound of eating popcorn.

The screen became sacred, the audience individualized, and viewing turned into almost religious personal cultivation.

You come alone, sit alone, face that giant glowing wall alone, then leave alone. Who sits next to you, what reactions they have—it doesn't matter. In fact, you'd better not notice them, because doing so would disrupt your immersion.

This is certainly progress, a necessary path for cinema as an art form maturing and becoming refined. But the cost of progress is that we lost that shared physical warmth. Cinema moved from temple fairs to churches. It became solemn, yes, but that steaming vitality slowly cooled down.

Benjamin's aura, instinctual atavism.

Artworks in the age of mechanical reproduction lose their aura because the unique "here and now" of the original is flattened by copies. As the most typical mechanically reproduced art, cinema should theoretically suffer the greatest loss of aura.

Yet strangely, Benjamin also held a utopian hope for cinema. He believed mass screening might foster a new collective perception—a testing ground where audiences could move from passive reception to active participation.Looking back today, Benjamin's optimism seems unfounded. Instead of fostering more engaged masses, the film industry trained audiences into gentler, lonelier consumers.

But *The Cow Comes*' viewing experience made me vaguely feel that the possibility Benjamin described has always lurked within our bodies, merely suppressed for too long. When a film happens to shed all artistic pretensions, stops demanding you sit upright to appreciate greatness, and instead proves rough enough, direct enough, unpretentious enough—that moment awakens the temple-fair instinct buried deep inside us.

We start laughing—not politely, but uncontrollably, leaning forward and backward, even slapping the thigh of the person beside us. We shout, sigh, hold our breath simultaneously.

We cease to be aesthetic subjects. We revert to a group gathered beneath the old locust tree at the village entrance. The images on screen are merely an excuse. What truly satisfies us is the breathing and voices of those alive around us, resonating at the same frequency.

This is essentially atavism. But atavism isn't necessarily bad. Sometimes, returning to ancestral roots helps recover what we carelessly dropped along the evolutionary path.

The collective ritual function of cinemas

I once wrote that cinemas may be among the last remaining legitimate spaces in modern society where strangers can openly share emotions together.

Our lives today are highly atomized. You scroll on your phone at home, stare at computers in offices, wear headphones on subways. You encounter countless pieces of information daily, but most are tailored specifically for you. You see only what you want to see, hear only what you agree with. Rarely do you share time and space with people of diverse backgrounds and tastes, facing the same thing, then getting struck by the same emotion.

More seriously, we've even grown unfamiliar with being struck. We prefer staying safely within our informational cocoons, expressing emotions via bullet comments and reviews rather than real, bodily, irreversible laughter or tears. Bullet comments are safe because you hide behind screens; reviews are safe because you can choose your words carefully. But collective bursts of laughter in cinemas are unsafe. They expose you. They make you share a soul for one second with a complete stranger who likely shares nothing in common with you.

This is the power of ritual. Rituals don't require understanding—they demand participation. *The Cow Comes* unintentionally activated this ritual potential inherent in cinemas. It didn't deliberately pursue artistic heights nor try to educate anyone. It simply provided a good enough pretext, allowing strangers in darkness to jointly complete a synchronized emotional oscillation.

What I miss isn't cinema itself

I miss the experience of everyone immersed in one film. What I truly miss isn't cinema itself, but that simultaneous, synchronous human connection. Being seen, heard, responded to—even if the responders are people you'll never meet again.

From its inception, cinema carried contradictory genes. It is both the most private art—you face inner projections alone in darkness—and the most public art—you always need companionship to complete the act of watching.

Over past decades, industrialization, artistic refinement, and elitization of cinema heavily emphasized its privacy while sacrificing its public nature. Films like *The Cow Comes*, using an almost inadvertent, somewhat crude method, returned that sacrificed public dimension to audiences.

Perhaps this is cinema's most essential quality. It doesn't need exquisite production or profound themes. It just needs to gather people together, turning that glowing wall into a window, allowing events inside and outside the window to embrace each other momentarily.

*The Cow Comes*' success as abstract cultural communication represents not technological triumph, but human 回归 (return). We are no longer isolated viewers; we are co-present kin.

If there are more such moments, perhaps the temple-fair era of cinema hasn't ended yet. And we can finally comfort ourselves: in an age where everything can be algorithmically pushed, watched at double speed, consumed in fragments, we still possess the luxury of requiring simultaneous presence.

Cinemas remain among us.