Popcorn: Synonymous with Movies during Oscar Awards Season
By Veronica MacDonald Ditko
An Accidental Anthropologist
Crunch, peel. Crunch, peel. This is the sound of walking in an old movie theater with layers of soda, candy, and popcorn stuck to the floor. You might even bring some of it home on the soles of your shoes. Amazingly enough, this disgusting experience doesn’t stop the average movie-goer from buying this food, especially the popcorn.
It would be strange to walk into a movie theater and not smell the nutty, warm, partially burnt smell of popcorn. Food concessions are the real money that movie theaters make. It’s not the ticket sales, because all that money goes straight to the movie makers and distributors and copyrighters, etc. No, food is the major boon for the theaters and lucky for them, the average American can’t imagine watching a movie without a bag of popcorn. Our noses and memories connect the two very closely. The average American eats 54 quarts of popcorn a year, according to The Popcorn Board, Chicago, IL.
So how did this pairing come to be? Popcorn, as the folklore goes, was discovered accidentally by a Native American who let a dried corn cob get too close to a fire. Imagine his/her surprise when it started to not only pop loudly, but also shoot out popped kernels at random. Run for cover!
Although its creation was a long time ago, popcorn only became popular in the States during the Great Depression. This snack was very cheap, about 5 or 10 cents a bag and a little luxury for the very poor. Movie theaters were just starting to pop up in masse as a place for the better off to escape. But popcorn was always available for purchase from the theater on the street. No movie watching necessary.
Then during World War II, popcorn’s popularity soared again because sugar rations cut the production of candy in the U.S. Some sources say it caused Americans to eat three times more popcorn than before. Unfortunately, after the war, popcorn slumped.
It wasn’t until popcorn became an at-home food that its fame rose again. Before the popularity of the microwave, Jiffy Pop could be made on the stove top. And these days, a few minutes in the microwave can help us simulate the movie theater experience.
Some may have glorified this treat a bit with caramel, nuts, cheese, etc. But I can tell you that as a former theater concession person, butter and salt (lots of both!) are a favorite of New Jerseyans. And like during the Great Depression, popcorn can be made for pennies using dried corn kernels at home. In these tough economic times, we can all use a little treat, can’t we?
Veronica MacDonald Ditko is originally from the Jersey Shore, but married and settled in northern New Jersey. Her journalism career started a decade ago after studying Psychology and Anthropology in Massachusetts. She has written for several newspapers and magazines including The Daily Hampshire Gazette, The Springfield Union News and Sunday Republican, Happi, Chemical Week, The Hawthorne Press, The Jewish Standard, and more.