This weekend, I was at a Town Hall thrown by my very liberal district’s Democrat state representatives. They were taking questions from the audience, and confronting some answers with bizarre logic answers. One question asked “Your budget is projected to have a shortfall of $500m annually for the next four years. How you plan to reconcile that?” To which the canned response was “In a budget of $3+ b, $500m is a margin of error.” The next question was about film subsidies, of which Washington only gives $3m annually, and they said “Well, given that we have a $500m projected shortfall, that subsidy of $3m makes a huge difference.” I laughed. Later, they dodged answers about rent control, during which I made overt jerking off motions while rolling my eyes (which they saw) until they finally, sheepishly, answered the question that they disagreed with the district about our opinion. At which point I booed.

Heckling is a time honored tradition to express dissatisfaction with the manufactured slop that’s being dished out. Pelting people with physical objects dates back to Roman times, when Vespasian was pelted with Turnips by dissatisfied people. Verbal Heckling was so ingrained by the 1900s that it was used in Vaudeville acts (Statler and Waldorf are hecklers). In modern times, people throw shoes at politicians, engage in glitter-bombs, and otherwise show their dissatisfaction by interrupting the dominant voice who is supposed to have the command of the room. Just last year, the NYPD pointedly turned their back on Mayor DeBlasio during a funeral in dissatisfaction with his statements about Eric Garner. The act of heckling is an act of dismantling and disrupting the status quo (whether or not you agree with the heckle).

Heckling is also a manner to disrupt something that isn’t working, stage and screen. In 2012, The Guardian made a case for heckling at live productions. On screen, we’re expected to be hushed and quiet consumers only allowed to react in appropriate responses. Some have said that we’re only supposed to heckle in designated areas. The Room isn’t a film that works on any level, unless you openly mock and laugh at it. The cult following of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is built around heckling the characters and disrupting the narrative. MST3K made a massive career out of heckling old movies. But, outside of certain realms, expressions of dissatisfaction are strictly verboten.

But, sometimes it’s appropriate to have a bad reaction, and to be vocal about it. If a majority of a crowd is actively disengaging with a film, there is something wrong with that film. When I died laughing at the end of The Imitation Game regarding the “Today, we call them computers” end card, or when I said “Fuck You” and gave middle fingers to the final end cards while storming out of the theater (to the shock of the people behind me), that was a deserved reaction for the incredible amount of shit that preceded it. When I died laughing at the scarf floating at the end of The Danish Girl, that was a deserved reaction for the incredible amount of shit that preceded it.

Hollywood dishes out an incredible amount of shit at us every day. From “prestige” biopics that reinforce the white heteronormative dominant view to comedies that reduce women and minorities to punch lines and bad cliches. From action movies that show actual contempt for coherency and plot (Transformers 2) to thrillers whose endings contradict the plot elements in the beginning. From dramas about people who don’t exist to horror movies that don’t scare us. Hollywood likes shoving shit in our face all the fucking time.

And, how do we deal with it? Movie theaters won’t refund your money after 15 minutes. Instead, one response is to heckle. The Room didn’t come with plastic spoons to throw at the screen. Rocky Horror didn’t come with rice and toast. Somebody, somewhere, has to believe that the movie deserves heckling, and the audience has to agree that the heckling is appropriate. The website Rotten Tomatoes gets its name from heckling. Cannes is known for heckling films (as this list shows, they heckle films both good and bad). Heckling is, sometimes, the only response to a movie who has broken the contract that we pay to see a movie because it is going to be a decent movie.

Right now, reviewers are losing their shit over audiences hating the shit out of The VVitch, a movie which some people engaged with on a visceral level, but others (like me) found to be far too pretentious, shallow, and Boring to be even creepy (and, sometimes, it was downright funny in its disturbing imagery. Audiences have fired back by growing restless, laughing with derision, and shouting at the screen. That isn’t to say that the people who liked it are wrong. But, the people who heckle aren’t wrong either. There are whole theaters where the majority of the audience, many who were expecting tension and immersion along the lines of The Blair Witch Project, are heckling the shit out of The VVitch for not delivering a good movie. There is nothing known as a Heckle-Free zone, and this is important.

So, readers, is it ever appropriate to heckle? Do you heckle? What would you heckle? Have you heckled in the comment sections of an article? Have you heckled a street heckler “preacher” telling you you’re going to hell? Would you heckle at a Trump rally? The Westboro Baptist Church? The Brown Bunny? Transformers 2? All About Steve?