Fans line up...

Current events with commentary by Rabbi Avigdor Miller

From The New York Times:

​Star Wars Fans Turn Out in Droves
LONDON — In Manila, a 27-year-old ballet dancer named Mika Fabella began weeping as John Williams’s orchestral score filled the cinema. In Bangkok, Winyou Sukhumwat, 40... declared, “I feel alive again.” In Paris, Jérémy Forges, a 32-year-old security guard, took a day off from work so he could stand in line for five hours to catch the 10 a.m. screening at the sumptuous Grand Rex theater... ​

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People are looking for substitutes. They know that in their heart of hearts they want to see something...

From True Happiness (#685):
The Gemara says in the World to Come , there’s no eating and drinking. Yet the World to Come is a place of the most intense enjoyment. What is that? 

“Tzaddikim yoshvim v’nehenin m’ziv hashechina — Tzaddikim are sitting there forever and, they enjoy the sight of the splendor of the Shechina.” They enjoy to look at Hashem. To look at Hashem, that’s the greatest happiness. Now to us right now it’s understandable. People pay a lot of money to go to places where they “look.” 

Of course they look at foolishness. They waste time going to look. Go to the movies and theaters, it’s crowded with people standing in line to look at what? Nothing. Imaginary things. It’s only a picture, it’s only light falling on the film. There’s nothing there at all. And the story never happened. The whole thing is false. It’s silly too, and many times even vicious and immoral. 
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But we see the desire to look is an intense pleasure. Only people are looking for substitutes. They know that in their heart of hearts they want to see something. “Ritzoneinu liros es malkeinu — Our desire is to see our King.” That’s our greatest hope, they said at Har Sinai: We want to see our King. And therefore people look for substitutes and look for everything else, except what they’re supposed to see in this world.