Material World

I follow a lot of film aficionados on Twitter, and there's been a steady increase there of consternation regarding the streaming wars that are heating-up with the arrival of Disney+ and other rivals joining the fray. A few years ago, some folks would smugly proclaim, for all to hear, how they were "cutting the cord" from cable and going to save a lot of money by streaming. That was back when Netflix and Hulu were about the only games in town. Now, a plethora of streaming services await our hard-earned cash, and barely any are well-rounded enough to serve as someone's sole streaming platform.

Coupled with the myriad of choices opening up faster than multiverses crashing into one another is the issue that certain film aficionados also like to mention, which is the reality that we are basically paying to continually rent movies and TV shows from streaming services. We never truly own them, as we're at the mercy of the streaming service to keep the content available. Quite often, the content will go away at some point, whether you've paid to own it, or not. This opens the door for some folks to promote the dying art of DVD/Blu-ray ownership, or "physical media" as it's called by many. Some will even thump their chest and talk about how buying physical media these days is a pretty radical statement.

While I agree that if you truly want to own a movie or TV show, you'd do well to purchase a physical copy of it, the escalation of rhetoric and worry surrounding streaming services and ownership of creative content got me to thinking how it didn't use to be like this. This point was brought home t'other day when someone on Twitter lamented how they hadn't watched a certain movie in a couple years because the streaming service they subscribe to removed it awhile back, and the DVD is out of print. They mentioned how they were scanning the channels, hoping it would be shown there at some point. I read that and thought, 'This dude's rockin' it like it's pre-VHS.'

I am just old enough to remember when home video became a thing, and life before cable (barely), and before VCRs. And, even when cable came along, it paled in comparison to today's version. There were far fewer channels available. The concept of owning a copy of a film, or being able to watch a movie on a whim was completely foreign. Even as a kid, it took me some time to adjust to it. I mention all of this because the advent of home video is not akin to, say, indoor plumbing. Having access to clean, running water changed society dramatically for the better, and we should never look back. Home video changed society, yes, but people treat it like indoor plumbing and, well, it's not. We don't need it. In fact, I sometimes still find it to be an odd reality.

As I become comfortably ensconced within middle-age, the thought occurs more frequently that I've probably got too much stuff. You can go ahead and remove the "probably" from that. Like, yeah, sure, I own some of my favorite movies on DVD or Blu-ray, and there's this idea of owning them that provides me with a sense of comfort and satisfaction but, really, how often do I actually watch them? They sit on a shelf collecting dust more frequently than they're in the player. That, coupled with the reality that the time will come when I'll either die and leave all this crap for someone to sort through, or I'll eventually get rid of them via garage sales or eBay, rather hits the pause button on collecting much more physical media.

We survived quite well before VCRs, cable, HBO, DVDs, Blu-rays and streaming. They're a nice, middle-class privilege, but let's not pretend to die on some hill over them. Whenever I hear the cries of, 'Physical media is dying!' I pause and wonder, 'Whoever said it was permanent?' It's only really been around in a prominent fashion for a little over thirty years. Longer than a fad, less than an institution. Owning copies of movies and TV shows is a nice convenience that we've turned into a necessity. Perhaps it's time to let go? We could all do with a little less crap in our lives, anyway.