It’s been almost a decade since I moved off strictly paper and onto an e-reader platform. I’ve been writing about it for just as long – back when the Pretend Blog was a Live Journal page and not my own site (check it out if you’re into old news). I’ve long been considering what I want to have as part of a physical collection of things in my home and what I don’t have a desire to physically handle. There are some things that are inherently tactile, and those that are not. There are some that you’ll want to have a copy of, just to be sure you’ve always got access to that copy of it.
Books, and many other forms of entertainment media fall into this category. I’m going to tie books and movies and television together on this one as electronic media actually makes the same argument for a physical copy of something in each case. The most recent thing that has come up for debate is animation or films. Here in the digital age we (nominally) have access to all the media that has gone before. Remember a show from your childhood? Look it up and check it out. Want to watch an entire ‘season’ of a show without waiting? Binge it on Netflix. Have a tradition of watching something every year? Just flip on the TV and go! Right?
Well ~ that’s what’s gotten everyone’s attention right now. “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” will NOT be shown on network TV this year for the first time since 1966. That’s right – 54 years in a row and not this year. Television has been part of the American household for so many decades at this point that there are generations of people that have watched the same shows as part of their favorite holiday season. It is something they never miss.
They never miss until some massive corporation decides they want you to pay for it again and again rather than allowing the ‘payment’ to be in the form of watching advertising. Apple has decided they’re going to miss it this year. Sure, there’s some Byzantine way to give up some of your personal information and sign up for a “free” version of a service and watch the show on your computer – IF you can get the app to load right, if your internet is strong enough for streaming like that, if you have a device that allows more than one person at a time to watch comfortably, if you really feel like going through all that…
There’s this assumption that everyone is on board with paying for all these services and bending technology to their will in order to enjoy the chosen form of media. Then there’s the assumption that people will only want to see that when the company that has purchased the rights says it’s acceptable to see it. Then you will be able to see it, but only in the way or format that the company that purchased the rights deems acceptable. There are now content warnings in front of old movies. Smoking is listed under movie ratings now in case you don’t want your child to see that. They control and edit what version of the media you get to see.
It’s the way things are moving. I’m not entirely opposed to the way things are moving. I think there are a few things that border on the ludicrous, but the truly ridiculous generally resolves itself over time. What worries me is that people consider this loss of continuity in media to be the loss of their personal tradition. Wrapping up your tradition (happiness?) in something that belongs to others is dangerous.
It was Halloween season and we were down for good old scary movies. I wanted to show my daughter a great older movie the other day and was disappointed to discover that I didn’t actually own a copy. Fine, we’ll pull it up on a streaming service and watch it there. Only it’s now behind a pay wall. I can subscribe for an additional $5 per month OR I can buy a DVD copy off Amazon and have it shipped to me for about the same cost. There are times when owning a personal copy of something really matters. I don’t want to wait until some corporation decides it’s time to watch a movie. I want to allow our family traditions to grow and develop and continue without the influence of whatever is going on in the general media.
So I’ll be ordering a copy of ‘great pumpkin’ on DVD to be sure we can watch it when we want. I’ll get a copy of the movie that’s good enough to stick in my memory for 15+ years. I’ll be sure that when I want to watch something, read something, listen to something that I’ve got a copy here. Most of these things will still be digital, but they’ll be here when the time is right.
What’s the biggest gap in your collection?
