Back to the Video Store

A couple of years ago, an episode of the TV show Parks and Rec took place at a high school prom. At one point, one of the teenagers at the dance proudly proclaims, “I only listen to CDs. They’re the way music is meant to be heard.” It’s a funny gag because it pokes fun at our hipster friends who insist that vinyl is a more important 20th century invention than penicillin. It’s also an insightful joke because it draws attention to our nostalgia for certain kinds of media reception and how we often insist that we have just left the golden age and are now suffering through lesser times.

I thought of that joke last weekend when my wife and I did something we haven’t done in four years – we went to a video store. It was a scene you’re probably familiar with – it was a cold Friday night and my fingers were freezing as I was trying to scroll through the new releases on my neighborhood Redbox. Some guy was parked right behind me, his headlights blaring into my back, while someone else stood just a couple of feet away, disk in hand, obviously waiting just to return his movie to the machine I was occupying. Of course, the one movie I wanted was out.

The idea of driving to other Redboxes didn’t appeal to me at all, so once I got back into the car, I said, “What if we just went to a video store?” My wife looked at me as though I had just suggested that we go down to the malt shop for a sock hop or perhaps that we just head home to churn our own butter. But she wanted to see the movie too, so off to the video store we went.

 

As we browsed around, I was struck by how quaint and old fashioned it seemed to pick up actual physical movie covers and read printed words to decide whether or not we wanted them.  But I also noticed how communal the video store is. We listened to a couple in the next aisle argue about whether or not to get rent another Paranormal Activity movie. The girl looked at my wife and I and rolled her eyes letting us know this was not the first time she’d had this discussion. A group of kids ran around the children’s section, yelling for their mom every time they found something they liked. The clerks chatted with each other and made nice with the people checking out their movies. It was friendly. It was human.

The Redbox experience is quick and convenient at best, but awkward and a pain at worst. Streaming is easy, but it’s also kind of lonely.

Several months ago I did a show praising small, vintage single-screen theaters, encouraging people to support them because they’re a beautiful, elegant part of our past that deserves to be preserved. I’m not ready to say video stores have that kind of cultural value just yet. Right now, they’re an odd anachronism. Video stores are like 8-track players. They still work and there’s nothing wrong with them, but you have to wonder how long it will be before they get replaced completely. I’ll be interested to see, in the seemingly inevitable age of universal wi-fi, if video stores will become more like vinyl record shops – small, highly specialized havens for people who think they’re the way movies are meant to be seen.

This was originally broadcast on www.deltabroadcasting.org.