Dearness Only...

Tell me if this sounds familiar: you sit down on your couch or bed to watch a movie on a streaming service and start clicking through the possibilities. There are the shiny, new releases, the ones you kind of wanted to see in the theater but just didn’t get around to. There are the critical darlings that you’ve heard a lot about and know you “should” see, but you’re not sure if you’re in the mood for something “important.” Then there’s the host of old favorites – movies from when you were a kid, that comedy that never stops being funny, that cool action movie with that one scene. You click back and forth, weighing the length and likely entertainment value of each movie, and after twenty or thirty minutes of indecisive clicking around, you give up and binge-watch a bunch of episodes of The Office. Is this you or is it just me?

I have been thinking a lot about this phenomenon and asking myself what the problem is. Why is it so hard to just pick a movie and watch it when I have thousands at my disposal and free time each night to watch? As I ponder this question, the words of two different influential Americans come to mind. First are those of Thomas Paine, one of America’s founding fathers and an influential pamphleteer of the revolutionary era. Paine wrote, “the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; ’tis dearness only that gives everything its value.” The other influential American is the Boss himself, Mr. Bruce Springstein, who, on his 1992 Human Touch album, included his song, “57 Channels (and nothin’ on).”

 The thing that occurs to me is that we have an overabundance of ease and choice. Streaming technology has made movie-going so easy, not only do we not have to get dressed, get in the car, buy the tickets, find seats, and wait for the lights to dim, we don’t even have to walk across the room to a shelf and crack open a DVD case anymore. Watching movies is so easy, it almost doesn’t mean anything. Watching a three-hour long feature film created by thousands with a budget of millions intended to change lives is physically the same as watching a Youtube video of a four year old unboxing PJ Masks toys. The convenience of our technology has cost us something in the way of ritual and distinction.

Additionally, there’s such an abundance of choice, we are often paralyzed by possibilities. When there are three movies on the marquee or sitting in cases on the coffee table, it’s easy to decide which one is the better way to spend ninety minutes. When there are three thousand, where do you even begin? Even if you narrow it by genre, how do you choose between seventy five sci fi movies? When everything is available, it’s almost as though nothing is.  

There’s no stopping streaming technology or cutting back on what is available to us. The only thing we can do is choose to be more mindful about how, when, and why we consume movies. I can choose to be more purposeful when using a streaming service by researching ahead of time what’s available and deciding then what to watch instead of just mindlessly browsing. I can consciously decide to screen more movies at the theater so I am invested in what I’m watching because I am paying the money and taking the time to be in that environment rather than just on my couch at home. Our decisions about how, when, and why we watch films are a big part of what gives the movie-watching experience meaning. If we want to really watch movies instead of just having them on in the background of our lives, if we want movies to have value, we have to treat them as though they are dear to us. Otherwise, it’s just 5700 channels and nothing on.