Lamentation

I lament the loss of the video rental store.

If you want to watch a movie nowadays, you have to resort to various on-line film databases (like Netflix, Hulu, Daily Motion, Amazon Instant Play, etc.). The problem with this approach, however, is that the variety and quality of the films available in these venues is generally quite poor and quite limited.

You might also go to your public library, which usually has a similarly limited selection, particularly when compared to the likes of the Blockbusters of yesteryear.

You might also rely on RedBox, but the problems here are manifold:

1. Redbox privileges the new, the trendy, the more-recent-than-the-so-2-weeks-ago. In this way, Redbox is the byproduct and expression of democracy, which intentionally blinds itself to all but the most extremely contemporary present. Redbox effectively invites amnesia of anything that is not of the highest presentist strain. Movies that came out more than six months ago will not appear in Redbox, ancient relics of a forgotten time when Blackberry had not even reinvented itself yet, relegated so quickly to the dustbin of history.

Also, Redbox seems to specialize in movies with animal protagonists.

In tandem with the loss of the video rental store has come the loss of the knowledgeable video store geek. I miss you, knowledgeable video store geek! Your demise comes at a heavy price. Gone are the days when your expertise led me quickly and excitedly to explore, upon your recommendation, further films which I may never have otherwise considered. The breadth of your knowledge and your passion for cinema now have no worthy venue. Today, your talent is forced into the shadows, relegated to the realm of anonymous Amazon reviews, an indignity so unbefitting your unique gifts.

Some may write off this view of the past as mere nostalgia, as naive "golden-age thinking" (yes, I saw Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris-- got it from Redbox) that fetishizes history and unfailingly locates utopia in the distant past. All true paradises are lost paradises, after all.

Yet we subscribe too credulously to the facile rhetoric of teleology. "Forward!" the politicians say. Are we always moving forward? Are there not also stops, false starts, regressions, redundancies in our history? Is there never any backsliding in the forward march of time? It was easier ten years ago for me to find the movie I wanted than it is today. Is this progress? Are there not abilities, possibilities, knowledge that get lost from one generation to the next? Were there not multiple apostasies? Do we really know all the things our ancestors knew?

So please do not misunderstand my longing for the snows of yesteryear as mere maudlin tripe. It is inscribed in a recognition that sometimes things get lost, that apostasy requires restoration, that one day all things shall be revealed. This is, for me, the lesson of the fall of the American video rental store.