The Golden Age of Streaming: Why Streaming Video Will Preserve Film, Not Cause Its Ruin

I’ve been obsessed with watching movies ever since I was a kid. I don’t know how or why it started, but I do remember that a frequent subject of arguments in my house revolved around R-rated movies. My parents were pretty strict about it, meaning I didn’t get a free pass to see everything I wanted until I was 16 (which, coincidentally, was when I was able to drive myself to the video store and rent movies without needing someone to accompany me). As an adult, I know why they felt like they needed to protect me from the bad language, the sex, and the violence in the movies I wanted to watch; back then, on the other hand, I was only resentful because it threw a wrench into my plan to see every movie I could possibly watch.

There was one other thing stopping me from my quest to watch everything: where I grew up. My tiny town in Virginia was an hour from the closest movie theater, meaning that, until I could drive, I had to either get someone to take me to a movie or simply wait for them to come out on video. (Even when I was able to drive to the closest city by myself, I was still blocked from seeing R-rated movies by the box office cashiers who wouldn’t let anyone under the age of 17 inside.) My town did have a video store, but it didn’t have many of the indie movies I had read about in my subscription to Entertainment Weekly (I started buying it at 14), which meant my queue only grew longer and longer as I approached college.

The library at my university was a blessing, mostly because it had an extensive media center that offered, among a very vast selection of film titles, nearly every movie in the Criterion Collection. I started taking film studies classes my sophomore year, and that first survey course offered me the chance to see movies I had never heard of but found to be incredibly important because they had influenced and inspired the movies I loved so much. My film knowledge expanded surely because I had two professors to guide me in the right directions (shout-out to Robert Hoskins and Jim Ruff at James Madison University!), but also because I finally had the access I previously lacked.

This was, of course, years before Netflix introduced its streaming service in 2007. That launch, and the subsequent launches of Amazon Instant Video and Hulu, meant that suddenly more and more movies were available to me. Around the same time, I was living in a major metropolitan city (Chicago) where limited-release indie films actually played in theaters as opposed to my sleepy college town in the Shenandoah Valley. And now, as a New Yorker, I have a lot of chances to see both new and old films on big screens. The vast selection of movies available on myriad streaming services is still convenient, for sure, but it’s not the only place for me to find and experience great cinema.

It’s with that in mind that I take anti-streaming comments made by auteurs like Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers with a grain of salt. I get it: they are of the classic cinematic tradition. They want their films to be seen on big screens, to be projected and viewed on celluloid. (And they are, of course — they’re making films released by major studios now, a far cry from their early days working in the indie world.) Tarantino, specifically, seems to value the analog, physical experience of the movie as a physical object — I mean, the dude tapes things off of TV onto VHS instead of watching Netflix, which seems like an exhausting option (but who am I to judge his artisanal home video tastes?). He in particular forgets his own reliance on the wide variety in a video store; just imagine if he were an aspiring filmmaker today, in an era when the video stores are closing — I don’t think he’d be so dismissive of streaming services, do you?

Of course, who knows! But here’s what I do know: I can only imagine how expansive my knowledge and love for movies would be if growing up I had the access I have now. If I didn’t have to hope and pray that a weird little indie movie might actually arrive at my local video store. If I didn’t have to beg my parents to drive me an hour away to see a movie in the theater. If I could have my own film studies course as a weird, lonely teenager who wanted to stay and watch (and read about) movies at home. I’d like to think a new generation of audiences, who might not have the access to film courses at a university, will still have the opportunity to express their eager desire to learn about cinema through online resources.

I understand that every generation fears technology to a certain extent, and there are plenty who worry that our online-focused world is the death of the sometimes communal experience of film. And sure, the creators of classic films like Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia might not have wanted their massive, widescreen films squeezed onto a laptop screen (and David Lynch has ranted about the concept of any eager young film enthusiast watching Blue Velvet on his or her iPhone). But they probably wouldn’t have wanted their films to go unseen, either. I don’t see the point in suggesting that certain movies shouldn’t be watched on a mobile device; I’d rather hear of people gaining access to those pieces of cinema in a small format than not at all. (And, to be honest, any argument to the contrary only comes across as silly film snobbery — and makes you look like a grumpy old coot at best and an elitist at worst.)

The access to stream films online, either through subscription services like Hulu or Amazon Prime or through purchase and rentals through Amazon and iTunes, opens the doors to new generations of film lovers who might not have the chance to get to a theater. And that breeds a new crop of film buffs who can grasp a sense of history and continue the long tradition of supporting film in the manner in which it was originally consumed: on a big screen. But that screen isn’t the only option anymore, and we’re better for it. It’s the Golden Age of Streaming, and it will only get better.

 

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