Streaming Upstream

After making your way through the bustle and excitement of the bright and colorful lobby, you find yourself on the threshold of a vast, dimly-lit chamber, lined with row after row of cushioned seats. Whether you’ve bought some for yourself or not, the faint smell of popcorn hangs in the air as you find your way to your seat. Making yourself comfortable — the chair emitting a familiar metallic creak as you lean back — you look out into the space in front of you, making sure that you have, in fact, found your preferred vantage point. But no matter where you are sitting, your forward view is monopolized by a massive rectangular screen, which might be playing a slideshow of local advertisements, or better, appears to be nothing more than an intriguing blank space. In the best case scenario, it might even be obscured by heavy, velvet curtains, whose parting you eagerly and — depending on what you’re here to see — perhaps even fearfully await. The feeling is contagious, a shared heady buzz of anticipation, audible in the murmurs and whispers surrounding you. You might not know anyone else in the room, but whatever happens, you all know you’re in this together. You might even feel giddy enough to enjoy that peculiar stickiness of the floor against the soles of your shoes. Finally, after a brief eternity, the lights begin to fade. You remember how this plunge into darkness terrified you as a child, and somehow it only adds to the thrill. The curtains, if you’re lucky enough to have them, begin to open. You suddenly realize you’re holding your breath. A focused beam of light pierces the blackness and the screen in front of you flickers to life…

I’ve never had this experience.

Not because I’ve never been to the movies. I’ve actually spent the better part of my life in movie theaters. (Though, for a variety of reasons, I haven’t been inside one in over a decade…) But this sort of sensual, fetishized enjoyment of the process of going to the movies is completely alien to me. I’m capable of rendering it vividly only because, throughout my life, seemingly infinite variations of the above paragraph have been recited and repeated to me, whether in fragments or as a whole, by fellow movie freaks. And I have responded with everything from impassive (perhaps patronizing) nods, to disinterested shrugs, to blank stares. Among that increasingly eccentric subsection of the population who call themselves cineastes or cinephiles, I am in the minority in my almost complete indifference to a film’s venue — even its mode — of exhibition.

Don’t get me wrong. I like comfortable seats. I prefer clean, well-maintained screens. A good sound-system can’t be overpraised. But watching movies, for me, has always been about the movie. The pleasure I experience comes from losing myself in the world that opens up in front of me, studying the craftsmanship that brought it to life, and analyzing the artistic vision that shaped it. I’m not saying these things are unimportant — or even less important — to other cinema junkies. I’m saying that while all of us love movies, they also love going to the movies, which, for me, is ancillary to the entire experience, something to be considered only from the most utilitarian perspective.

It’s why it’s been so hard for me to wrap my head around the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments that has greeted Disney’s recent announcement that it would focus its future energies almost exclusively on streaming rather than theatrical exhibition. I know, for most of you, it probably got drowned in the deluge of Covid and Coney Barrett posts, but a small social media blaze was set by various film sites, established critics, and other assorted movie lovers who responded to Disney’s announcement by declaring, “The Death of Cinema!” and “The Beginning of the End!”

And it’s not just that it seems like so much hysteria and hyperbole to me. On some fundamental level, I simply can’t relate. (Or, rather, it seems like hysteria and hyperbole to me because I can’t relate…)

You film aficionados not addled by media-induced ADHD might remember a similar outcry when, not too many years ago, the film industry started to shift from celluloid to DV, only to be met with mournful wails from fans and critics who felt mortally wounded because, of course, movies wouldn’t be real films anymore. Then, as now, I sat on the sidelines scratching my head. I had graduated film school just as the digital revolution was beginning to hit and, even then, had been endlessly bemused by my fellow film students’ elegiac odes to the tactile ecstasies of celluloid. (While I confess I found a certain Zen-like tranquility in my late-night sessions with a Hervic splicer, I only had to sit at an AVID bay for about five minutes to be convinced of its superiority…) To me, the only thing that mattered was whether or not whatever ended up on the screen was engaging and well-crafted. It wasn’t as though the language of film had changed, or would be significantly altered or limited by a filmmaker’s choice of stock. The vocabulary and grammar remained the same, just printed on a different kind of paper. I couldn’t help but wonder if all these people were also nostalgic for papyrus…

Of course, not long afterwards, the backlash against eBooks seemed to suggest that, yes, in fact, they were. I mean, I love books as much as the next person. Possibly more. My apartment is literally walled with them. But I can tell you from experience that Moby-Dick reads the same on a Kindle as in a leatherbound volume, the only difference being that the former is slightly easier to carry around. Hell, Ulysses and Pale Fire actually read better! And, I know, this is the part where all you bibliophiles out there are going to start talking to me about the smell of books and the unique texture of deckled pages. And I will ask you, in utter sincerity, if what you really enjoyed about Pride and Prejudice was the smell. Because if the answer is even partially yes, part of me can’t help but feel like you might be doing this whole reading thing wrong. If nothing else, think of the trees!

The whole thing reminds me of the 90’s vinyl craze when people at parties (I still went to parties back then) would spend hours trying to convince me that an LP’s fuzzy, popping qualities were crucial to true musical appreciation and, goddammit, Jimi Hendrix wasn’t meant to be heard with the cleanness and clarity that CD’s could offer. (Usually, I’d try to steer the conversation away to Mitch Mitchell and why I think he’s still terribly underappreciated…) But just to prove I’m not simply a sucker for whatever the latest technological advance happens to be, you should know: I still prefer CD’s to any other format for the simple reason that, when I buy music, what I want is to hear the music.

And, alright, yes: I am being a little disingenuous for the sake of a curmudgeonly rant. I’m a big fan of cover art, and inserts, and lyric sheets. I admit I feel a stronger sense of snobbish pride when I look at my print library (of some 450 to 500 books) than when I look at my Kindle library (which is over 1200 strong and climbing). If you have children in the house, I think an analog library of music and books is more likely to inspire curiosity than a batch of digital files on a computer screen. I know my Kenneth Burke and I am fully aware of the powerful and complex relationship between a container and the thing contained. There’s a reason you serve wine in a wine glass and whiskey in a tumbler. I’ve even read psychological studies which suggest that the simple act of putting a different label on a bottle of Coca-Cola can affect the way the brain registers the flavor.

So I’m not really trying to make a case that format, mode, media, and venue are entirely insignificant and unworthy of consideration. And, who knows? Maybe all those outraged critics and film fans are just exaggerating for the sake of curmudgeonly rants, too. Or maybe they’re throwing down the gauntlet in search of some sort of reassurance, just as maybe I am perhaps trying to ease a gnawing inner fear that my focus on fundamentals has caused me to miss something vital about those arts that I passionately love: Has my apathy towards those aspects of art I see as window dressing caused me to miss out on potential discoveries and obscure hidden gems? Is that why my tastes and preferences are so pathetically conventional? Or worse, maybe in order to truly devote oneself to a particular art form, one has to have that sensual love of appurtenance and apparatus to spur their desire. Maybe the reason I’m a mediocre musician, filmmaker, writer is that I’ve always been far more enamored with the essentials, more aroused by a body of work than the clothing it wears…

It’s not that I’m so thoroughly cerebral that sensual pleasures of any sort are alien to me. (Don’t worry. I’m not going there, but…) I could point out, for example, that seeing and hearing are senses, and therefore, finding pleasure in watching or listening to something does constitute a sensual enjoyment, even if one is largely indifferent to the room in which one watches or listens. Art of any kind is as inherently sensual as it is inherently philosophical, and it would be the gravest of errors to limit one’s appreciation to just one while overlooking the other. But surely some aspects of an experience are more supplemental or incidental than others? Is it possible we’ve taken Marshall McLuhan a little too literally and thrown comprehension out with the communiqué?

Listening to (or, technically, reading) the various lamentations for the death of film (or, technically, DV, I guess…?) in the aftermath of Disney’s announcement, I have struggled to find an analogy among my own sensual preferences (Don’t worry. Still not going there….) that might elicit the same sort of anguish in me. And I have to admit, if Benihana were to announce that they were closing their restaurants and would only offer take-out going forward, being deprived of the hibachi restaurant’s spectacular sights and succulent smells would seem downright criminal to me. But I doubt I would proclaim it the Death of Japanese Cuisine, and you can be certain I’d still order from them whenever I could afford it. Likewise, if my wife were to stop wearing my favorite perfume of hers, however disappointed I might be, I would hardly consider it the end of our marriage.

(And, yes, I can hear you, my fellow cynics: the change of fragrance could be the latest manifestation of a much larger issue that would signal the end of my marriage and, seen in that light, Disney’s latest corporate maneuver could be properly viewed as just the most recent harbinger of doom. Well, my friends, if that is, in fact, the case — and I’m not saying it isn’t — I can only, yet again, roll my eyes at humanity’s infuriating tendency to react hysterically to symptoms, while doing nothing at all to treat the underlying cause… And we don’t want to go down that road, do we…?)

I think the best analogy I’ve come up with so far is live music. The energy of a live show is something entirely different from the experience (however invigorating) of listening to a recording. I would be truly and deeply saddened if a favorite band of mine were to announce their retirement from touring. But, let me ask sincerely, is anyone’s experience of seeing a film in a movie theater really that different from viewing it at home? Because I’m pretty sure I’d find the Mulan remake equally disappointing no matter where I saw it. And I don’t think I could possibly have loved Candace Against the Universe more if I’d seen it at the Arclight (which is still the gold standard for a theatrical viewing experience, right…? It really has been a long time…).

In a lot of ways, I actually prefer seeing films at home, these days. Among the many reasons I haven’t stepped inside of a theater in over a decade is that I had started to feel like it just wasn’t worth it. Sure, movie theaters today have better projection, better sound, and better seating than ever before. But the price of admission has become damn near cost prohibitive in most places. And even if you’re one of the lucky few who can afford to pay top dollar ticket prices for a top-notch theater, you’ll find yourself surrounded by philistines who can’t stop themselves from talking throughout the entire goddamn film — to the screen or to each other if you’re lucky, on their phones if you’re not. And that’s when they’re not talking selfies to document their “enjoyment” of the film in question. Many of the critics and industry insiders bemoaning the ascendance of streaming might be used to complimentary screenings in private projection rooms, but the rest of us end up emptying our bank accounts only to have the experience constantly disrupted, if not completely ruined.

By contrast, I can subscribe to multiple streaming services for a combined monthly fee that costs me less than one night out at the movies. I’ve got a decent size flatscreen, a good sound system, a comfy couch, and better quality concessions right in my living room. And everyone in that room is guaranteed to be someone I actively want to share the experience with. All of which allows me to give myself completely and totally to whatever film I’m watching, fully immersing myself in all the things I really love about it. Worst case scenario, I find myself really needing to pee, in which case… Oh, look: A pause button!

I’ve got to be honest, fellow cineastes: Either your Death of Cinema is my New Day Dawning, or one of us is missing something…