Is inevitable not being nostalgic reading Anne Friedberg’s article “The End of Cinema: Multimedia and Technological Change”. After she mentions the change that VCR, cable television and television remote control represented for technology and culture, I just want to add that those events also took an important place in my family live during 1980’s and 1990’s.
We did not have color TV until late 1980’s. My grandparents gave us a color TV as a present. I think this change was fundamental in the history of film, perhaps for Friedberg’s is not, but I think when my family and I started to watch in technicolor, the value of image increased a lot. Perhaps some of the readers of this blog did not have a black and white television, but when you pass from that gray and somber image to a new one in color, the relation with the image is other. I remember watching cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry or The Flintstones in black and white, but when I started watching them in colors it was awesome! The color gave this texture that before it was impossible to determine, gave them character, personality.
We also had a VCR and sometimes we rented movies for a low price. The selection of the movie was a ritual: my sisters and I trying to agree about what children or pre teen films chose, and my parents trying to select one that both could probably enjoy, because we did not have enough money for renting more. But it was a really good deal, if we think in economic terms: my father paid for two films the value of two movie tickets, so besides taking the whole family in a bus to the movie theatre and pay for five tickets, and for popcorn and sodas, we can just lay down in the bed, watch the film, and drink juice or 2 litter of Coke and make our popcorn. I say in bed because we usually did not have the TV on the living room, it did not was this “window-wall designed to bring the outside in” as Lyden Spigel mentions quote by Friedberg (810), but it was located in my parents bedroom. The film, that usually took place Sunday’s afternoon, after lunch, it was almost like the representation of the end of the weekend, the last rest before we starting to prepare for terrible Mondays. Usually, someone took a nap when the movie started ⎯there is nothing like napping when the TV is on⎯, and usually, after forty minutes or an hour that one who was napping, woke up and asked the question: “I missed much of the movie?”.
I remember, also, about twenty years ago, my dad brought a VCR camera to the house. I his work sometimes they have to record on video meetings or events, and the employees can borrow the camera for personal events, well in certain occasions. I remember my father recording an asado, a barbecue, with this huge VCR camera during a holiday time. He worked as a camera man and director looking for smiles, interviewing spontaneously friends and visitors, taking funny shots from different perspectives. When we saw the film two or three days after the event took place, it was funny to note the faces, the attitudes of people in front the camera. But two or three years ago I was looking for a VCR video for my job and I found this one stacking within other. My mother started to watch the video with me and I think both of us watched everything with different eyes, perhaps we were a little shock: many of that people, young or not so young, children that day were dancing or playing with each other, have passed away during the last twenty years. It was very hard to see that, but also we saw a lot of the video trying to remember names, and figuring out what had happened with all that people.
What I want to say is perhaps not so critic. I just want to recognize that my memory is linked to technology that was developed during the last twenty five years. The objects that were part of that technology are not only history of the film but part of the cultural live of most of many people. The idea of seeing myself trough this old-fashioned apparatus let me know who am I, how I conceived the world according to the possibilities I had then and now.
To conclude, there are some films related to this topic: the unassailable pass of the time and changes of that technology produces, and the nostalgia for those days of VCR. I present two examples: one of my favorite scenes from The artist, directed by Michel Hazanavicius, the “sound” part:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qvNfSwTAfE
and this scene from the movie Be kind, rewind, directed by Michel Gondry, a film about how to reconstruct a VCR world and what represented for communities (I could not found it in English or French)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DscBAc0zXUU
The trailer in English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0M9rSpjlDM
Thank, you, Camilo, for this nostalgic text. As you, I also felt nostalgia when I read the essay of Friedberg. I am of the generation of the VCR. In Peru, the DVD arrived in the early 2000’s. So, most part of my childhood (and the best part of it) was with the VCR. I also remember going to rent movies and watching them with the family. It was a social act inside the family. I didn’t enjoy times of the Betamax (I was enjoying the pleasure of the non-existence in that time).
What it is interesting is that with the development of these new devices there were always (apocalyptical) voices that announce the end of cinema. Nevertheless, it is still alive and will continue. As you said, the visual art of cinema, the films, are part of the social culture. And, I think, as such, doesn’t matter the format. It will be present for a long, long time.
Ay, Bruno, the Betamax was sometimes good, sometimes not. I remember those films entangled in the machine and it was a complete disaster: sometimes the film broke and we had to put some adhesive tape to fix it. And I agree with you with the long life of the movies, there is nothing like having a nice evening, night, or morning hide in the cinemas watching a great or not so great movie. I think human beings need and will always need to leave those “familiar, organized, tamed” spaces that mentions Barthes, quoted by Friedberg that TV had colonized, and the movies theaters will always going to be untamed, unfamiliar, and not so organized spaces.
I think you would also really enjoy Sans Soleil, or Sunless in the English version. It is a film by Chris Marker on the link between memory and technology. I find it interesting by they way in which he talks about technology being able to capture precise moments in time and that they then serve as our memory, as our own memory banks must continually sort and discard images and memories we are unable to hang on to. It must have been very nostalgic to look back over old faces, on a VCR player, knowing that you are watching it through the your eyes of 10 or so years ago! I think technology can be beneficial in that it allows us to keep memories like these, and that it allows the social interaction in the way of family time like you say, on Sunday evenings in front of a film. I also think though that it can be quite an isolating experience, for example the whole idea of going to the cinema we do as a social distraction but in reality we are shutting ourselves in a dark room and focusing on a screen; there is no interaction to be had with our friends or family around us.
Thanks for the recommendation, I will look for Sans Soleil. About the isolation experience, I think it depends. Usually, when we go to the movies we are not going alone. Probably you share the film with that special someone, or perhaps with your sister, or brothers, parents or friends. Yes, during the movie we focus our attention on the film, but after the film, usually we comment the movie with that person who went to the movies with you. However, when you go to the movies with that person, close to your affections, even if you do not talk during the film, the experience of feeling company is really important.Sometimes, nevertheless, it is really good go to the movies alone: is like hiding a secret. Thanks for your comment!
I just read your post and it made me so nostalgic.
I, too, grew up with a black and white tv until we switched to a color tv. It truly made a difference to see the world in color, although my years with the black and white tv were quite short.
As I read what you wrote, I start to think there is more to cinema than entertainment or a way of seeing the world. Cinema changed and even shaped our behaviors. I remembered my parents talking to us about the time when they did not have a tv, and they would go to the only neighbor who had one. Possessing a tv gave that neighbor a certain prestige, but also shaped my parents’ behavior towards tv, for they saw it as this amazing little box that could show them the world. It was magical. My parents still talk about that period with certain nostalgia: going to the neighbor to watch westerns, sharing these moments, bringing something to eat, coming on a specific day (Saturday or Sunday), etc. Later on, everybody started to have a tv, but there was still that astonishment or at least a trace of it. Back home, the tv was in the dining room, for when people are not outside, this is where they spend most of their time. The tv was only turned on for one or two specific shows in the afternoon, and at 7:30pm, it had to be turned on for the news. Even today, when you walk around the city at around 7:30, the streets are empty and you can hear the echo of the news, for there are only 3 free tv channels on the island and two of them are playing the news at exactly 7:30pm.
That means people tend to have dinner ready by 7:30 so they can eat while watching the news and finish before the movie of the night that will start after the news, that is at around 8:15. Then, the whole family will be seating for the movie, which also means that no one would ever pay a visit to somebody past 7:30. Such a visit would more likely be seen as rude. When I think about it, even today, here in Canada, I tend to eat at around 7:30 with the tv on, a tv placed in the dining room, of course. Tv did more to us than we thought.
Thanks for your comment, Aurely. I would really like to see and hear your home town at 7:30… news on TV, forks sounding the plates.
My parents also did not have TV when they were children, and watch TV in neighbors’ house was also a privilege. My father says when he was a child, the children from the block had to wait outside the only house which had TV and they watch trough the window what they were presented. Imagine several children trying to to share this small space, the window, to watch the “other window”, the TV. And, of course, they have to be quiet and try to behave for a little while. So they have rules for that social space, also. And it is true that people that used to have TV, when they were new, had this social prestige; I think it happened also when computers came, early ninety’s, and not much people have them because they were expensive and those families that have them have to receive continuous visits of friends or neighbors that needed to write a letter.
I also eat in front of TV, well, now in front the computer, but I watch TV shows! I think is probably related with dinner time in my house that also was, and still is, TV time. Not at 7:30, but around 8:00: the family all together having something to eat, and something to watch.