I’m all for new technology and the convenience it provides. Technologies that were deemed futuristic in my youth are a reality. I can turn the lights on and off in my house or start my car by voice command. I can make phone calls on my watch. My floors can be vacuumed and mopped by a robot. I can sync my work between multiple computers in my home. The things I can do on my phone would blow the mind of my teenage self. Technology is a wonderful thing.
Even in entertainment, technology is fantastic. Forget special effects and CGI; I’m talking about the sheer volume of options available. Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Paramount+, and Disney Plus (and probably others I can’t think of yet still pay for) offering me essentially a limitless amount of movies, television shows, documentaries, etc. to watch.
In addition to the new content being made, over the years I’ve been able to binge-watch old favorites from my past: Seinfeld, Frasier, Cheers, Growing Pains, How I Met Your Mother, Family Ties, and The Golden Girls. And most of those I’ve even completed. It’s amazing what you can do watching just a few episodes late at night while trying to get to sleep.
Yet, as much as I love all the options I have available to me, there’s something sad about just how easy it is to watch almost anything you want with a click of the button.
As a child of the ’80s and ’90s, I remember the ritual of planning a movie night with family or friends vividly. I remember going to small, independent video rental stores when I was young. Later, I can remember trips to Blockbuster Video, which was a safer bet to find what you wanted because they typically had plenty of copies of movies higher in demand. The trip itself was part of the experience. If you were only picking one movie, your entire evening rested on that choice, and the process of choosing required at least a majority vote, if not unanimous approval. Depending on how far the video store was from home and how long it took to settle on a movie everyone agreed to watch, it could take an hour to get the video and bring it home. That investment in time and effort made you appreciate the experience even more. Watching a movie at home was an event in itself, and that experience is gone now. Your selection of videos isn’t limited to the square footage of the video store. If you start something and don’t like it, you can stop it and pick something else. The at-home entertainment experience is taken for granted because it requires little effort.
Holiday specials are another problem. For example, I loved A Garfield Christmas Special and A Charlie Brown Christmas when I was a kid. But, back then, you had to wait until the Christmas season to watch them, and you had to know when specifically they would be broadcast so you could catch them. My son is fond of those specials, too. But, between our various streaming services, both can be watched anytime he wants. And, he’s watched A Garfield Christmas Special at least half a dozen times the past two weeks. I’m glad he likes it, but I can’t help thinking he and other kids are losing something by having so much so readily available to them. They’ll never experience movie night the same way we did.