On physical media

In a world increasingly more reliant on digital (cloud/drive/whatever you want to call it) storage, ownership is a difficult thing to process. 

After I left for my second year of university, my parents moved houses. Having moved a few times before, I do understand the urge to downsize, and they certainly prioritized it. (My mom boasted passing on hundreds of items through our neighborhood’s “Buy Nothing” Facebook group alone, not to mention the Goodwill trips and yard sales.) One thing I noticed specifically was my family’s DVD collection, which has been slowly shrinking over the years, transforming from a solid small library to a couple shelves on a single bookcase. 

I do understand the appeal of digital storage, especially as someone currently jumping between dorm housing to study abroad and (fingers crossed) finally to an apartment next year. But DVDs, CDs, even books, are finding residence online now more than ever. Apart from the very typical “oh this is dystopian because–” or “but you don’t own it!” or even “what if one day, the internet just breaks and we’re all left with nothing but the ghost of the films and art we love lingering in the back of our minds with no reproductions accessible!!!” the sentiment that resonates with me the most is the absence of flipping through cds, thumbing past titles on a bookshelf for that one that you’ve heard about. Call me a sap, I guess, but maybe hear me out first.

My dad, just around when my brother was born, bought a copy of the Star Wars prequels. He hates those movies, enough that he discouraged me from watching them my entire life, and the first time I finally did was when I was 19. I didn’t find them as charming as some people do, but I admire those that do find substance in them. Either way, he bought this box set, plastic wrapped and all, and never opened them. He saw the films in theaters and haven’t rewatched since. My parents never even use a dvd player anymore. The set, to this day, takes up a significant amount of space on my parents’ tiny dvd shelf. If you asked my dad, he’d probably say something offhandedly about “how much they’d be worth if [he] sold them” but he’s not going to. They mean something, even something small, a piece of character that will never be achieved by buying a set of films online. 

Personally, I can’t help but find his ownership of this little set to be both hysterical and endearing. In my parents’ admittedly minimalist (though decorated) lifestyle, having a somewhat useless and not decorative item on a front-facing shelf is a statement in itself, although they’d never admit it. 

CD sales are rising right now, for the first time in years. Younger individuals are buying disc burners, keeping booklets of DVDs and collecting their hard plastic cases. In some fan spaces online, fanfiction binding is becoming increasingly popular, with media that has been nothing but digital gaining physical form. People are starting to remember why the cloud is not as convenient as it seems — it’s fleeting. Streaming services and online retailers can take away your content on a whim, and movies you know and love can disappear from view. Acts like KOSA in the states threaten online spaces, and the archives that do exist are always at risk of deletion or targeting. Without fear mongering, it is important to acknowledge that the loss of purely digital media is a real threat, especially in the current global social network. Further, the support of artists through book, DVD, and CD sales often contributes much more than a streaming service to both the survivability and demand for individual artistic content. 

All that is to say — I find physical media pretty important, and I’m glad for its resurgence in popularity. I hope it remains prevalent why it is important, without forcing reliance upon it fully. I’m grateful for how connected the world continues to be — that I can watch an indie film from a director who I’ve never heard of posted on Vimeo in 2015 at the click of a button — but it is equally as important to make physical that which isn’t. Maybe you find it lame that the consensus of this ramble was “because it’s fun,” but hey, at least you stayed until the end.

Note: Hey guys! L here. Thinking of trying to post once a week this year. Welcome to the first of many.