Has home video rendered the cinema obsolete?
The following discourse aims to focus on three technological developments in the history of home video. By applying Marxist methodologies, with particular reference to Walter Benjamin the discourse will examine to what extent home video has rendered cinema technically and socially obsolete. Cinemas offer an artificial environment that influences the viewer’s perception of the screened film. To elaborate; cinemas invite viewers to not only personally consider the film, but to compare and respond to the perceptions of every individual in the theatre. Home video liberates the viewer from being tied to an exterior simulacrum, allowing them to choose the manner in which they view films. The home video initially entered the mass consumer base in the late 1970s with the introduction of VHS and Betamax. Since the cassette, home video has expanded into the Internet, where casual piracy has continued to threaten the wider industry.
When Walter Benjamin (1936) celebrated the transitional characteristics of film, the medium was in its primal stages of development. Benjamin compared the experience of film to the ‘increased threat to his life which modern man has to face… the film corresponds to profound changes in the appreciative apparatus’. To him, film represented a microcosm of the greater mechanisation of art. Benjamin described ‘Aura’ as the intangible value attached to original artworks and their inherent sensual labour. Mechanical reproduction therefore was a process that diminished ‘aura’ by removing it from the art gallery and placing it in the hands of the viewer. Benjamin hailed cinema as a liberating medium, one that came and ‘burst this prison-world [of modernity] asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second.’ To Benjamin, the birth of cinema was a symbolic victory against established metropolitan environments, however the following discourse would suggest that film in the modern cinematic environment also exerts a form of aura and thus a form of control. The constructed environment of the modern cinema may be compared to that of the art gallery, where the viewing space has been devised to amplify the effect of crowd perception. This simulacrum, or simulated environment may be considered as the postmodern successor of aura or that what intangibly communicates the ‘domain of tradition’. The simulacrum of the cinema is constructed from omnipresent CCTV surveillance, lifts, ticket-checkpoints and various rules all of which restrict freedom of movement and action. The effect of the simulacrum is to influence the audience to think, act and respond emotionally through environmental conditioning.
The videocassette recorder or VCR was the first product that enabled the viewer to capture television at their convenience. Fig 1 demonstrates the primary selling point marketers focussed on; the ability for viewers to miss live television content, with the security of being able to watch it at a later time. This changed the incorporeal nature of film viewing into a format of entertainment that could be saved on tape, then hoarded, shared or sold, just as mechanised reprographics had done so with the work of art. The VCR hindered the ability of television and cinema to confine viewers to one place at a set time. The consumer was also enabled actively avoid advertisements by fast-forwarding their prerecording. As Beller (2006) explains, screen based media primarily capitalises on ‘value-producing human attention’. Thus, the consumer was now at liberty to chose the time in which they gave their attention, rather than complacently obeying the schedule of television and cinema. Initial resentment amongst film corporations climaxed in the US Supreme Court case Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios 464 U.S. 417 (1984), in which companies attempted to sue Sony, arguing that the Betamax VCR could be used for copyright infringement. The court ruled in favour of Sony adding that ‘time-shifting merely enables a viewer to see such a work which he had been invited to witness in its entirety free of charge’. With the Supreme Court siding with Sony, the viewer has since enjoyed the liberty to record any footage broadcast on television. This freedom to consume films for free is a large contributory reason why modern viewers maintain an attitude of entitlement; they expect instant gratification and are unlikely to shy away from piracy to obtain the entertainment they want.
The market was initially polarised into two main competitors with their own unique formats, JVC’s VHS and Sony’s Betamax. Although each product initially offered essentially the same service, the Betamax differed in its ability to capture sixty minutes of slightly higher quality video, while the VHS could capture up to two hours of average quality. JVC licensed their technology to a multitude of electronics manufacturers, thus increasing internal competition and lowering prices. The longer duration and cheaper production value allowed the VHS format to dominate the film rental market and render the Betamax obsolete. Sony had failed to appreciate that the audience as Neil Fiske (2003) described; was a ‘sophisticated and discerning consumer with high aspirations and substantial buying power and clout’. Consumers found that home entertainment was a more affordable and flexible alternative to habitual trips to the cinema. Visual quality was an acceptable trade-off for instant gratification, much like modern consumers frequently stream films at low quality rather than paying for a cinema admission price or purchase a download. The video rental industry extended the decline of cinema attendance, which had long been driven into the ground since the introduction of television. According to the Cinema Exhibitors’ Association (2015), the nadir of cinema attendance occurred in 1984, at which point it was figured that there were less than 60 million admissions to movie theatres in the UK compared to a peak of 1.64 billion admissions in 1946.
In 1995, a consortium of seventeen electronics manufacturers gathered to decide upon a standard digital format in anticipation of another costly format war as experienced with the previous decade’s VHS and Betamax conflict. The primary contestants were again divided in two, with Philips and Sony’s multimedia compact disc or MMCD competing against the Super Density Disc, supported by a plethora of companies such as Toshiba, Time-Warner and JVC. After the intervention of third parties such as IBM’s president Lou Gerstner, the competitors united under one combined format, the Digital Versatile Disc or DVD. DVD players were marketed to the international mainstream audience in the late 1990s. Region locking had been explored in video game consoles in the previous decade and had enabled manufacturers to extend control over international releases. The manufacturers applied region locking by encoding DVDs into six regions, allowing for studios to precisely time global releases and prevent unregulated trading. In hindsight, DVDs were mired with technical flaws. While the VHS tape was somewhat durable even when devoid of case, the DVD is quite fragile and susceptible to dust, stains and scratches capable of ruining the content. The overall proportions of the DVD case were a direct reference to the VHS, a comforting visual reference for consumers as well as an opportunity for manufacturers to reuse existing artwork. The disproportionately larger packaging also made DVDs distinct from CDs and thus made them seem more valuable.
During the late 1990s, PC ownership and access to the Internet rose sharply as prices lowered significantly. A cycle of product obsolescence caused an exponential advance in processing power and Internet speeds. A combination of marketing and social pressures ensured that consumers recognised the advantages of faster and marginally improved machines and persuaded them to spend accordingly. Apple’s introduction of the general user interface made computers easier to use for a wider casual market, where earlier DOS-based systems had initially put them off. In 1997 the first online video hosting website shareyourworld.com was introduced, it endured for four years before closing but paved the way for future video hosting sites. Later sites such as The Pirate Bay specialised in the indexing of torrent files. To elaborate on the process; BitTorrent is particularly efficient at distributing large files. Rather than relying on a single source, the downloader joins a collective swarm of users, both uploading and downloading from each other simultaneously. Sites that share and archive torrents are enabling the process of illegal file sharing, rather than being the active party who hosts the files. In this sense, the notion of illegal file sharing is abstracted and more difficult to prosecute. According to Envisional, (2011), a group formed by NBC Universal, eDonkey, a peer-to-peer service was compromised of 98.8% copyrighted material. Computer savvy consumers recognised the widely unregulated Internet as an opportunity to download films for free, view them on their computer, or even burn them onto a disc for further circulation.
Fig 2 is a screenshot taken from the relatively short information film, ‘The Pirates are Out to Get You, 2002’ This segment was inserted into the majority of rental and retail VHS tapes. The film makes some rather sensational claims including; ‘piracy funds terrorism.’ The latter quote has a particular weight considering the near-memory of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, less than a year before. The portrayal of the pirate as a bald, sweating and obese man conjures connotations of greed and disease. The red hues, open fires and abundant smoke and steam seem to convey images of hell and damnation. Certainly, the advert is painting piracy as a threat to humanity, rather than simply an affront to manufacturer’s profits, which is openly suggested by the voiceover who grimly warns that piracy will ‘will destroy our development and your future enjoyment’.
. Fig 3 shows two screenshots of the public information film ‘Piracy it’s a crime, 2004’. In this film composed of relentlessly jerky fast cuts and a thrashing metal beat, the Motion Picture Association reminds the viewer that they are unlikely to engage in the theft of cars, handbags or televisions, reasoning that therefore the viewer should refrain from engaging in illegal downloads. The short fifty second film was added to the majority of commercially available DVDs, whilst encoding prevent users from skipping the film. To the surprise of one viewer, the Dutch musician Melchior Reitveldt, the thrashing music in the film was oddly familiar. In-fact Reitveldt had written the song for an anti piracy advert with the expressed intention to be played at a singular film festival. Rather as Kruszelnicki (2013) reported, the song ‘had been illegally used on dozens of movie DVDs’, all while the musician received no royalties. It wasn’t until 2012 after a plethora of bureaucratic procrastination that the artist received the royalties owed to him.
Piracy therefore is a direct threat to both home media and cinema industries, however piracy must be recognised as a form through which viewers can enjoy home entertainment. Piracy is enabled by users being technically informed, rather than relying on the transaction of wealth. A distant example of rampant piracy exists in Spain, where according to Llwellyn (2010), La Coalition found that 83.7% of movies downloaded in 2009 were done so illegally.
Netflix was conceived as an online DVD rental service in 1999, the introduction of a monthly subscription fee eliminated the need for individual shipping costs and late return payments. This holistic business model was unique, in that it could be equally applied to the users of the streaming service introduced years later. Netflix also ushered in an era of on-demand services, as Sandvine (2013) detailed, peer-to-peer downloads fell to less than 10% of the total bandwidth share, while they had enjoyed a 60% share a decade earlier. The consumer has turned to the instantly gratifying services such as Netflix, rather than waiting hours for a torrent. According to the aforementioned source, Netflix accounts for a 20% share of downstream Internet traffic in the UK. Netflix presents the consumer with the option to pay a periodic membership fee in order to watch a limited library of licensed films from the comfort of their own home on a variety of devices, including games consoles, PCs, and unsurprisingly tablet devices. As Anthony Oliver Scott remarked, ‘it is now possible to imagine – to expect – that before too long the entire surviving history of movies will be open for browsing and sampling at the click of a mouse for a few Paypall dollars.’ Though we have not reached this climax of an all encompassing digital library, the Internet certainly offers a more expansive medium for viewers to habitually and instantly consume videos. In addition, the Internet enables content creators, artists and directors to distribute videos to an international audience without the need of third party publishing or physical reproduction. In this sense, cinema seems obsolete; offering relatively sparse opportunities for independent filmmakers.
The superficially utopian image of an open internet with assured fame and wealth for all contributors contrasts with the modern cinema.
Conversely to the previous point, the Internet is not a utopia. An effect of a levelled entry point for content creators is an overall saturation. Independent filmmakers are lost to what Ken Garland (1964) and his collaborators once referred to as the ‘high pitched scream of consumer selling’. In the noise, consumers gravitate to the familiar, evidenced by the lack of originality witnessed by many modern releases. The box office successes generally involve a familiar brand, logo or franchise. Even as a concept is seemingly exploited in full, producers do not shy from total reboots, as seen recently with Star Trek (2009), The Amazing Spider Man (2012), or the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). Cinema is on average a conveyer-belt of the same products periodically regurgitated with aesthetic, social and cultural updates. In this way, cinema primarily commodifies familiar visual culture. Independent content producers are also less equipped to prosecute piracy compared to larger corporations. In addition, those that rely on advertising revenue when hosting on sites such as Youtube are vulnerable to users applying advertising blocking plugins.
The cinema’s simulacrum is at times a caricature of western society. The standard VUE cinema involves binary viewer class system, those attempting to save money being ‘standard’, and those who wish for marginally more comfortable seating at the additional cost of £1.50. The latter individuals with apparent greater aspirations of seating are referred to as ‘VIPs’, insinuating that anyone not willing to purchase the right to seat themselves in bigger chairs are not important. VUE forbids the consumption of hot food bought outside the premises, whilst offering it’s own range of hot foods at inflated prices. Behaviour deemed antisocial is responded to with forced expulsion and possible prohibition from all future screenings. Bryman (2004) referred to this commercialist simulacrum as ‘Disneyization’, which in effect ‘exchanges the mundane blandness of homogenised consumption experiences with frequently spectacle experiences’. In short, the environment conditions the consumer to spend more, and have fun whilst they are doing it. Cinemas have applied theming, which involves association with an unrelated exterior culture or environment. An example of this would be modern cinemas that have been refurbished to appear more archaic, to inspire notions of nostalgia and old Hollywood. All of the aforementioned elements of the average big brand cinema would seem to have a negative effect on public perception. Cinema attendance has continued to diminish, according to the Hollywood Reporter (2014) 1.26 Billion consumers attended the cinema in the USA and Canada, the lowest numbers since 1995. The rising ticket prices and drastically higher prices for 3D performances have discouraged the consumers from venturing forth to the cinema aisles. Self-proclaimed industry changing epics such as AVATAR (2009) seems to have done little to sway public opinion.
An example of simulated environment would be ‘Secret Cinema’ (see fig 4) which attracts a cult following by situating screenings in locations related to the screened film. The events require viewers to attend in a prescribed dress code, also related to the film. These screenings involve performative labour; the use of paid actors to play roles and wander amongst the viewers, much as performers impersonate Disney characters and inhabit the Disney theme parks. Secret Cinema capitalises on the audiences’ palette for total immersion, only partially offered by the gleaming illusions of 3D technology and the escapism of video games.
To conclude, cinema and home media are competing forces that capitalise on mental activity rather than traditional labour. Consumers of film willingly subject themselves to emotional manipulation. The implicit value of this experience is realised in the price of an admission ticket, the cost of a DVD or the subscription fee of Netflix. The rise of home media formats has pushed emphasis onto material organisation; that is to say the access to an Internet connection, or enough disposable income to invest in relevant technologies. The cinema offers a simulacrum, a manufactured atmosphere in which the consumer is invited to spend, sit and enjoy. The simulacrum has evolved from advances pioneered in Disneyland, introducing notions of theming, hybrid consumption, merchandising and performative labour. This immersion would seem to be the last device cinema may offer that home video cannot. Screenings by organisations such as Secret Cinema are unique, and cannot be digitally reproduced with any modern technology as of yet.
Perhaps the recent developments in the virtual reality industry, with the introduction of accessible products such as the Oculus Rift are a foreboding signifier of what is yet to come. Home video offers only the familiar environment; the enabling of the consumer to exert minimal effort to enjoy visual sensuality. Home video liberates viewers from the requirement to subject themselves to synthesised environmental control, and perhaps it is that choice that matters. Benjamin’s original vision of a social emancipation born from collective cinematic viewing has evolved into a consumer paradise of polymorphous franchises that extend their reach from the cinema into an innumerable amount of contexts such as television, streaming, social media, video games and merchandise.
Home video has not rendered the cinema experience obsolete, it has simply been absorbed into a larger multitudinous form of commercial symbiosis.
Bibliography
BELLER, Jonathan, 2006, ‘The Cinematic Mode of Production’ Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA, University Press of New England
BENJAMIN, Walter, 2008 (1936) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, London, Penguin UK
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Cinema Exhibitors Association Limited, (2015)
http://www.cinemauk.org.uk/facts-and-figures/admissions/annual-uk-cinema-admissions-1935-2013/
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http://documents.envisional.com/docs/Envisional-Internet_Usage-Jan2011.pdf
FISKE, Neil, 2003 (2008 Paperback Edition), ‘Trading Up’, London, Penguin Books Ltd
GARLAND, Ken, 1964, ‘First Things First Manifesto’, London, Goodwin Press Ltd
KRUSZELNICKI, Karl S, 29th of January 2013, ‘Anti-pirating music stolen’, ABC,
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/01/29/3678851.htm
KATZ, James, 2006, ‘Machines that Become Us’, New Jersey, USA, Transaction Publishers
LLEWELLYN, Howell, 10th of Jun, 2010, Billboard, http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/1205759/spanish-online-piracy-rate-nears-96
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http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-2014-moviegoing-hits-760766?
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https://www.sandvine.com/pr/2013/11/11/sandvine-report-netflix-and-youtube-account-for-50-of-all-north-american-fixed-network-data.html
SCOTT, Anthony Oliver, 2007, ‘The Shape of Cinema, Transformed at the Click of a Mouse’, New York, New York Times
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Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios 464 U.S. 417 (1984)
Fig 1, JVC, 1978 an advertisement for the JCV Home System,
Fig 2, F.A.C.T. -Federation Against Copyright Theft, 2002, ‘The Pirates Are Out to Get You’ public information film, found at the beginning of most retail and rental VHS tapes in the UK
Fig 3, Motion Picture Association, 2004, ‘Piracy it’s a Crime’ PSA
Fig 4, Secret Cinema, 2011, A promotional image taken at a screening of ‘The Battle of Algiers’ (no photographer credit given), London
