Interesting piece in the Boston Globe entitled “Elegy for the Video Store,” comparing to the demise of this retail format to the similar death of the independent bookstore.
“The demise of the independent bookstore has been augured for nearly a generation now, the inevitable casualty of behemoths like Borders and Barnes & Noble, online booksellers like Amazon, and ultimately, so we're told, of the universal, digital library imagined by Google and various techno-visionaries,” according to the Globe. “The more imminent demise of the video store, meanwhile, has merited only occasional notice, mostly in the business pages. Yet something important is being lost here, something that isn't going to be replaced by rent-by-mail outfits like Netflix, video-on demand services, or newfangled delivery systems like the Disney-backed MovieBeam. Though it may never have acquired the cache of the independent bookstore, for people who care about movies, the video store is just as vital an institution.
“Video stores aren't just a place to grab a movie. The halfway decent ones-in other words, not Blockbuster, which is almost entirely given over to new releases, the so-called back wall-are places where the enthusiasms of the cinephile find a home. The theater is a place to see movies; the video store is a place to be among them-and to be among other people who love movies.”
“The demise of the independent bookstore has been augured for nearly a generation now, the inevitable casualty of behemoths like Borders and Barnes & Noble, online booksellers like Amazon, and ultimately, so we're told, of the universal, digital library imagined by Google and various techno-visionaries,” according to the Globe. “The more imminent demise of the video store, meanwhile, has merited only occasional notice, mostly in the business pages. Yet something important is being lost here, something that isn't going to be replaced by rent-by-mail outfits like Netflix, video-on demand services, or newfangled delivery systems like the Disney-backed MovieBeam. Though it may never have acquired the cache of the independent bookstore, for people who care about movies, the video store is just as vital an institution.
“Video stores aren't just a place to grab a movie. The halfway decent ones-in other words, not Blockbuster, which is almost entirely given over to new releases, the so-called back wall-are places where the enthusiasms of the cinephile find a home. The theater is a place to see movies; the video store is a place to be among them-and to be among other people who love movies.”
- KC's View:
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We have to admit that we haven’t been lucky enough to have access to the kinds of independent video stores the loss of which are mourned by the Globe. In fact, we suspect that most people have been denied such a pleasure.
We find that Netflix makes us feel the same way, albeit in a virtual fashion.
