Old Media, Again

 

Wendall--every other Thursday

 

I am in the midst of prepping new lectures for my LIVING ROOM LECTURE webinar series, and have DVDs and VHS tapes all over my office, and bed.

Typical lecture prep for me. . .

 

So I thought this week I would revisit this post on my enduring love for old media:

As I sat last night in front of a friend’s very highest definition television, it reminded me again just how old school I really am.

In case anyone doesn't recognize that thing on top...it's an antenna.

 

Needless to say, they were a bit shocked that, as a film teacher at UCLA, I am still using two analog televisions (one a gift from 1987) in my house and will only get a flat screen when one of them dies. And even then, I’ll probably get a used one that is less high definition, since to me, the newest technology makes all the 70s films I love look like bad BBC/PBS two-dimensional videotaped dramas from that era.

I still have vinyl, of course. That's hip again, apparently?

 

 

One of my LP stacks.

A few favorites, including a signed Bangles release...

I will never abandon Mr. Newman.

Sigh.

I still have cassettes, I still have VHS and DVDs and I still have working equipment to play all these things, along with my true blue old media electrician, Joe at Stone Electrics, who keeps them all working. As he once said to me, after returning a beloved machine three days earlier than promised: “When a woman asks if you can fix a VCR and when you say yes, she says ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes,’ she needs her damn VCR.”

 

Someone told me "reorganizing is hoarding." Too bad.

Of course, I also have a crazy number of physical books, which I guess also qualifies as old media, or old school, or both.

 

And it’s not just media—I still have the original Krupp’s coffee grinder that I bought in 1983, as well as the Osterizer blender I took away with me when I went to college. And a few t-shirts from those days, too.

 

So, that qualifies me, probably, as the worst and most pathetic type of “Boomer.” I don’t know for me if it’s nostalgia, an inability to change, a high tolerance for static, skips, and pops, or it’s because I hate throwing away things that still work. Or fit!

 

However, I recently happened into a video store in our new neighborhood, and found I’m not the only one who is turning back to VHS tapes in all their low-definition glory. After the owner and I compared notes and he took me through his most precious and most popular items, I couldn’t stop laughing because, unless they were horror, I pretty much owned all of them.

 

A section of the "media" closet in our old apartment. Each shelf has a layer of tapes behind the ones you can see.

 

And then, I saw an article about that very video store in the Washington Post just before Christmas called “With VHS and video stores, ‘tape heads’ are fueling an analog revival.” You can read it here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/12/17/vhs-comeback-stores-analog-revival/

 

And this followed another Washington Post article and a Twitter flitter featuring Guillermo del Toro and Christopher Nolan declaring people who hold onto old media as saviors of these films for posterity, as so many great pieces of work float in and out of streaming, or have licensing issues and never stream at all.

 

del Toro and Nolan, on my side!

You can imagine how much that bolstered up my case for keeping all my movies with my non-hoarding husband. This is an argument we have been having for so long the picture below is actually one of the anniversary cards I gave him a few years ago. But even he can’t argue too much with two of our greatest living directors . . .

 

 

So, maybe I am not as out of touch as I thought. Or maybe I’m just old enough to know that everything, good or bad, comes back around. So, here’s a cross section of a few of my alphabetized tapes, just in case anyone else fancies a trip down VHS lane, or wants a reminder of something they might want to see again. 

If anyone wants info on my webinar series, you can find it here:

https://www.wendallthomas.com/private-classes

 

                    -- Wendall