Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
As lovers of media, we’ve all made a dark deal. In order to participate in just about any of today’s seemingly effortless methods of entertainment consumption, we must accept that we do not truly own any of the things we love. It’s likely that folks born after the VHS or DVD generation have never held their favorite movie in their hand. They probably haven’t ever thought to want that, or simply don’t see the need.
But for those of us who had the privilege to enjoy physical media, digital media’s boundary lines are obvious. If you owned the DVD boxset already, you never had to worry about Warner Bros. taking your favorite show away from you. A movie leaving Netflix at the end of the month? If you already have a copy of the movie on a disc, it doesn’t matter if it’s streaming or not. And no matter how convenient streaming can be, it has failed to recapture the most magical thing of all: the DVD special features.
There is a tragedy, to me, in the knowledge that the new generation of arts consumers is sorely missing out on one of the great material advantages of the physical media era. These hours and hours of behind-the-scenes materials unlocked insights and inspired obsessions that the bite-sized, hyper-monetized media landscape of today just can’t touch.