Changes Of The Video-Store Landscape In The Last Decades

For my whole life, I have been surrounded by films. From helping my father and his film production company making music videos to being mesmerized by his vast DVD library. However, as a member of Generation Z, I have also experienced first-hand how the internet has changed film culture. This project aims to highlight how the video-store landscape has changed.

As a child, I remember going to the video-store most weekends as a family to a select a film that would appeal to us all. This would often involve complex negotiations between my brother and I to reach a compromise. Now, we share online streaming links of films we might want to watch. My father, however, whilst in an industry that is constantly developing new filming devices, believes films should be watched at the cinema, through physical DVDs or legal streaming. The movie culture is changing rapidly, and this visual project attempts to capture video-rental stores before completely disappearing. When I first started this project, I knew I wanted to capture the features I remembered of video-rental stores from my childhood that were both alive and dead in Christchurch. However, as I was taking pictures, I came across one store that was alive in a very run down area of Christchurch and another located in the industrial area. Significantly, only one of the alive stores was situated in central Christchurch. Therefore, I captured a wide-shot of these stores, alongside other significant features, to locate them in their surroundings, emphasising the importance of this. This project challenged my assumptions on how much the internet is making our lives more efficient.

Today, we use the internet to provide instant, convenient and immediately available information and access to an array of movies through online streaming. However, as we turn to the internet more, we are disengaging with other aspects. When going to the video store or renting a library from the book, we are investing in a particular choice, choosing that over other. Comparatively, the internet provides limitless options available 24/7, with no need to select one film. Perhaps, we ourselves are also to blame for the demise of the video-rental store as we opt for lives full of multi-tasking, and constant connection to the internet. Significantly, Apple recently included an update to tell us how much screen time we spend on our phones and laptops. It would be interesting in further research to see how satisfaction differs when watching the same film, through an online streaming service such as Netflix, as opposed to renting a physical hard-copy at one of the increasingly hard to find video rental stores. What I found most interesting as I was completing this visual project was the paradoxical natures and impact of film. For example, films rely on technology to be made but they are also suffering at the hands of technology. It is this critique that I took as inspiration for how I presented my project. As is noticeable through the pictures, video rental stores are becoming increasingly isolated. Instead, people are opting to view films through online streaming methods. It took me a while to settle on how I wanted to present my pictures. In the end, I decided to display my pictures and accompanying notes in a very contemporary way using an online service, which I hoped would act as a paradoxical metaphor for the ongoing debate in society. I decided to use photography over text to display this project as I felt it was the most efficient and powerful way to study the change in our movie culture from video rental stores to online streaming. Anthropology, for its entirety, has faced representation issues of how to present others without exoticizing them to exacerbate a sense of difference.

I would argue that media, in particular photographs, provide anthropologists with a tool to circumvent this. Part of this ‘othering’ often emerges due to the language adopted. When anthropologists study a culture and produce textual records of their observations, these words form the foundations of understanding. However, often the anthropologists and the culture studied, do not speak the same language. Thus, language use, even before the words have formed on a page, exacerbate a difference between the two cultures as interpretation must be done in the primary language. Nonetheless, visual depictions of cultures are open to universal interpretation as interpretation does not require knowledge of a certain language. Similarly, early anthropologists expressed their concern over the testimony created from the natives they were studying. As a result of their inability to understand the local language, photography was instead adopted to present data reliably.

However, im Thurn (1893) criticised images introducing more representation problems, as photographs produced were ‘comparable to the photographs which one occasionally sees of badly stuffed and distorted birds and animals. ’ In response, Haddon argued anthropologists need to intervene with the visual scene they are attempting to capture in ‘small ways’ to produce ‘intelligible photographs. ’ Photography takes it cue from a desire to show aspects of culture – their practices and ideals - that would otherwise be invisible without the use of a camera. However, just as we select to read a book based on a particular story as written by a particular author, a photograph is taken to show a particular story by a particular anthropologist; laden with similar issues of truthfulness and representation.

More modern reflections on photography’s power over text are expressed. For example, Marion (2010) argued the power of photography to act as a ‘social and cultural passport’ when understanding a culture. Just as a passport can provide physical entry into a country, the camera, socially enabled Marion to study Ballroom dancing, and culturally enabled greater insight into this culture. The move towards greater emphasis placed on photography is further expounded by Nijland (2006, 38) noting how it is ‘no longer possible to divide seeing from understanding. ’ With the shift to technology and its embeddedness in society, our lives are lived behind computer screens and through pictures on social media. With the increased presence of photography in society today, photographs provide greater understanding of the culture than words alone could ever allow. Ruby (2000) is correct in asserting ‘culture can be seen and enacted through visible symbols, embedded in behaviors, gestures, body movements and space use. ’

In much the same way, the changed movie culture was able to be seen and enacted through the symbols video-rental stores have left behind, the rare behaviors of interaction that occur within video-stores and the dismantling of video-stores as a social space.