The digital world, I’m realising, is a bit of a racket. Recently most of my iTunes library disappeared from my iPhone, and I just don’t know if I can be bothered to go through all the different hoops, portals, queueing systems and long forgotten passwords to get them back again. I’ve also had the repeated experience of trying to view a film I’ve downloaded on Amazon, only to get that little square in the middle of the screen telling me that the player’s having issues at the moment, and would I, could I try again later? Meanwhile, the CDs and DVDs reproach me from my shelves like an abandoned spouse. ‘We were once your rock,’ they remind me, ‘And you traded us for tech-tinsel, a piece of cyber-skirt. How are you feeling now?’
I feel what I’ve always felt – that DVDs and Blu-rays were the summit of the film-lovers’ experience, and that progress should have stopped forever after that. Perhaps downloads or streamable films can have the picture quality of a Blu-ray (someone will doubtless tell me they do), but works of art should produce an artefact, something you can hold in your hand and own.
Works of art should produce an artefact, something you can hold in your hand and own
I get pleasure from looking at the DVDs and Blu-rays on my shelf – like books, but much less daunting – and the special extras are something to behold. The Blu-ray of 24 Hour Party People has different commentaries by lead actor Steve Coogan and the late Tony Wilson, the TV presenter and club-runner the film’s about. Taxi Driver had voiceovers by Scorsese and Paul Schrader, and The Red Shoes, though low on commentaries, was as ravishing on Blu-ray as anything I’ve ever seen. Recently I bought Tár (the year’s best movie) and there was something delightful about taking the plastic wrapper of this masterpiece and possessing it in its highest quality form.
But whatever the logic of buying these things, I know it marks me out as a period piece. My daughter, when she’s of an age, will cast the same cold eye on my Blu-rays as I did on my grandparents’ 78 records, their talk of ‘gramophones’ and ‘wirelesses.’ There is something automatically chafing about older people who don’t keep up with technology, who carry on writing cheques long after the instant bank transfer has become a thing or send things in the post when email will do the job in seconds. It will be the same with my spinning silver discs.
So I foresee a future in which I will have to lead a double life – keeping abreast of every tedious innovation for show while clinging to the old ways of doing things in private. I cannot muster any enthusiasm for the host of new screening services or music sites. My sister, a recent convert to Spotify, tells me it’s ‘more, much more’ than I could possibly imagine, that it puts together libraries and playlists and offers you different versions of songs and anticipates your future needs. I can’t help feeling I have a brain, a set of tastes and a memory to do this for myself. I get that, in a time of housing crisis, anything that remains in a cloud rather than at large is probably desirable – I’ve certainly been grateful to ditch many of my books – but when it comes to films and music, it’s something I don’t desire at all. Their shiny, colourful spines do so furnish a room.
So my Blu-ray collecting goes on, but it’s strictly finite. I don’t want any film I don’t actually love (this rules out the collected Tarkovsky or Bergman, things I’d like to think of myself as liking rather than actually wanting to watch). My ambitions in fact are modest: the middle period works of Woody Allen (they’re about £25 a piece and should be), the odd Hollywood classic (the more technicolour the better) and some of those gritty 1960s northern films (the kind Morrissey purloined for his album covers) starring Tom Courtenay and Rita Tushingham. Then, barring the odd hiccup, I’m done.
Perhaps then I can put my energies into learning about this wonderful new world of streaming sites, of RuTrackers and torrents and things that will doubtless be superseded as soon as I’m on top of them. Regarding online services, I suspect I’m like a lot of people of my age. I couldn’t live without YouTube. I’m delighted I can buy tickets online and that I don’t need to pay £2 per minute to speak to someone abroad. I’m also irritated I can’t book top-up driving lessons without using a special app (the instructor lives opposite me, for God’s sake, I see him in the fish and chip shop) and that I need to remember a range of passwords to do the most basic things. It has made life both easier and much, much more agitating. Meanwhile, there are the Stephen Frys among us, who jog along excitedly ahead of the cutting edge, going into raptures over every new development, who will doubtless remain au fait with it till they die. ‘Don’t worry,’ one imagines him wheezing lovingly in his husband’s arms before breathing his last. ‘There’s a special new cremation app on my iPad 27.’
I’m also aware that with the rise of computers human beings have had to become more machine-like to compete with them – that there are a whole range of behaviours now deemed ‘inappropriate’ or ‘unacceptable’ or simply too messily human to survive much longer when they can be circumvented with a couple of clicks. ‘The Lenovo Special Dogsbody doesn’t come back after lunch with beer on its breath,’ you imagine HR managers saying beadily to someone they’re laying off. ‘It doesn’t clear its throat noisily or weep at the desk over its recent divorce. Please tell me why I shouldn’t use the Lenovo Special Dogsbody instead of you.’
As someone who, along with that Blu-ray collection, possesses a floor-length mirror, I know exactly how that HR manager feels.
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