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Technology and Culture 45.1 (2004) 211-212



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Veni, Vidi, Video: The Hollywood Empire and the VCR. By Frederick Wasser. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. Pp. 269. $22.95.

In the three decades of its history, the consumer videocassette recorder has proved to have several uses, from time-shifting television programming to playing homemade videos, but today it is probably best known for bringing Hollywood movies into the home as never before. In Veni, Vidi, Video, Frederick Wasser offers a broad history of the VCR's complicated role in the motion picture industry, making a twofold argument about the reasons for the wild success of the VCR in American life and about the consequences of the new technology on the nature of Hollywood.

In the first part of his book, Wasser sketches out the history of the film industry and video technology leading up to the explosive growth of consumer video in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Within ten years of Sony's introduction of the Betamax to the American consumer market, more than sixty-eight million households owned at least one VCR, and Wasser explains this rapid adoption as a consequence of the "harried leisure" brought on by the increasing portion of their day that Americans were spending at work. Initially advertised as a device that would allow users more control over the schedule of broadcast television, the VCR was the perfect technology for consumers trying to manage their ever decreasing time, and "rental was driven by the same stressed leisure that made the time shifting ad campaigns such a success" (p. 103).

Taking for granted the establishment of the VCR in the media landscape, the second half of the book is concerned with the impact of the new [End Page 211] technology (and the market it opened) on Hollywood film production and distribution. Emphasizing the political economy of the movie industry, Wasser charts the rise and fall of the independent companies that embraced the new technology, only to eventually be shaken out of the market by the major studios. Moreover, he argues that the increasing market for videotape rentals and sales influenced the kinds of movies that were made by Hollywood, resulting in a greater emphasis on "high-concept" films that would open big at the box office (driving video sales) and then easily survive the "reformatting" process required to move from one medium to another.

The book as a whole is well researched and quite a pleasant read. One caveat, however, is that in its focus on the impact of the VCR on the film industry, it skims over the process by which the VCR was established in homes in the first place. Wasser himself is clear in this point: "In my political economic study, the method is to see how media institutions anticipated and determined the way viewers use their products. It is not a direct look at people using the VCR" (p. 17). His approach is successful at explaining on a macro level the changes in the production and distribution of films following the advent of the VCR, but seems disconnected from the actual practice of renting, buying, and watching movies on videotape as experienced by users.

Ultimately, Veni, Vidi, Video (which won the Marshall McLuhan Award from the Media Ecology Association) is a rich case study of the impact of a new technology on the preexisting constellation of media that also offers a commentary on the relationship between movies and the technologies that bring them to audiences. It is a useful and important history of the VCR—a subject for which a comprehensive history has thus far been lacking—that situates previously explored events like the Sony v. Universal trial and the standards battle between VHS and Betamax in a broader context. Though the book at times leaves open questions that one wishes it would answer, it is a tangible addition to our understanding of media history, one that deserves a place on the shelf of any scholar of communication technologies.



Joshua M. Greenberg

Joshua Greenberg, a doctoral student in...

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