ON-DEMAND CULTURE: Digital Delivery and the Future of Movies by Chuck Tryon (review)

Most of us have had a moment recently, perhaps while surfing Netflix, scrolling through YouTube, or popping in a Blu-ray disc, when we realized the sheer speed and volume of films available to us today and thought, “Wow.” If you lived through Betamax, Laserdiscs, and VHS cassettes, it’s clear how different American film culture has become. No one has considered this change more than Chuck Tryon. His new monograph, On-Demand Culture: Digital Delivery and the Future of Movies, a follow-up to Reinventing Cinema: Movies in the Age of Media Convergence (2009), presents a rich compendium of those “wow” moments.

Many film critics and media scholars have casually considered such changes. On-Demand Culture is one of the few texts to provide the critical context and analysis necessary to understand them. Tryon acknowledges that “given that new technologies and movie distribution strategies emerge almost daily, the pace of change invariably seems to surpass the ability to research and document those changes” (vii). He reminds us, however, that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved television subscription services as early as 1968. Soon after, consumers began paying to screen sports events and other spectacles in their homes. It wasn’t long before HBO and other specialty channels appeared. Thus, many current trends are simply hyperextensions of much earlier practices in American culture. Consequently, the subtitle of the text is a bit of a misnomer (this is much less about “the future” of movies than their recent past).

On-Demand Culture explores how technological advances and economic imperatives have brought films to our computers, living rooms, and cell phones. Tryon avoids both the technological sublime that many enthusiasts fall into as well as the despair of film buffs lamenting lost times. Instead, he demonstrates how changes in distribution have, in many ways, worked to restrict Americans’ viewing habits while simultaneously promising unending video streams and entertainment choices. Tryon examines landmark events such as James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) and its impact on 3D cinema and consumer consumption. From there, he investigates elements of our digital culture such as social media’s role in hyping films and targeting specialty audiences, crowdsourcing websites’ assistance with funding independent films as well as big-name productions, and, finally, the changes that many film festivals are undergoing as they shed their fixed sense of place and introduce streaming features that allow audiences around the world to experience virtual screenings.

Tyron’s analysis is a welcome addition to the field and well worth reading. The book’s only noticeable shortcoming is its lack of an overarching theoretical framework. While snippets appear from the usual suspects—Castells, Deleuze, Foucault, Marx—there is no sustained application of theory to help readers understand the logic behind of the changes we’re experiencing and how they function politically, socially, and philosophically. Instead, Tryon concludes with the somewhat lame assertion that “although media conglomerates are playing a major role in shaping these changes, consumers will also play a vital role” (180). We must therefore “remain attentive” to these transformations. These statements feel more like interludes in his research than conclusions. Perhaps he plans to create a trilogy following his first two books, which would explain why I felt there ought to have been a “To Be Continued” at the end of his text. Either way, I look forward to see where he takes this research as American film culture continues its rapid transformation.