21st-Century Hollywood: Movies in the Era of Transformation

CHAPTER ONE: The Digital Century

3 B CHAPTER ONE The Digital Century There can be no doubt that the digitization of the moving image has radically and irrevocably altered the phenomenon that we call the cinema and that the characteristics of this transformation leave open an entirely new field of visual figuration. For those who live and work in the post-filmic era—that is, those who have come to consciousness in the past 20 years—the digital world is an accomplished fact and the dominant medium of visual discourse. Many of our students remark that the liberation of the moving image from the tyranny of the imperfect medium of film is a technical shift that is not only inevitable but also desirable. And this tectonic shift in cinema is only part of the overall digitization of society. But it is also a tectonic shift in our culture as a whole, something entirely unprecedented in our lifetimes, or even in this century. With the digitization of culture, bookstores and record shops have nearly vanished; it’s so much easier to purchase these totemic artifacts online. Virgin Megastores, which used to span the globe and offered one-stop warehouses of books, CDs, and DVDs (everything from hip hop to classical, with all imaginable styles in between), has all but gone out of business. In San Francisco, in March 2009, the last Virgin Megastore prepared to close down operations. As Greg Sandoval noted at the time, 4 21ST-CENTURY HOLLYWOOD One can hardly find a better symbol of the music industry’s crossover from physical CDs to digital downloads than the intersection of San Francisco’s Stockton and Market streets. On one corner sits a Virgin Megastore, once an icon of hipness and high-end music tastes. Now it looks more like a schlock discounter. Signs blare from the façade: “Store Closing” and “Up to 40 percent off.” Just across Stockton is a stainlesssteel storefront uncluttered by text. Only a single Apple logo glows from the metal, and the overall feeling created is of permanence and futuristic technology. Arguably, Apple [and its iTunes online music store] has done more than any other company to advance digital music, which has driven the CD into obsolescence and retailers like Sam Goody, Tower Records, and Virgin Megastores out of business. . . . Evan Adrian Gomez, 23, a Virgin Megastore employee, says he buys much of his music online and understands why consumers are going digital. Still he says, the crossover will mean he will lose his job, along with hundreds of other store employees. “I understand why people buy online,” Gomez said. “It’s easier and we’re a lazy culture. But I’m an artist and I’m going to miss album artwork. It’s sad.” And in Manhattan, the last Virgin Megastore closed with “90 percent off” sales on June 15, 2009, in a final act of desperation. Located in Union Square, the store was the last major outlet for commercial CDs in the city. As Ben Sisario reported, With the music industry stuck in a decade-long crisis, the sight of a record store closing is hardly surprising. But for many shoppers at Union Square on Sunday the loss of a big outlet in one of the most heavily traf- ficked areas of the city was particularly dispiriting. “Unfortunately the large retail music store is a dinosaur,” said Tony Beliech, 39, a former Virgin employee who was lugging around an armful of CDs that he said would cost him no more than $20. “It does matter because it was also a social gathering space, and that’s one thing that buying music online lacks.” . . . Max Redinger, 14, who was walking his dog, picked up some anime books and Guitar Hero figures. He said he buys most of his music on iTunes but still likes going to record stores and mentioned that a friend had recently introduced him to an independent shop upstate. 5 THE DIGITAL CENTURY “I don’t really buy stuff from it,” Mr. Redinger said, “but it’s a really cool place.” Bookstores are suffering a similar fate, as Kindle readers, promoted by Amazon.com, encourage customers to download new books at a flat rate of $9.99 per title (comparable, in a fashion, to iTunes’ 99 cents per song, although these benchmark figures are variable), when a physical print copy of the same book may cost $30 or more. When Amazon tried to...