OPINION: Fascination with the obsolete

Do you remember lava lamps? The futuristic post-Vietnam era lighting device with glowing, floating orbs and bright colors? They may have only worked half the time, but, to me, they were really, really cool.

You can still buy a lava lamp, and honestly I might get one, but there’s a certain fascination I have with old items which signify a certain generation. Here’s another one: DVDs and VHS.

Next year, the DVD will turn 30. Even today, in the age of 4K televisions and more streaming services than fingers and toes, DVDs are still being made. It’s actually easy to understand why when discs are still the best way to store and distribute media. I assume it’s ridiculously easy to make disc players compatible with DVDs.

For fun, I watched a YouTube video the other day of a guy going over one of DVDs’ oldest technologies: closed captioning. Exciting stuff, I know.

You don’t have to understand the difference between line 21 captioning compared to overlay subtitles (surprisingly complicated and ties back to the dawn of broadcasting). Just know that one type of closed captioning on DVDs is being lost due to modern disc players being unable to decode a previously-analog signal.

It’s a relatively minor issue in the context of streaming and the world of media, but it’s still fascinating and important in the context of accessibility.

But even farther back, there’s the world of VHS. If there’s ever a place for nostalgia, a 4:3 CRT television with a VHS player hooked up is the definition. Rewinding the tape, the static of a blank image, those red, yellow and white cables? Nothing is better.

I’ve been thinking about buying a CRT just to see old movies on VHS again. This is for super movie nerds, but movies had to be edited to fit the 4:3 aspect ration of home televisions. This developed into an editing style called pan and scan, where the frame would pan from the left and right as needed to show the important parts of the frame.

This would change so many movies! Plus, with the lower resolution of VHS for a blurrier image, older movies which have been restored and recolored for modern releases and streaming services will have a completely different look. At least, in theory.

Backing up a little bit, I understand this fascination is completely based on nostalgia. The largest problem is how, no matter what, doing any of this as a born-after-2000 member of Gen Z would signify a mid-life crisis of identity, nostalgic for a time before I was even born!

Yet this fascination hasn’t left me. I adore learning how movies change as they go from the theater, to a VHS release, to a DVD release, to a Blu-ray recolor, to a 4K upscale, to its eventual landing on a streaming service where all hell breaks loose. This is the media culture we live in, and nothing is more interesting (or expensive) than seeing each release.

It’s a fanatic’s way of looking at media, unfortunately. Will I actually be entranced by nostalgia enough to buy a CRT, a VHS player and whatever copy of a movie to compare? Probably not. It’s a nostalgic fantasy.

I’m also not entirely convinced by the idea of preserving physical media, mostly because studies have shown that discs will age quite poorly from disc rot over time. DVDs and Blu-rays have been noted to only have 10-20 years of existence before the natural world starts to erode them, and that’s if you take care of them.

I have a collector’s mindset. Not for figurines and other nerd-culture stuff, but for media. I like having a large collection of movies I can sort through and play whenever I want. I understand, however, that collection will naturally age. Not much I can do to stop it, it’s how discs were manufactured.

I’m not immune to streaming services or digital libraries either. This is how the media landscape changes and adapts. But a DVD was a movie you owned. My parents can account for how, as a kid, I would methodically sort and re-sort movies on their shelf by alphabetical order or by the director or by the year.

The idea of everyday objects turning into nostalgic reminders of our changing world is unpredictable. Floppy disks, vinyl records, skateboards, those shoes with the wheels in the heel (I think they were called heelies?). It’s pop culture for sure, but they’re endlessly fascinating to me.

Maybe a lava lamp, hopefully one that works, wouldn’t be so crazy of a purchase.