logged on angry as hell after hearing about the netflix wb merger&acquisition to say that if the writers' guild and Christopher Nolan don't manage to block this merger by way of anti trust laws, thereby preventing an even bigger monopoly of only 3 (Disney-Fox-Hulu-ABC-??, Netflix-WB-HBO-Discovery-???, Paramount) giants in media (all of which are controlled by select wealthy few, with agendas of their own, who will then censor more content and mass produce the most shallow, inconsequential, en-masse slopified media of the modern age--all perfectly cut, polished, and veneered to fit in your little black box phone which tracks your location and steals your time and sells your privacy piecemeal, persona per persona, like you're a damned russian doll!), then the only way to fight back against their proposed "shorter theatre release windows" threat is to unsubscribe and only watch the films they release theatrically until they are forced to keep the cinemas open because they've become their only large, feasible source of income--again. And then like a boomerang, we create the damned industry--again.
I'm tired of subscriptions and watching amazingly vibrant, detailed films on flat, small, impersonal devices that don't block out your phone or the outside world's distractions. the cinema is a holy relic man. it's worship in a way. it's where you go to disconnect and enter another realm of fantasy. taking it away from long-standing theatrical releases (which is actually a form of making film and media inaccessible--especially in the global south where internet, power outages and alike are so common that physical media is still the main form of media accessibility) is blasphemy, and it hurts the whole idea of community, it isolates and individualises to the point that we will all die alone in our homes with no one looking for us because all our subscriptions and bills are on autorenew and the tv lights stay on and flicker over half-drawn curtains. this turned very maudlin at the end, but I'm so fed up of tech and progress being pushed to the forefront when it is so nefarious and goddamned evil!
in paul lafargue's the right to be lazy, he writes of the capitalist worships, these 'capitalist minotaurs', saying, before it made cotton and fabric barons into millionaires, it first "conquered the country: in its hunger for human labour, it had dragged the workers from their hearths the better to crush them between its jaws and suck out the labour they contained."
media giants now work harder than ever to keep you mindlessly pliant, supposedly sated with safe, inoffensive material--most of it voyeuristic (true crime docs), the rest commercial propaganda for other industries (reality tv, beauty, plastic surgery & fast fashion), and rarely ever provocative or historically intospective media that speaks to racism, sexism, xenophobia, capitalist-based-slavery, etc..
make no mistake, this move to streaming platforms takes away right to ownership, will further render physical media 'obsolete' in the eyes of the machine, and nullify its design; one that used to be cemented, preserving an idea in a format that cannot be altered by outside forces without your knowing. (rather than have it only available on a digital platform where it can be altered, edited, transformed and refurbished to no end--leaving it always cycling in this horrid cycle of political-correction : censorship : absurd perfectionism--takes away the ability to digest an idea or intension, it takes away the prospect of trust in a message, strength of a message, finality, opinion).
And to drive this home, closing down theatres leaves you one less space without the world bombarding you with advertisement screens (yes the films have ads in the beginning, but they can be ignored, and you can arrive late and they aren't constantly playing in the background--they're leashed, they have an allotted time, you are free to look away and chat) or work emails or needing to share your personal id to sign up to a service or network, leaving your data vulnerable to countless attacks that companies never inform you about (go to haveibeenpwned and see for yourself). shortening the time slot of film, destroying cinema culture, it leads to one place to find entertainment: home. and so, then your life is cycled like this work : home : sleep : work.
like a good little cog, you will work yourself to the bone to afford all these 'services', in an industrial age that is so ableist (because all stationary, sedentary jobs are being taken up by the ai craze, leaving only manual labour as the most sought out form of 'entry level, menial pay labour') to then be too tired to go anywhere else but home after a shift, to then be bombarded with so much endless choice that all you end up doing is scrolling till you sleep, maybe even accidentally leaving the cursor hovering over a top 10 film thumbnail that prompts it to play after a trailer, giving the service its views even if you're alseep, making you a working product even while 'disconnected', only to then return to work and do it all over again.
