Previously on isoul.uk: It Only Took Me Twenty-Odd Years to Listen to Harry Potter — a Year 6 recommendation I ignored finally found me through audiobooks more than twenty years later.
There was a time when watching a particular film began with somebody leaving the house.
My brothers would go to Blockbuster or one of the local video shops and return carrying whatever the household would be watching. I was younger and not always part of the choice, but that only made their return more interesting. A film did not simply appear in a menu. It arrived through the front door.
I have already written about the mixture of South Asian cinema, Hong Kong action and Hollywood that came into our house. What stays with me here is the rental itself: a temporary object, chosen in a shop, with a deadline attached to it.
Browsing was part of the evening
A video shop made selection visible.
Rows of cases showed what was available, what was popular and what somebody else had already taken. The cover had to earn your attention before reviews, trailers and personalised rows could do the work. A title, a painted image and a few lines on the back might be all you had.
The local shop and Blockbuster did not feel quite the same, but both turned choosing into an activity rather than a prelude to pressing play. You moved through a physical catalogue. You picked cases up. You compared a small number of possibilities. Eventually somebody had to commit.
Even when I was not standing in the shop, I felt the result of that process when the tapes came home. The choice had already been made. The evening now had a shape.
The film came with a clock
A rental was temporary in a very literal way.
It had to be watched before it went back. Keeping it longer could mean another charge. The tape also had to be rewound, an instruction so common that “be kind, rewind” became part of the culture around VHS.
Those small obligations changed the way a film felt. Somebody had made the journey, chosen it and paid to borrow it. There was a good chance the household would actually sit down and finish it rather than abandon it after ten minutes for one of a thousand alternatives.
The inconvenience created commitment.
That did not make every rental good. Sometimes the cover had done a much better job than the film. But even a bad choice became part of the evening because there was no recommendation row waiting underneath it.
A physical copy changed the room
A rented tape occupied space while it was with you.
The case sat near the television. Somebody could pick it up, read the back or ask when it was going on. The object reminded everyone that there was something to watch and that it would not be there for long.
Streaming has made access much easier, but it has made this kind of temporary presence less visible. A film in a digital watchlist can remain there for months without creating any urgency. It can also disappear when a catalogue changes, sometimes without anyone noticing.
A rental announced both its arrival and its departure.
Convenience removed the edges
I would not seriously argue for returning to late fees, unavailable tapes or journeys made for a film that turned out to be terrible. Streaming and self-hosted libraries solve real problems, and I use both.
There was a stage between the video shop and streaming for me. I was one of the relatively few people who actually bought DVDs and Blu-rays from LoveFilm, rather than only renting through it, before eventually moving over to Netflix. The delivery method changed, then ownership gave way to instant access, but each step made the act of choosing a film feel a little less physical.
But modern convenience smooths away the edges that once made watching feel like an event.
There is no shop to enter, no finite shelf to browse and no return date. Starting a film is almost effortless, which also makes abandoning one almost effortless. The process has become better while the ritual has become thinner.
What I miss is not the VHS format itself. It is the sequence around it: somebody going out, a choice becoming physical, the tape arriving home, the household making time for it, then the object leaving again.
The film was only part of the memory.
The deadline, the case and the journey gave it a beginning and an end.