So long, good friend

VHS is finally dead.

“The last major Hollywood movie to be released on VHS was “A History of Violence” in 2006. By that point major retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart were already well on their way to evicting all the VHS tapes from their shelves so the valuable real estate could go to the sleeker and smaller DVDs.”

I know, not my usual shocker article, but I’d like to pay homage to the VHS.  After it was made mainstream by porn, VHS has entertained us for something like three decades, really taking off in the 90’s.

So I’d like to write about some memories that I have with VHS. A eulogy, of sorts. Feel free to add your own memories in the comments section.

I remember still being in Russia, so I was under the age of 6, and how I thought my Grandpa was something close to god (secular Soviet home) because he could make TV stop, rewind, and play at will. I watched endless reruns of the same episodes of Gummi Bears (in Russian of course). I thought the TV power solely belonged to my Grandpa. Sure, I didn’t know it was a trusty VHS that held my joy on it, but there it was, a token of  my early childhood.

In case you’re curious as to what Gummi Bears sounds like in Russian..

You can only imagine my sheer happiness when I discovered that this strange new land, America, also had Gummi Bears, albeit in it’s own language. America also had those adorable little cheese wrapped in wax (Babybel), which I first met on the plane coming to the USA, where I promptly ate the cheese, wax and all, until some nice lady took pity on me and explained to me that I can take the wax off.

Oh VHS, I remember the sheer control. I could put it in, record anything I want on TV, play it back, record over it again. I remember recording mistakes. I remember footage being lost. I remember the joy of finding it again, accidentally, that as you’re watching some old cartoon, for nostalgia value as now you’re too told for the cartoon, that you recorded at a very tender age that would get interrupted midway through by the porn that you recorded from the TV at that same tender age.

I remember feeling so powerful. I could capture moments. I could rewind and play at will. I could erase. Maybe this sounds so geeky, but the idea that one could take memories from the TV without permission. We don’t have that anymore. We pay for it. We are also watched. Someone else knows what we record. What we prefer. The privacy is gone. That was really the glory of VHS, video home system, the privacy in your own home. Obviously this was primarily for porn purposes in the beginning, as it’s nicer to watch it at home instead of some peep show theater. With VHS we had our own personal cinema. It was so revolutionary. It was so intimate. I loved hitting pause, and then play and watching everything move very very slowly. I loved the noise of the machine when it would fast forward or rewind. You could feel the little guy working.

I remember the anticipation of tracking. When the tape was too old and it would be fuzzy and not so perfect, and you would hold your breath hoping that tracking would fix it. I remember actually the days before auto-tracking and how that was a bitch and a half to set the levels just right. It was a sense of pride and accomplishment every time I made a video look good.

I loved the working technology as a kid, but I also loved it when my parents gave me the important task of destroying videos as well. I’d pull the black tape out and out and dance with it in the house. Sometimes I would rewind it manually with my fingers. See if I could put it back together. See if I could undo it more. I would braid it into my hair, then take it out because I wasn’t allowed to look like that outside the house. I loved how tangible VHS was.

My college house still has a ton of VHS tapes. Old Disney movies, not digitally remastered, that we gather around and watch. We bask in the feeling of being young again. Of the tape sometimes being soft around the edges. How everything wasn’t so perfect, and that is, and was, part of the appeal. Nothing more exciting than taking that clunky VHS tape and watching the VCR eat it. No menu screen with options. Just ff and then play. No DVD that sits and keeps replaying the menu screen over and over.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the new digital world. Yet sometimes I miss the fuzzy memories of my youth.

So goodbye and so long, VHS. You done good. I know others will make a far more creative and artistic omage to you. You might get some gallery installations. Some modern art pieces. Maybe a movie and documentary. Maybe a porno.

But you will never again teach young immigrant girls how to capture memories on their own. Don’t worry, VHS, your memory is already captured. It keeps playing inside. My generation watches your graceful death. You embody the death of our childhood.

In your face

I doubt that faces will become obsolete. Unless we have a truly democratic (democratic in a very rigid, almost proto-Fascist sense that democracy only works if everyone is the same)world in which we modify people’s faces to be one of a set five like in that Twilight Zone episode (although it was only women’s faces that were modified). Faces are different, and the bodies associated with the mugshot remain important.

For instance, why do people still go to concerts? We have the music. We don’t have to deal with other people, moshpits, drinking, smoking, pushing, grabbing…it’s also cheaper as certain concerts can cost $100+. We could easily watch a nice recording of them in the studio if we wanted them to dance and entertain us. But no, we go and crowd and push and deal because, as of now, nothing replaces the face, and its body.

Perhaps, that is only because of acclimation. We’re simply not used to a lack of a human being telling us what to do. We need the face and the body. We’ve always had class that way. Tuesday’s class was an interesting sociological exercise in authority. Why was everyone so content that I was “in charge”?

“If we can confidently assert that the face gives rise to meaning, then what is the nature of this meaning? In other words, if faces communicate something, what is it that they communicate?” (“What Can A Face Do?” Richard Rushton, pp220-221)

Was there something on my face? Was there something in my teeth that somehow gained me a modicum of unwanted (yet not wholly unpleasant) power. No one questioned, in fact, people wanted to make sure that I was a TA, or something else official. Yet, even when I explained there is no hierarchy between them and me, people still would address me, look at me, almost for permission to speak, or even listen to my suggestions. No one had to stay in the class, respond to my questions, or even allow me to speak. After all, in a Hobbesian world, something of my pitiful size would be trumped easily. I hold almost no capital (Bourdieu) and thus, should have had no authority. No one gained anything from allowing me to be an authority figure.

“Ultimately, the face is an instrument whose primary purpose is that of communicating; we cannot dissociate the face of the sender from the system of meaning implied by that face’s messages being sent to a receiver.” (Rushton, 221)

How did I manage to communicate power?

As witnessed in the classroom chaos, if my annoying little face didn’t step up, then the screen would have been ignored. People would have left. I doubt many would have logged onto a classroom real-time chatroom. Personally, I need to gesticulate. It adds a lot to my speech. My ability to persuade my audience is also heightened by my facial expressions, tone, volume (close to 80% of speech is body language (which makes sense because if we read a transcript of a speech we wonder how anyone could be excited by the words)).

In a way, it’s not what you say, but how you say it that matters in face-to-face interactions. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t we be saying and rating on the actual material? “Don’t rate a book by its cover,” is an applicable cliché. While the saying is meant for us to be more open-minded in our judgments, shouldn’t we scrutinize more? Devil Wears Prada has an attractive cover, but the guts are so useless.

This begs the question; since verbal speech is rated on whim and pathos, then is written speech, in a way, more important? If not important, then simply better because it cannot be swayed by pretty clothes, ugly faces, shrill voices… If written speech is so much cleaner, then why do so many blogs sound like shit?

I asked my IT co-workers if they owned blogs. None of the 8 people I asked did. One of them even said that unlike most of the bloggers out there, he knows he has nothing of worth to say, and would rather stay silent (and in a “morally” higher position). Why then are so many, in his and plenty others’ opinion, stupid? Worthless? Don’t enhance anything?

“So this would be a first meaning: the face is a thing that gives rise to meaning. This is, in short, a conception of the face as an object: the face is an object or instrument that indicates something.” (Rushton, 222)

I really like this quote. I enjoy the idea that something so personal as a face is an object, it’s being used for something, but often it is being used by us without our knowledge. Involuntary emotions, reactions. In the beginning of his article, Rushton

Indeed, I remember a while back I was watching an online video (I can’t find the link right now) which had this person that was an FBI or something fancy expert on faces, lies, etc. She was asked to say which person was the most honest. Turned out, that for her, Giuliani, was the most honest politician because when answering a question, his face would have a reaction first, and then he would respond. It was that honest facial reaction that made him more honest than many other politicians (and thus more trustworthy) because he didn’t think of how to react, but just did. This reminds me of the point that Rushton quoted Zizek’s discussion of Hitchhock’s movie Lifeboat (Rushton, 222).

Oh! I can’t help but think of V for Vendetta where the Chancellor communicated with his henchmen by way of a huge screen that only had his face on it. That face had power. When that electronic face screamed, people squirmed and reacted. So what was more important, the message “You messed up!” or the face screaming it? If the henchmen came into the boardroom and encountered a projected screen (similar to one that the class witnessed on Tuesday), would they respect that authority? Would they squirm anyway? I imagine not. I will attempt to add more to this thought later on.

On another note on the importance of the face…

With breakups becoming more and more common over text messages, post-it notes (Sex and the City), and oldschool phone calls (basically any way to avoid actually being in physical person with the “dumpee”)…the reaction is always indignant…Why didn’t so-and-so say it to my face?! Why is that seen as the more honorable thing to do?

Righteous indignation, I’d say. No one likes someone talking behind their back. It’s always “say it to my face.” But why is that so important? Would that change the message? Doubtful. It might even bring on more tears to see our beloved be hateful, or worse, wear the face of indifference to our suffering. Again, is it the message, or the medium (the face) that is more important?

Drawing upon Bernadette Wegenstein and the cliché of the eyes/face being the window(s) to the soul, then we come back to the idea that how something is said is more important than what is actually said.

“The human face is here to be understood as the absolute breakthrough between individuals… The very opacity of the face constitutes for Lévinas a “window” on the other: everything else can lie, but the face cannot. Individuals, when they encounter each other, cannot but react to that.” (“Getting Under the Skin, or, How Faces Have Become Obsolete” Bernadette Wegenstein. pp.231)

I like the line that gazing upon one another’s faces is a “breakthrough” because that is a violent action. Not that I endorse violence, but that to see, recognize and know one another is a painful thing. I wonder if this has anything to do with my British flatmate telling me that making eye contact with someone on the street is also considered rude. It’s penetrating. You’re looking into someone’s soul and, drawing from what I’ve said about the involuntary honesty written on the face, you’re taking something from them that they have not given permission for. We break through each other’s privacy in order to engage. As Wegenstein says, people “cannot but react to that”.

Back to the breakups and rumors.

Does the dumped person want to see the person’s face in order to penetrate/break through and “look into their soul”? Perhaps not to hurt them, but to find something there. Something that could not be written, literally, into the message? (Literally written, hah! Get it? Text messages are written!) This reminds me of, I believe Zizek, who wrote about believing what one sees, rather than what one hears. Are we hoping to believe the medium more? Why would the face tell us more than the message? We don’t want to believe what we’ve heard/read, so we go looking for truth in the visual. (If I had some more time I would link this to a discussion of the visual to the virtual, and go back to TV, and blogs. How do we believe them? What is more real?)

In the end, it’s too early to discount face-to-face interaction.

I guess it’s important to still keep your skin clear and moisturized.

Gosh, some makeup company should totally pay me for advertising space.