Scaling Down
09/04/24 14:20
My chapter “…Scaling Down: On the Unsustainable Pleasures of Large-File Streaming,” in What Film Is Good For, ed. Julian Hanich and Martin Rossouw, asks, How does the value of postponing satisfaction by enjoying non-streaming media, accompanied by the ethical awareness that one is not damaging the planet, compare with the luxury of movies on demand? And how does the value of watching brief, low-resolution, often low-tech cinema, accompanied by a similar ethical awareness, compare with the enjoyment of energy-intensive high-definition streaming?
I write, "I don’t think I’m the only person who finds the marketed appeal of high-resolution, ‘immersive’ media faintly insulting. It assumes we are so forgetful that we can’t recall what things look like, so unimaginative that our minds can’t fill in details, that our brains and senses have shrunk down to wizened nubs (which, according to McLuhan, they may have). As I demonstrated above, media build a contact between object and viewer, which an engaged viewer can imaginatively realize, even if the video file is low resolution. All media are like executable files—designed to travel small and unpack when they reach their destination."
The book, which relates film to the philosophy of the good life, was awarded Best Edited Collection in Popular and American Culture at the Popular Culture Association, 2024.
I write, "I don’t think I’m the only person who finds the marketed appeal of high-resolution, ‘immersive’ media faintly insulting. It assumes we are so forgetful that we can’t recall what things look like, so unimaginative that our minds can’t fill in details, that our brains and senses have shrunk down to wizened nubs (which, according to McLuhan, they may have). As I demonstrated above, media build a contact between object and viewer, which an engaged viewer can imaginatively realize, even if the video file is low resolution. All media are like executable files—designed to travel small and unpack when they reach their destination."
The book, which relates film to the philosophy of the good life, was awarded Best Edited Collection in Popular and American Culture at the Popular Culture Association, 2024.
