Synopsis
An ode to the counterculture of the 80s and 90s, when finding quality culture was a real treasure hunt.
2008 Directed by Danny Plotnick
An ode to the counterculture of the 80s and 90s, when finding quality culture was a real treasure hunt.
The thrill of finding an album that I read a review for months before was the ultimate high. The same goes for movies, when I found Doom Generation, having the slightest clue what it was about yet saw the neat packaging, the cool stars, and that great 90s font for the title, JACKPOT!
Out of Print is a short piece on nostalgia about an era where you might have appreciated something just a little bit more because you had to work to find it. Today, I can stream or buy any movie I want with ease. Music, I just press a few buttons and the entire discography of long-forgotten bands appears before my eyes begging me to press play. I…
Kind of wild to think we’ve now entered a time where browsing through physical media at a used book store, thrift outlet, or flea market is an imagined, instead of actual, experience. In the age of the Internet, you could still choose to shop in-person locally and embrace the utter delight of serendipity when you find that thing you’ve been looking for or, better yet, discover something you didn’t know you were looking for until that very moment. Of course, there’s something to be said of the ability to click a button from the comfort of wherever you are and have the thing you’re seeking delivered to you, but there’s something primal about the hunt and, typically, the comparative deal resultant…
i would argue that this sort of reverence when it comes to obscure media totally lives on in the 21st century, it’s just changed face to reflect the change in tech. i didn't spend my teens crawling through thrifts or duping vhs tapes but i did spend time perusing through sites like bandcamp and the internet archive, peddling google drive links, and receiving my informal music & arts education from all the cooler older mutuals i had on places like tumblr. even now i routinely find myself spending ages shopping around the web in the hopes of finding a specific film, album, or recording — the thrill of unearthing a ‘hidden gem’ piece of media is a truly timeless feeling.
Yeah ok as a millennial I find this relatable but in the end it’s all just nostalgia.
The internet as a replacement to find oddities and counter culture is just as good, except it’s faster. I don’t think the effort it takes to find something is relevant at all, as stated it felt great in the moment you found stuff, but that was it.
There is of course an aura to the object that exceeds nostalgia but is part of the process of finding, questing. I love the emphasis on cheap duplication rather than rarefied original.
In general this nails a certain palette and look that resonates with my personal experiences. I caught the tail end of this generation and am a collector of physical things. The film provoked sharp sense memories, how a certain bookstore in San Francisco smelled when I entered it. I loved the montage of all the common patterns and colors of your friends old couches. So ubiquitous.
Film perhaps understands digital culture and access in a simple way, but this is after all a short tribute video.
Thanks to this short film helping me remember exactly what it was like to hunt for rare vinyl records and old VHS tapes at the flea markets and antique stores, as well as musty and dusty old book stores, etc. Those were the days.
Cheers, mate.
Everything in this is true but also true was gate keeping, social cliques, exorbitant pricing, tribalism, regionalism, etc.
While it was undeniably fun to seek out hard to find films and books "back in the day", that we now live in a time where for example somebody can discover Jess Franco on a Sunday and have watched a huge chunk of his catalog by the following Friday is a whole different kind of media experience from the way that would play out in the 80s and still undeniably fun. They're different experiences and I'm not sure if I can definitively say one way is necessarily better than the other. They're just different and we can embrace both, especially considering the…