I abhor Blockbuster. I can’t be any clearer on the subject. I loathe it. It is like kryptonite if I were Superman, or lemon Pledge if I were a stubborn built-up spot on a wooden coffee table.
Why, you ask, why would a nice normal person hate a nice big business that provides so many movies at all hours of the day? Why indeed?
The little annoyances first: the selection. Sure, you can get thousands of copies of the crap that Hollywood has been spewing out in the last twenty years — thirty copies of “Red White and Blonde II” available next week, sign up now! But can you get something interesting on a Saturday night? If there’s an interesting movie, especially in the action genre, by Saturday night it’s gone — if they even had it in the first place. I know it’s supply and demand and the American people tend to have taste that I find embarassing, but really — couldn’t businesses at least try to discourage consumers from visually and aurally ingesting crap like Reese Witherspoon going, like, to Harvard Law School??!!
That’s a little gripe. Here’s a bigger one. The corporate consumerist BUY BUY BUY philosophy. On the speakers and TV screens while I was there last night: “That was ‘So Yesterday’ by Hillary Duff [a teenage girl who Disney actually owns]. You can hear this song on her new album, or on the soundtrack to the new movie. Rent the movie here! Hear the soundtrack! Buy it now! BUY THIS NOW. WE ARE FEEDING YOU UNORIGINAL CRAP AND YOU WILL BUY IT BECAUSE WE TELL YOU THAT YOU SHOULD LIKE IT.” The video, the movie, the dvd, the soundtrack, the album… by the time you consume all that, you’ve spent around $50 on the same item in different formats. But you gotta get it all! I know it’s part of American culture and it’s how a business sustains itself, but I just hate the idea of two or three enormous corporations all benefitting at the same time from consumers slapping down cash for the same tired crap over and over.
And my biggest beef with Blockbuster: the family establishment bullshit. Once I tried to find a particular South Park episode at Blockbuster for a hall program I was running. The girl at the counter said, “Oh, we don’t carry individual episodes of South Park — Blockbuster is a family establishment.” I sort of stared at her, contemplated screaming my head off, and then remembered that she was getting paid $6 an hour to wear that nasty polo shirt and take crap from parents wanting the last copy of the Hillary Duff movie, so I said nothing. However. My question is, how could Blockbuster be a “family establishment” if the drama section is full of “The Red Shoe Diaries” and other softcore offerings? How is pornography family entertainment? And if it is, then shouldn’t South Park be family entertainment also? I really want to know.
I know that whether I like it or not, pornography is a successful moneymaking option, and a video store would be foolish not to sell it. But. If it’s right there on the shelf with the rest of the options, where little kids can see it, where I can see it, that’s not a family business. I don’t want to have to see it when I’m looking for a movie, I don’t want kids to have to see it, and I shit on the idea that porn is okay for a family establishment, but a smart dark comedy is not. I shit on this backwards moralism. I refuse to spend my money for a poor selection and three thousand copies of the next crappy movie that Miramax, Disney, or whoever thinks I should want to watch… and I refuse to fund Mr. Blockbuster’s vision of a happy family society in which we can all watch porn together on the couch with popcorn.
Gee willikers, a rebuke of Porn Night? I cry. And I oh so love Reese Witherspoon.
They may not be a family establishment, but they’re a damn fine business. If they’ve shunned you by not having a south park, they won’t lose much business compared to the people who sop up schlock every friday night.
October 12th, 2003, at 1:23 pm #Yeah, I wish Blockbuster had a different selection. I hate Reese Witherspoon. I also hate their selection. Unfortunately, I’m in the minority, because their primary consumers are families, and families love crap. Especially mine. I can’t watch TV or movies with them, because they love the latest peice of shit with whichever actor/actress that’s about growing up or family or something really dumb and at the end there’s a moral to the story and we’re all better people. Those are the movies that get rented, hence that’s what they stock. I wish, as opposition to Blockbuster, there was some store that carried everything they didn’t. Like every episode of MST ever made, instead of like two VHS selections. Bastards.
October 12th, 2003, at 1:32 pm #