My wife and I schlepped five kids from Salt Lake City to Washington, D.C., and getting here required five hours of air travel, and we hoped to relieve the tedium some by watching an in-flight movie. But there were no in-flight movies at least, not in the way I remember them.
For those of you who dont remember, once upon a time, the aisles of jumbo jets were strewn with tiny TV screens, and at the appointed hour, the entire cabin would go dark and youd watch a trailer for a film that had been out of theaters for a few months or so. Flight attendants would stroll up and down the aisles selling lousy earphones so you could barely hear the audio, and the airline would screen a version of the movie with all the naughty bits taken out.
Back when that was the prevailing business model for entertainment at 30,000 feet, many demanded that the airline versions of these movies be released on video for those who preferred seeing the latest blockbusters without the gratuitous sex, profanity and violence. The argument was that Hollywood was leaving money on the table by refusing to accommodate audiences that felt bowdlerized versions of box office hits were more in keeping with their values.
This always seemed like a common-sense approach to me, but it unfortunately led to all kinds of nonsense. It seems almost quaint to imagine anyone getting up in arms about a mom-and-pop store taking a razor blade to a videotape, but such was the backward era we lived in during the late 20th century when there wasnt an app for that or for anything else.
For my part, I think that after you purchase a videotape, what you do with it is entirely your own business. Want to slice out a few seconds? Feed it to your cat? Wrap fish with it? Knock yourself out. But thats an argument that doesnt matter anymore. Because the entertainment industry has quietly solved the problem in a way that no one anticipated.
In the old days, you had one choice of inflight movies. But today, I had about 30 different choices. Rather than getting stuck staring at a tiny screen hanging over the aisle, I streamed free shows on my iPhone. I watched several episodes of Shark Tank. My son seated next to me was engrossed in a makeshift Phineas and Ferb marathon. There were several other movies and TV shows we could have watched, too, including a few R-rated ones. But we passed over the bad stuff and simply watched something else.
Of course, that was always Hollywoods position back when people called for edited versions. If you dont like it, they would say, then watch something else. But that mantra rang hollow back when there wasnt much in the way of something else to watch.
When you only have three channels on television, a handful of movies in the theater or only one channel on a crowded airplane, your severely limited options increase the demand for entertainment acceptable to the widest possible audience or, perhaps, the lowest common denominator. But technology has made that conundrum largely obsolete. There has never been a time in history with more entertainment choices available than there are now.
If you cant find something consistent with your values or your tastes, it may not be Hollywoods fault anymore.
For those of you who dont remember, once upon a time, the aisles of jumbo jets were strewn with tiny TV screens, and at the appointed hour, the entire cabin would go dark and youd watch a trailer for a film that had been out of theaters for a few months or so. Flight attendants would stroll up and down the aisles selling lousy earphones so you could barely hear the audio, and the airline would screen a version of the movie with all the naughty bits taken out.
Back when that was the prevailing business model for entertainment at 30,000 feet, many demanded that the airline versions of these movies be released on video for those who preferred seeing the latest blockbusters without the gratuitous sex, profanity and violence. The argument was that Hollywood was leaving money on the table by refusing to accommodate audiences that felt bowdlerized versions of box office hits were more in keeping with their values.
This always seemed like a common-sense approach to me, but it unfortunately led to all kinds of nonsense. It seems almost quaint to imagine anyone getting up in arms about a mom-and-pop store taking a razor blade to a videotape, but such was the backward era we lived in during the late 20th century when there wasnt an app for that or for anything else.
For my part, I think that after you purchase a videotape, what you do with it is entirely your own business. Want to slice out a few seconds? Feed it to your cat? Wrap fish with it? Knock yourself out. But thats an argument that doesnt matter anymore. Because the entertainment industry has quietly solved the problem in a way that no one anticipated.
In the old days, you had one choice of inflight movies. But today, I had about 30 different choices. Rather than getting stuck staring at a tiny screen hanging over the aisle, I streamed free shows on my iPhone. I watched several episodes of Shark Tank. My son seated next to me was engrossed in a makeshift Phineas and Ferb marathon. There were several other movies and TV shows we could have watched, too, including a few R-rated ones. But we passed over the bad stuff and simply watched something else.
Of course, that was always Hollywoods position back when people called for edited versions. If you dont like it, they would say, then watch something else. But that mantra rang hollow back when there wasnt much in the way of something else to watch.
When you only have three channels on television, a handful of movies in the theater or only one channel on a crowded airplane, your severely limited options increase the demand for entertainment acceptable to the widest possible audience or, perhaps, the lowest common denominator. But technology has made that conundrum largely obsolete. There has never been a time in history with more entertainment choices available than there are now.
If you cant find something consistent with your values or your tastes, it may not be Hollywoods fault anymore.
