Monday, October 01, 2007
(5:49 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Reflections on Netflix
This morning I watched Fellini's classic meta-movie 8 1/2. Saturday evening it was Children of Men. Of course, House remains an ongoing project -- when I have a disc at home, which is nearly always, I'll watch episodes at odd hours when I believe I "deserve a break," or else when I feel like I need to ease into what I have to do.In the weeks since I started getting Netflix, I have decisively broken a rule that I didn't even realize I had made: no TV before 6pm. Who is this person putting in a movie at 8:30 in the morning? I wasn't even a "movie guy" before, really. Now I am faced with an imposing list of foreign and independent films. Also The Office (UK) and Freaks and Geeks. I'm considering The Sopranos as well.
Netflix has become a potential "task," alongside taking out the garbage or running the dishwasher. I must watch them and get them out the door! Think of the scorn we all instinctively reserve for those poor souls who hold onto the same DVD for months at a time. What failures they are, going out with friends, etc., when they should be watching movies! Or telling themselves, "okay, one more episode."
They must be making a ton of money. It's clear that the percentage of those who are "getting their money's worth" on Netflix comes out to be roughly equivalent to the percentage of New Yorker subscribers who are reading more than one article per issue. There is a handful of long-term enthusiasts, a steady influx of first-timers who are initially entranced, and then a much larger group whose fees amount to a tribute to a really good idea.
Or maybe I'm wrong. You walk down the street and see a whole lot of blue-tinted windows. How better to spend an evening than by looking at a screen? They must be watching something, and I certainly hope, for their sakes, that it's not the cable news.
I sometimes accidentally watch a few minutes of the local news, and it's almost never helpful to my personal development. But the experience of Netflix itself, on the formal level, is a kind of moral homily: an introduction to the concept of responsibility. You open up the mailbox, and no matter what, you have to say: I did this. Yet from another angle, Netflix is the "cunning of reason," the inherent undermining of teleology. It's entirely planned out, entirely self-selected -- but there's only so far planning can take you, only so much that can be scheduled, even -- were we to risk extending this principle -- in those rare situations in which the post office plays no role.
