KD^3C^3 - 20251214 And the picture abruptly changed
This week's newsletter comes to you in three parts.
Part 1:
You should probably be watching Pluribus. Vince Gilligan, the guy behind Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad has a new show out. It's called Pluribus and it stars Reah Seehorn as one of the last humans left after an alien invasion (of sorts). But despite being an ostensibly science fictional premise, the majority og the show is realtily grounded. I've seen others call it a Robinson Caruso style story about one person all alone trying to survive. IT is that, although not in quite the same way. What it really feels like (to me) is the opposite of so much streaming TV nowadays.
There was a (possibly apocryphal) story that was going around, where a netflix studio executive though more characters should be saying what they're doing all the time. If someone is making spaghetti, they should say "I'm making spaghetti." The goal being to keep "viewers" who only had the show on in the background while doing other things informed of what's happening. They wanted netflix to be the background noise of our lives.
In Pluribus, almost nobody says what they're doing a any point in time. Seehorn's character Claire is always doing something, but huge swaths of the show are almost entirely dialogue free. Carol is mostly alone so we have to watch what she does to figure it out for ourselves. It's a show that demands your attention rather than one that asks nothing more than to be noise in your life.
Part 2:
Speaking of attention, I love movie theaters. The popcorn and big coke and pickle are all great parts of the experience, but there's something magical about being in a dark room with a bunch of strangers experiencing the same movie at the same time. I like being forced to point my attention in one direction for a few hours and keep it there. Movie theaters are great. Which is why it's a real shame that the companies that make movies are trying to destroy them.
Not literally. Netflix isn't coming to your local megaplex with a sledgehammer or wrecking ball. At least not yet, anyway. But everything that most movie studios are doing certainly feels specifically designed to make theaters fail. I think this is the natural outcome of how they work, however.
In 1948 the Supreme Court of the US decided United States vs Paramount Pictures inc. which did a lot of things, the most relevant one being the breakup of the studio system, and in particular forcing the studios to give up ownership of movie theaters. This lead to independent movie theaters, and then later, movie theater chains. But those chains aren't owned by the studios. So if a studio wants a movie shown in theaters they have to split the ticket price with the theater where the ticket was sold. This seems reasonable to reasonable people. Both are required for the experience (theaters need movies to show and movies need to be shown) so both should profit from the money made. But corporations are not fond of sharing. That's how the vertically integrated system came to be in the first place. They wanted to own every penny made by their movies and I think they ahve been resenting that governemnt forced profit share since 1948.
Sure once home media existed in the 1980s and later, movie studios could release direct to consumers for home viewing, but direct-to-video was such a pejorative even then. everybody new that for the real movies you had to go to a movie theater. So studios made due. When they could, they shortened theatrical windows. And when they thought they could get away with it, they released movies in as few theaters as they could get away with
Netflix wanted the prestige of awards, so they would release movies in the minimum required theaters (Usually in LA and New York) for the minimum length of time (usually two weeks) to be eligible for the Oscars or Golden Globes and then release it on netflix for everyone else. Direct-to-streaming wasn't quite as gross to the general public as direct-to-video, and hey if you want to watch the latest Benoit Blan mystery, it's your only chance anyway.
2020 and the pandemic further emboldened studios, since everybody was staying home, they got rid of theatrical releases entirely. This was viewed as an opportunity to prove that theaters (and their pesky share of the profits) are entirely unnecessary. And it worked. Streamers and studios got bigger, theaters struggled and people watched big tentpole movies from their couches. I wanted to see Wake up Dead Man in Theaters, but to do so I would have to drive at least 2 hours to the nearest town with a theater showing it. So I watched it at home. Its still really good, but I wish I had seen it in theaters with a crowd of people.
I don't really have a solution to this. If we had antitrust regulations worth a damn, we could split the production from the exhibition again. Force netflix to be a studio or a streamer, but not both. But that's not really likely, given that netflix is poised to take over one of their only remaining rivals and buy out Warner Brothers Discover (Unless paramount can bet them, but a slightly different giant media company buying warner brothers is the same problem with a different label slapped on it. ) Whoever buys WB, we'll have one less major studio, less competition, less reason to put movies in theaters and the only people who benefit will be the ones with more of your money in their pocket as they further jack up the prices for the services they monopolized. It's not like you will be able to go to the theater instead.
Part 3:
I think self-hosting anything you can is one way to fight back. It's not the only way, and it's not a solution in and of itself. But being able to take control, to decide where your money goes, to own your own media, these are all things that these mega corporations hate. They want you helpless and paying rent forever.
I've said before that I own my own social media. And that's mostly true! I pay $5 a month for storage and network access on a hosting platform, but I control nearly everything about it. Except. My hosting platform is shutting down at the beginning of the year. They won't let me pay $5 a month to keep going. But I can keep all my data and there are other places I can take it and migrate my entire social media footprint to. This is a good thing. I'll be doing that today. At some point this afternoon https://Social.catastrophic.horse will go down and I'll backup all the data and send it to a new hosting provider. They'll get it up and running again, hopefully, and by Monday afternoon the website should be up again.
I could solve some of this myself by running the server on my home network, on a computer I directly control, and maybe one day I'll do that. But even if I did that, I don't own the networks and internet infrastructure that the information would cross over and through. So I'm always going to be a little beholden to someone else, some company, and I don't know enough about computers to take on the responsibility of doing it myself, when I can pay a reasonable amount to outsource some of that work.
It's entirely possible that some of that will fail and I'll have to find another solution. Or maybe I'll walk way from social media entirely (I won't do that). But it's a further reminder that everything we make, everything we have, is only for now.
Part 1:
You should probably be watching Pluribus. Vince Gilligan, the guy behind Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad has a new show out. It's called Pluribus and it stars Reah Seehorn as one of the last humans left after an alien invasion (of sorts). But despite being an ostensibly science fictional premise, the majority og the show is realtily grounded. I've seen others call it a Robinson Caruso style story about one person all alone trying to survive. IT is that, although not in quite the same way. What it really feels like (to me) is the opposite of so much streaming TV nowadays.
There was a (possibly apocryphal) story that was going around, where a netflix studio executive though more characters should be saying what they're doing all the time. If someone is making spaghetti, they should say "I'm making spaghetti." The goal being to keep "viewers" who only had the show on in the background while doing other things informed of what's happening. They wanted netflix to be the background noise of our lives.
In Pluribus, almost nobody says what they're doing a any point in time. Seehorn's character Claire is always doing something, but huge swaths of the show are almost entirely dialogue free. Carol is mostly alone so we have to watch what she does to figure it out for ourselves. It's a show that demands your attention rather than one that asks nothing more than to be noise in your life.
Part 2:
Speaking of attention, I love movie theaters. The popcorn and big coke and pickle are all great parts of the experience, but there's something magical about being in a dark room with a bunch of strangers experiencing the same movie at the same time. I like being forced to point my attention in one direction for a few hours and keep it there. Movie theaters are great. Which is why it's a real shame that the companies that make movies are trying to destroy them.
Not literally. Netflix isn't coming to your local megaplex with a sledgehammer or wrecking ball. At least not yet, anyway. But everything that most movie studios are doing certainly feels specifically designed to make theaters fail. I think this is the natural outcome of how they work, however.
In 1948 the Supreme Court of the US decided United States vs Paramount Pictures inc. which did a lot of things, the most relevant one being the breakup of the studio system, and in particular forcing the studios to give up ownership of movie theaters. This lead to independent movie theaters, and then later, movie theater chains. But those chains aren't owned by the studios. So if a studio wants a movie shown in theaters they have to split the ticket price with the theater where the ticket was sold. This seems reasonable to reasonable people. Both are required for the experience (theaters need movies to show and movies need to be shown) so both should profit from the money made. But corporations are not fond of sharing. That's how the vertically integrated system came to be in the first place. They wanted to own every penny made by their movies and I think they ahve been resenting that governemnt forced profit share since 1948.
Sure once home media existed in the 1980s and later, movie studios could release direct to consumers for home viewing, but direct-to-video was such a pejorative even then. everybody new that for the real movies you had to go to a movie theater. So studios made due. When they could, they shortened theatrical windows. And when they thought they could get away with it, they released movies in as few theaters as they could get away with
Netflix wanted the prestige of awards, so they would release movies in the minimum required theaters (Usually in LA and New York) for the minimum length of time (usually two weeks) to be eligible for the Oscars or Golden Globes and then release it on netflix for everyone else. Direct-to-streaming wasn't quite as gross to the general public as direct-to-video, and hey if you want to watch the latest Benoit Blan mystery, it's your only chance anyway.
2020 and the pandemic further emboldened studios, since everybody was staying home, they got rid of theatrical releases entirely. This was viewed as an opportunity to prove that theaters (and their pesky share of the profits) are entirely unnecessary. And it worked. Streamers and studios got bigger, theaters struggled and people watched big tentpole movies from their couches. I wanted to see Wake up Dead Man in Theaters, but to do so I would have to drive at least 2 hours to the nearest town with a theater showing it. So I watched it at home. Its still really good, but I wish I had seen it in theaters with a crowd of people.
I don't really have a solution to this. If we had antitrust regulations worth a damn, we could split the production from the exhibition again. Force netflix to be a studio or a streamer, but not both. But that's not really likely, given that netflix is poised to take over one of their only remaining rivals and buy out Warner Brothers Discover (Unless paramount can bet them, but a slightly different giant media company buying warner brothers is the same problem with a different label slapped on it. ) Whoever buys WB, we'll have one less major studio, less competition, less reason to put movies in theaters and the only people who benefit will be the ones with more of your money in their pocket as they further jack up the prices for the services they monopolized. It's not like you will be able to go to the theater instead.
Part 3:
I think self-hosting anything you can is one way to fight back. It's not the only way, and it's not a solution in and of itself. But being able to take control, to decide where your money goes, to own your own media, these are all things that these mega corporations hate. They want you helpless and paying rent forever.
I've said before that I own my own social media. And that's mostly true! I pay $5 a month for storage and network access on a hosting platform, but I control nearly everything about it. Except. My hosting platform is shutting down at the beginning of the year. They won't let me pay $5 a month to keep going. But I can keep all my data and there are other places I can take it and migrate my entire social media footprint to. This is a good thing. I'll be doing that today. At some point this afternoon https://Social.catastrophic.horse will go down and I'll backup all the data and send it to a new hosting provider. They'll get it up and running again, hopefully, and by Monday afternoon the website should be up again.
I could solve some of this myself by running the server on my home network, on a computer I directly control, and maybe one day I'll do that. But even if I did that, I don't own the networks and internet infrastructure that the information would cross over and through. So I'm always going to be a little beholden to someone else, some company, and I don't know enough about computers to take on the responsibility of doing it myself, when I can pay a reasonable amount to outsource some of that work.
It's entirely possible that some of that will fail and I'll have to find another solution. Or maybe I'll walk way from social media entirely (I won't do that). But it's a further reminder that everything we make, everything we have, is only for now.