Apparently I have developed a new hobby…this year, for the first time ever, I’ve been buying DVDs from the $5 DVD bin at Walmart.
A moment of clarity has stemmed from a deep home cleaning over the holidays and re-discovering my own bin of DVDs, most of them being over 20 years old at this point.
I’ve walked past that $5 DVD bin for decades without a thought about what might be in that seemingly endless barrel except for “C” level movies they were trying to get rid of. However, I walked past the bin on a random Monday and I was floored to see the movie Forrest Gump sitting on top of the pile. I vividly remember watching that classic as a kid.
I’d always assumed the bin was composed of nothing but movies nobody wants, so if Forrest Gump is in there, what other popular movies could’ve found their way into this utopia hidden in plain sight? I discovered the answer to that quickly, uncovering an alarming number of bangers over the course of several trips.
Ferris Bueller? Pretty In Pink? Shrek? Back when DVDs had replaced VHS as the primary form of media in the early 2000s, these movies would be a minimum of $20 each. And now here they are, all mine for the taking for the low price of $5.
Younger me would never have stopped at the $5 DVD bin. “Damn, your broke ass can’t afford the regular-priced DVDs?” is what I assumed everyone would say as they walked by with their judgmental stares. The inner voice now says “Damn, you’re still watching DVDs when we have streaming?” as they watch me pilfer through the unorganized pile, but the current version of me knows the joke is actually on them.
We currently live in an era where we’re being beaten down with subscriptions as companies shift more toward a world where we (the consumers) own nothing. Streaming was awesome when it first arrived, but now it’s become the monster it originally saved us from. And when it comes to media, we’re beholden to a handful of companies that dictate what we can watch. Once they decide a show or movie isn’t worth it, it disappears into the void (aka an offline server), never to be seen again.
I know it’s very soapbox-y to talk about media preservation, but I often think about various shows/movies from my childhood that no longer exist anywhere. It makes me wonder how much of what we consume now will still be available to watch 25 years from now. That’s also why I’ve bought DVDs of newer movies as well (no, they’re not $5).
Who knew they still made DVDs?!? I guess I’d assumed they stopped doing that once Best Buy announced they were no longer selling DVDs, but Wally World is still going strong. My personal favorites are the “collections” where they cram anywhere from 2 to 10+ movies on a single disc. Who doesn’t want to enjoy a double feature of viruses decimating society?
The crazy part is I haven’t even entered the world of yard sales or browsing through stores that sell used stuff yet. Yes, I’m basically 20 years late on collecting a thing that’s only a few steps away from becoming obsolete. But when the AI robots inevitably become sentient and take down the internet to cripple humanity, I’ll at least have the “Mark Wahlberg Collection” on DVD to keep me occupied.
