On a recent trip home, I found the following sticker on a VHS copy of 'Mac & Me' (no, not an instructional pasta video, but a kids movie - an 80s 'E.T.' but with half the talent involved...) which I pretty much wore out over the few years I owned it (prior to the release and subsequent world-domination of the DVD format…).
I'll always remember the Chester-Le-Street video shop. A tiny upstairs room in a hovel of a building located outside a dingy train station. Floor-to-ceiling tape walls, the stench of stale cigarette smoke imbuing each tape with nicotine and cancer, I'd spend hours (or as long as Dad would let me) trying to pick out a movie which looked good. This was difficult in those days; as a kid, visiting the cinema was a once-a-year activity, a world away from my now bi-weekly visits to the local multiplex. There was no Quicktime Movie Trailers dot com, there was no internet yet. Which raises another question - did life actually exist before AintItCool.com?? A question for another time, perhaps…
It was a simpler time, but not without its charms. The 'Be Kind Rewind' era is long gone now, and I think it says a lot about the world which we now inhabit. We no longer have to 'rewind', nor do we have to even visit the video shop. But it's about more than video shops - I guess it's about the worry that we're no longer a part of a society that would go a little out of its way so that the next person in line can enjoy the same experience as we have. Maybe I'm overreacting, but I can't help but feel that our world no longer 'rewinds' when we're finished with an experience, and I don't mean 'mentally' rewinds, I mean...well...we leave the hotel room in an untidy state because there'll be somebody in to do that for us. We don't pick up our rubbish when we leave the cinema because somebody else is paid to do it (well I do, but that's because I've been that litter-picker-upper-guy…). We don't bus our own trays when we leave the fast food joint, or refill the paper in the office printer, or keep that library book in pristine condition. We have, in a lot of situations, exchanged our expendable wealth for our sense of community 'niceness'. Am I overreacting?
Let's say there was a new format of entertainment tomorrow, one that asked that, once you were done enjoying it, you'd do a little bit of work to make it easier for someone else to enjoy it the same way. Maybe 'rewinding' is today's equivalent of 'seeding' an illegal download that you've enjoyed. If so, I'm happy to say that there is still a large proportion of society that is functioning by working together, even if the big companies do want to lock us all up for, oh I don't know, 'breaking the law' or whatever….
I can't think of any perfect examples right now of what I'm trying to get at, but hopefully you can catch my drift. I just worry sometimes that the times of holding a door open for someone even if they're miles away, or giving somebody a lift in a flash rainstorm, or checking that kid crying in the park is ok might be long gone. I'm not saying society has crumbled since the death of VHS. If it has, then I'm as much to blame for it as anyone else, but I don't think we're all doomed. In fact, one thing I've noticed in recent times is that 'random acts of kindness' are everywhere. And every now and again, if you're watching very closely, you'll see somebody 'rewind', and it's really heartwarming.
When was the last time you 'rewound'??
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