VCRs, Family, and the Community

The VCRs has changed how consumers are able to watch home entertainment by allowing the spectator the ability to chose what to watch and when. The increased freedom of the individual, however, has an effect on how families operate and in a larger scale how the community functions. The trend of video is bringing the world’s cultures and people together, yet this happens through a dissociate medium. Instead of bringing people together as video claims it in facts is creating a separated cult society.

As VCRs continue to sell at a rapid pace, 78 million sold last year, so are television sets. Instead of buying higher quality video equipment, consumers are buying more television sets and households are increasingly having more and more televisions. With multiple TV set homes becoming common place where every member of the family can choose their own program, do families watch programs together? Many believe that families use the VCR to watch movies and television programs together, but this is not the case. Levy and Gunter did a study to find out who people watch their VCR with. They had families record VCR journals and analyzed the results. There were two categories that Levy and Gunter split VCR use into: television recorded and watched at a later time (off-air viewing), and movie rentals.

The results of this study showed that off-air viewing was watched 42% of the time with the two adults of the household, while only 19% of the time was spent watching off-air programming with children. Rented movies showed an even greater separation were 59% of the movie viewing is watched by oneself, 22% with another adult, and only 6% with the children. With this data, Levy and Gunter concluded, "video playback is most frequently experienced as a solitary activity." (Levy p.54) This explains the consumer trend where people are buying more televisions for individual rooms instead of buying a large screen television for a family room.

This trend of separate viewing of entertainment fit well with video technology that stresses more spectator control. The major control features of the VCR are the ability to time-shift, zip commercials, and watch pre-recorded movies. Time shifting is the term labeled for tapping a television program and watching later. The fast forward function allows for skipping the commercials in what is called zipping. Finally, the viewer can control the exhibition of the program by watching it at any time. This individual control of the exhibition that is created through the VCR is why they are found increasingly in people’s rooms instead of common areas. Films on the other hand continue to be shown in social theaters, probably since the medium is not designed for spectator control.

This spectator control has changed the viewing of entertainment. Julia Dobrow did a study of 200 hundred people on their viewing habits and found an interesting result. Almost all of the participants watch tapes multiple times. (Dobrow p.185) There were a huge variety of programs that they would view, but they viewed them multiple times. A soap opera lover would watch a soap over and over, similar to a sports lover watching his/her favorite game many times. It is interesting to know why a person would watch a show that they already know the outcome. Dobrow found that the participants enjoyed multiple viewing since they would gain a deeper understand of the characters and notice subtleties that could not be seen on the first viewing. Another explanation is accounted to what Freud describes as the repetition complex where a person repeats certain actions because of the know the outcome and thereby giving a sense of security that life does not offer. Basically, both of these theories fit into the idea of control.