Inside Vulture Video
In honor of Video Store Day on October 19, Anna Rose Stamm rhapsodizes about physical media and the irreplaceability of video stores like Bloomington’s own Vulture Video.
The very first Christmas gift I can remember receiving was a VHS tape of A Bug’s Life. I still remember the way those tapes sound as they slide into the player and the buzz of the cathode-ray tube television turning on. The screens of CRT TVs produce a magnetic field whose fuzzy static feels like how a bad connection looks. Then, as I got older, DVDs replaced VHS tapes — then Blu-rays after that. My family stopped going to the video store. When Netflix started, they sent us discs. My dad would open up the envelopes, we’d watch the movie — on a static-free flat-screen this time — after which we’d seal the movies back up and send them off. I remember Netflix challenging Blockbuster’s position and once they started their streaming service, Blockbuster failed to meet that challenge. Streaming seemed so much easier, so much more convenient than dealing with physical media. Discs could scratch, get lost in the mail, or cost more per movie than Netflix was offering per month for a whole library. It’s no wonder we abandoned the video store.
For a while, there was Netflix and Hulu. Amazon Prime had a lot to offer too. But then every studio worth their salt figured out that they better get in on this streaming business too. All those services added together cost more than cable these days. Streaming promised us convenience and choice, but now? Perhaps they offer neither. Their libraries continue to shrink — sometimes eliminating media we can’t obtain anywhere else. Legally, at least. They slowly inflate prices, while they introduce advertisements, and so become increasingly inconvenient.
However, while we watched streaming dominate the media landscape, physical media never died. Boutique film distributors deliver beloved trash, hard-to-find cult classics, and the best of the best alike. They bring together interviews, behind-the-scenes, and other bonus materials to their releases. While these bonuses are intended to catch the eye of niche fans, the distributors deliver on their promises, and when you own your copy of Slumber Party Massacre, you really own it. Formats and hardware will change, as they always have, but no one can take away that disc, the way streaming services are taking away their content libraries. Discs are things; films that you watch via streaming aren’t.
Shelling out a few dozen bucks for a Blu-Ray of The Seventh Seal may not sound that appealing since that’s a month or two of Disney+ (at least!). Yet, people are forking over their cash in large enough numbers to keep these distributors alive, even thriving. But even as movie audiences remember physical media, one aspect we’ve forgotten about the videocassette and DVD days is the video store. That place with rows and rows of movie things. A place where you could rent a film for three dollars, take home the thing that housed the movie, and where you would eventually come to return it. Only a few video stores remain in this country, and for those of you living in Bloomington, one of those resides among us.
When you walk into Vulture Video (formerly Plan 9 Film Emporium), the lights are low but warm. There’s rows and rows of plastic-coated wire shelves with hundreds of cases lining them. Movies are organized by directors, genres, and vibes, sorted alphabetically by title. Hand-made labels direct you to niche genres like “non-Satanic malevolent children” and “music documentaries.” When you walk into Vulture Video, you are surrounded by movie things.
I started volunteering with Vulture when I began my graduate program in Cinema & Media Studies at IU. I knew no one in town, but I knew movies and I found it so exciting that there was a real-life video place straight out of my early childhood memories. While physical media had never left my life completely, their presence had diminished. Being surrounded by a plethora of DVDs, Blu-Rays, tapes, and all the ephemera produced by my fellow volunteers reminded me of the thing-ness of movies.
On the shelves sits a VHS tape of Evil Dead II, which the proprietor insists is the best way to watch that film. Most of us have a place on the Staff Pick’s shelf, where we arrange the movie things that reflect our tastes, project our identities. More than movie things, folks come in to ask us to hang their posters for happenings in town: concerts, screenings, gatherings, etc. More than a place to rent films (although Vulture does plenty of that), Vulture Video is a place with things. I came to Vulture expecting only movies, but what I found there is more than movie things, I found community.
I can’t help but juxtapose this place, with all that that implies, with the placeless-ness of the streaming platforms. While we all should do well to remember the material dimensions of streaming — and the massive amounts of power it takes to deliver movies to our home screens — the community dimensions of movies seem to have left along with the movie things that used to house our films. The discussion of films, the trading of recommendations, reveling in hidden gems: that happens between people, not a consumer and its algorithm. Social media platforms (like movie fans’ own Letterboxd) have offered spaces for such discussion, but I don’t think it has the ability to replace the discussions had in Vulture Video. When a patron comes through the door, I can pick out a Blu-Ray case and hand it to them. I can gesture to the cover art or point to the back where the special features are listed. I can show them around the place and always be surrounded with the movie things that have movie fans marveling. The face-to-face intertwines with the thing-ness found in Vulture (irreplaceable in streaming), rendering a material community for movie things and their fans.
This Saturday, October 19, join Vulture Video in commemorating Video Store Day with an array of goodies for sale and tons of great physical media to rent. An international event to promote the idea of supporting your local, independent video stores, Video Store Day honors the stores run by human beings who can be relied upon for reviews and recommendations and who truly love what they do.
Anna Rose Stamm is a current PhD student in Cinema & Media Studies at IU Bloomington’s The Media School. While her research focuses on American broadcast history, she has never forgotten her first love: movies.