What Blockbuster nostalgia says about modernity
Fifteen years after its landmark bankruptcy, Blockbuster is more revered than ever. As modern life devolves into bland homogeneity, dulled by friction-free widgets and numbing convenience, America’s signature video store has become a beacon of nostalgia.
The trend emerged in the late-2010s, as grifters sold Blockbuster tchotchkes on eBay and Etsy. Popup stores followed in London and New York, while a December 2020 documentary used ‘the last Blockbuster on earth’ – in Bend, Oregon – as a prism through which to re-examine our complicated relationship with the iconic brand. A flurry of books and online features followed, before Netflix (ironically) entered the chat with a Blockbuster comedy series in 2022.
For better or worse, I’m a sucker for such Blockbuster kitsch. I loved the Netflix show, which was annihilated by critics. I have read all the clichéd ‘rise and fall’ articles, which arrive in steady waves. And I have placed Bend, Oregon, on my travel bucket list, ahead of esteemed locales with far more recognised tourist attractions.
At the heart of such a nostalgic revival, of course, is personal reminiscence. Bromborough, my hometown, had multiple video stores, including a novel jewel called Jack and the Beanstalk, from which my younger brother and I rented video games. There was also a Blockbuster up the road in Eastham, if I remember correctly, and the brand’s sepia-tinged magic has outlived its physical footprint.
There is just an endless wonder there, an innocent and homely comfort. The very word ‘Blockbuster’ conjures an atmosphere that, on its own, seems banal or even turgid, but joined together, represents a mawkish assault on the senses – from the lurid carpets and low hum of excited chatter to the unmistakeable scent of plastic, popcorn, dust and – erm – sweat. Blockbuster denotes a feeling – too unencumbered to be accurately recaptured today.
Such is my Blockbuster fascination, I have developed a mental bank of useless yet intriguing arcana related to the chain. Take, for example, the wild scheme concocted by one-time owner Wayne Huizenga to build a 2,500-acre Blockbuster theme park and sports complex in the Everglades, to rival Disneyland. Or that time Blockbuster and Enron (yes, Enron) collaborated on a doomed streaming service. Or the well-worn tale of Blockbuster refusing to buy a nascent Netflix for $50 million in 2000, only to see its market capitalisation spike to over $400 billion a quarter-century later.
I could go on all day.
To that end, there is a nagging irony to Blockbuster’s newfound adoration. Sure, it was beloved by many during its peak, and its one-time ubiquity informs its cultural durability. But Blockbuster also attracted a fair heap of negativity as it rose to dominance. Detractors accused it of forcing mom and pop stores out of business, while a contrived corporate façade often made it a mercenary interloper in suburban settings. There was also an unlikeable arrogance to Blockbuster management, which pursued expansion with clinical recklessness.
Indeed, when Blockbuster announced the closure of its remaining 300 stores in 2013, some obituaries were scathing. Take, as a representative sample, Rob Walker’s Yahoo! elegy: “I always hated Blockbuster. In fact, if I’m nostalgic for anything, it’s for what Blockbuster destroyed: the idiosyncratic, independent video-rental shops of the 1980s and 1990s. I associate Blockbuster almost completely with the general rise of chain culture that’s slain interesting little businesses across a huge variety of retail categories — but even in that context, Blockbuster was special."
Nostalgia is an imperfect beast, of course, governed by capricious human memory. We have a prodigious ability to misremember things, while cognitive bias distorts how we view reality. Over time, we tend to blunt the jagged shards of painful memories while polishing their positive counterparts. Psychologists call this ‘rosy retrospection,’ and it encompasses an entire field of study. Some of our Blockbuster reminiscence fits the bill, but modernity may also have a lot to answer for in that regard. After all, more than a decade has passed since the initial Blockbuster postmortem, and a lot has happened in the interim.
For instance, the current wave of Blockbuster nostalgia saw a marked uptick during the Covid-19 pandemic and its associated lockdowns. Clearly, the surfeit of Blockbuster memorials – documentaries, books, articles, videos – struck a chord with weary, housebound romantics. We missed the freedom, community and serendipity of simpler times, and Blockbuster became a totem of those times. Sure, it was never perfect, but a trip to Blockbuster sure beat staring at the same four walls for months on end.
You see, Blockbuster was always much more than a video rental store. It was an impromptu social hub, a de facto community nerve centre – unplanned yet thoroughly effective in its ability to conjure random interactions with classmates, colleagues, neighbours and townsfolk. This phenomenon – its pleasing effects and its binding of communal fabric – exemplifies a theory about human interaction with urban space published by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in 1989. As Oldenburg explained, people spend most of their time in two places: home and work. For a society to function and thrive, Oldenburg argued, it must have accessible ‘third places’ – cafés, libraries, pubs, parks – in which citizens can spend restorative time.
“Third places host the regular, voluntary, informal and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work,” Oldenburg wrote in The Great Good Place, his magnum opus. He subsequently described how third places promote social equality by providing a level playing field for all guests, in addition to stoking cultural expression and communal empathy. Third places help us take stock of our busy lives and create safe havens where we can just be.
In business, Oldenburg’s doctrine was popularised – or perhaps plagiarised – by Starbucks mastermind Howard Schultz. By embracing third place methodologies throughout the 1990s, Starbucks morphed from a mere coffee shop into a desirable destination. Meanwhile, Blockbuster mastered similar techniques in a more ad hoc, unintentional manner. People came for the videos; they stayed for the escape and interaction.
To understand this concept, it is important to appreciate the zeitgeist in which Blockbuster flourished. The company was founded in 1985; its greatest saturation came around 1997, when almost 90% of US households had a VCR; and it peaked at over 9,000 global stores in 2004. Broadly, then, its zenith spanned a generation, from the late-1980s through the early-2000s. That was a very different world than ours today. A world before smartphones, ubiquitous internet, Facebook, AI, satellite navigation, YouTube and countless other gadgets that made our lives easier – and less enchanting.
Back then, a wholesome innocence pervaded, though it is largely incomprehensible to our contemporary palette. There was once a novelty to renting and watching movies at home. There was also a genuine anticipation to finish work on a Friday evening and head out – as a family, or with friends – to Blockbuster. There was a real excitement to return home with a pizza and a movie, and to spend the night immersed in another world.
In this regard, Blockbuster offered a clear line of demarcation between work and leisure, between week and weekend, which is all too blurred in this work-from-home age of incessant distraction. Once upon a time, Blockbuster movie nights were an event. Now, streaming a Netflix show is nondescript background noise.
This collective surrender to digital autopilot means we do not often experience things in a tactical, sensory manner nowadays. Our consumption is now metered by ‘you may also like’ algorithms, which, in a movie context, replaced the geeky Blockbuster clerk who, for the right price, might have slipped you a copy of You’ve Got Mail under the counter. And I, for one, regret that, because there was soul in the analogue that cannot be restored.
To miss Blockbuster is to lament the iPhone-ification of life, with as many trinkets and services crammed under one roof as possible. Sure, there were times when Blockbuster did not have your desired movie, or had rented it to somebody else, but its existence brought a sense of organisation and simplicity to the chaos of selecting leisure pursuits. Some may call it monopolistic, and they may even be correct, but in a more pastoral reading, Blockbuster was a one-stop shop for pop culture entertainment, and that felt efficient at the time.
Even when your desired movie was unavailable, Blockbuster taught a subtle lesson about compromise. You often went home with something else, increasing the odds of discovering something new – a rising star, perhaps, or a niche genre. Now, by contrast, we are programmed to receive exactly what we want, whenever we want it – unlimited choice multiplied by instant gratification, piped right into our echo chamber. Rather than freeing us into the vast creative oeuvre, such availability stokes analysis paralysis, and so we sit for hours, scrolling generic thumbnails, before falling asleep 12 minutes into Breaking Bad – again.
In fairness, there was also a downside to Blockbuster’s ‘planned disappointment,’ which kept people coming back by injecting scarcity and unpredictability into stock. If the alternative movie you selected proved a dud, it could sour the whole experience. But even those experiences were memorable. In fact, you can probably recall the worst movie you ever rented from Blockbuster. And that, alone, is extraordinary. It speaks to a mindfulness beyond the kin of modern consumers.
In truth, the entire process of bygone home entertainment was clunky, costly and inconvenient. Latter-day celebrations of Blockbuster often gloss over their derided late fees, and you rarely find mention of sporadic fines levied on ‘unrewound’ VHS returns. Blockbuster also adhered to a terrible business model throughout its existence, and chronic mismanagement – coupled with a baffling aversion to innovation – hastened its inevitable demise. Yet still, it retains a special place in our collective psyche. Still, it captivates our soul. Still, it activates feelings long buried by encroaching expediency.
Overall, we probably do not miss Blockbuster, the physical store. Nor do we really miss Blockbuster, the brand, per se. We miss Blockbuster, the concept; Blockbuster, the feeling; and Blockbuster, the era. We miss the time, place and ethos Blockbuster represents. And sadly, those things seem eternally lost.
The Bend, Oregon, store is still in operation, and the Blockbuster website showed signs of life in March 2023, when a cryptic message – ‘We are working on rewinding your movie’ – was posted to its homepage. Alas, there has been no elaboration, while the Blockbuster brand assets still belong to Dish Network, the faceless television conglomerate that mothballed them out of bankruptcy in 2011.
Such stasis seems like a major missed opportunity, given the nostalgic Blockbuster affection that still percolates. Dish does license the Blockbuster brand to select merchandisers, in addition to the folks in Bend, Oregon, but the lack of any mainstream use for the iconic name feels negligent.
Why not launch a retro Blockbuster streaming platform? Or a ‘content ecosystem that gives creators more control over their art and business,’ as a spirited group of 20,000 visionaries tried – and failed – to build while liberating the Blockbuster brand in 2022. Better yet, why not take a leaf from Oldenburg’s book and open a Blockbuster-themed coffee shop? I would live in such a place.
Ultimately, we will probably have to settle for sporadic nostalgia. A comeback seems unlikely, meaning Blockbuster will continue to lurk in the ether – in our memories and hearts. When all is said and done, maybe that is for the best. Maybe we can manage it better there. Maybe we can mould it to our whims. Maybe we can keep it alive – in spirit, if not in business. And that is most important of all.
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