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TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
Over at his Video Watchblog, Tim Lucas self-analyzes his compulsive DVD collecting, tracing it back to an incident in his youth:
When I was six or seven years old, my mother married a man who, a week or two into their short-lived marriage, sold every toy and comic book I owned in a yard sale and used the money to get drunk. When I was sixteen years old, I made the decision to leave home and, for various reasons, I could take with me only what I could carry. Aside from clothes and other essentials I could fit into two suitcases, I had to leave all my belongings behind — my FAMOUS MONSTERS collection, my movie posters, and some complete runs of numerous Marvel Comics titles, not to mention family photos. So, twice in my early life, I suffered the loss of everything I ever owned. Once it was taken from me, the other time I had to marshal the strength to walk away from it all voluntarily. I don’t need a psychiatrist to tell me that therein lies a good deal of my compulsion to have and to hoard from this day forward.
And then, from this psychological observation, Lucas goes on to discuss his — and many other collectors — drive to buy and re-buy their favorite films through regular editions, special director-approved editions, new Blu-Ray editions, etc., and comes to some conclusion about our “ownership society”:
Because the root of DVD addiction is that, through the act of regularly buying these discs, we have trained ourselves (or been trained) to feel that we must own everything we watch. If we don’t own it as we watch it, we feel resentful — don’t we? — as though we’re not getting our full money’s worth. I believe this is one of many reasons why theater attendance is falling off, and perhaps the only psychological one. Is there a soul alive that doesn’t run a tape or burn a disc while watching the latest offering on Pay Per View?
I’m the last guy who would willingly surrender his DVD collection, but as I continue along this strange path of acquisitiveness in life, I do sometimes think of what’s in my attic, still in shrink-wrap, and calculate how many trips to Europe, how many adventures, I might have had instead.
I’ve seen CITIZEN KANE at least 20 times.
I’ve never been to Europe.
