Learning films by heart, aiming for perfection

In the Saturday September 3, 2005 Guardian, Mark Lawson considered the implications of the increasing popularity of DVDs. Most of it was about whether the "old-fashioned picture house experience" would survive; but towards the end was something more interesting:

But DVD's greatest achievement has been to transform the nature of the memory of entertainment. In the past, the viewer of cinema or television was subject both to short-term amnesia (the misunderstood plot-twist, the punchline obliterated by a laugh or cough) and to long-term memory-loss: you were lucky to see a classic twice in your lifetime. It's true that video began to intensify recollection, but DVD, with its chapter selection and commentaries, has permitted total recall. If someone likes a film or TV show now, they can know it as well as poems learned by rote at school.

DVD was much praised on this account at last weekend's Edinburgh International Television Festival. The dramatist Stephen Poliakoff, who left the BBC for cinema in the 80s after his play Soft Targets was screened only once, now knows that his work can be repeated at the viewer's private pleasure.

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant revealed that the knowledge that The Office and Extras would be chapter-selected, frozen and rewound encouraged them to aim for perfectionism.

For more, see the full article, "Movie revolution: The popcorn gang can no longer hold back the march of the DVD."

The way people watch, and understand, reality shows must also be affected by the widespread use of video, DVD, and hard disk recorders; and this will include the aspects that would normally be the most ephemeral, such as the Big Brother live stream. (Yet so far this has not caused BB housemates to "aim for perfection".)