The 2010’s marked the start of the streaming age. Though, in recent years physical media has been making a resurgence in households across the world. Acclaimed film director, Christopher Nolan, is one of the biggest advocates for physical media. With the Blu-Ray and streaming release of the biopic “Oppenheimer,” Nolan expressed that streaming services do not offer permanent ownership like physical media does.
Fellow director, Guillermo del Toro, supported Nolan’s opinion on physical media on his X (formerly Twitter) account, “Physical media is almost a Fahrenheit 451 (where people memorized entire books and thus became the book they loved) level of responsibility. If you own a great 4K HD, Blu-ray, DVD etc. etc. of a film or films you love…you are the custodian of those films for generations to come.” Movies are not the only form of media that are having a revival of physical ownership: vinyl records, cameras, and cassette tapes have been making a comeback as well.
There is also a widely held perspective that the possession of digital media makes it easier to replace a beloved physical movie or song if it were to become lost, even though it also has a risk of being wiped. There is a more intimate aspect to owning physical media. When buying secondhand media, we can hold history in our hands. It is much harder to edit a physical copy than a digital one. For years, physical media has been one of the best legacies of human life and should continue to be preserved.
