R.I.P., VCR - Dusty and often discarded, these machines revolutionized the way we watched TV
Last week, news broke about the death of the VCR. The Japan-based Funai company, the only outfit that was manufacturing the devices, announced it would cease production in August.
For most people, the surprise wasn’t that the videocassette recorder was dying after so many years of quiet, clunky obsolescence, but that it had still been alive.
It’s easy to make fun of VCRs. They are outmoded, unwieldy, unlovely and associated with the 1980s, the decade the machines really hit the household market. When it comes to audio-visual nostalgia, they possess none of the retro cool of vinyl and turntables, having more in common with the idiot-brother of the audio family, the eight-track tape. And since their ’80s advent, they have been displaced by several generations of better, faster, sleeker tech.
But VCRs changed our relationship with movies and TV, in ways so fundamental we now take them for granted. Because we have a hard time remembering the era before we could "Watch Whatever, Whenever," as one early VCR ad promised, we sometimes lose sight of how revolutionary these changes were. As I mourn the death of the VCR — I still own one, though it’s getting peculiar — here are a few pop-culture moments that stand out:
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