Pão com Mortadela
A Polygon está com uma série de artigos chamada The Masterpieces of Streaming, com foco nos filmes e séries lançados no Netflix e em outras plataformas de streaming desde o início da criação de conteúdo específico pra esse meio (os chamados “originals”). Tem a típica lista dos 50 filmes mais importantes dessa era, e as séries que melhor utilizam a plataforma para maratonar. Tem também sobre um outro tipo de conteúdo, os vídeo-ensaios no YouTube, que por algum motivo não lista nenhum vídeo da ContraPoints.
O que eu mais gostei são os artigos que analisam essa era de conteúdo, em especial esse em que o autor, Charles Bramesco, tenta identificar o porque as plataformas de streaming geram tão poucos clássicos como as locadoras (e os cinemas) conseguem:
Humanity has spent a little over one hundred years developing a relationship to “the movies” as both a sentimental notion and a real place, priming us for the emotionally revelatory highs of a life-changing screening. There’s a crucial feeling of ceremony absent from the process of clicking around on the couch, and a certain investment in buying a ticket rather than simply hitting play. For the deliberateness required, these transactions mean more; it’s even in the language, of “going to the movies” versus “seeing what’s on.” Netflix has poured a bit of its capital into eventizing its films along these lines, buying out the Paris Theater in Manhattan as a place for the tastemakers of New York to take in the service’s more dignified releases as they were meant to be seen.
“As they were meant to be seen” is not a figure of speech. There are visceral, physical reasons for the way we have traditionally seen art and absorbed its effects. The sheer scale of theatrical presentation makes for an immediate bigness that amplifies our response to the moving lights on the wall. The enveloping environment of darkness, the elimination of extraneous sounds, and the upright stillness in the chair lull a viewer into a state of what film theorists called “lower wakefulness,” under which movies can permeate deeper than when watched from a couch. The company of the crowd goes a long way as well, their reactions giving approval to ours and vice versa in feedback loops of fuller-throated laughter, fear, or in the case of Magic Mike XXL, joy. The forced isolation of the past year-plus has only underscored the critical importance of the social, communal dimension to viewership.
Mas meu artigo favorito de todos é esse ensaio sobre o poder, e a influência, do Vine nisso tudo. Esse sim foi o rei da internet enquanto durou.