Editorial: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

THE SINGLE CONSTANT ABOUT CONTEMPORARY POPULAR CULTURE IS

that there is no constant. Popular culture is entirely mutable. Itis ever changing, always in motion, never static. Of course,

I am talking about the artifacts of mass produced entertainment andnot the archetypal formula narratives supporting it (that is for a laterdiscussion). Thus, the story of romantic comedy may be ‘‘eternal,’’ butthe products disseminating that story in video formats are not.

Case in point: I recently purchased the complete The Man fromU.N.C.L.E. set from Time Life on DVD (‘‘. . . if you order now duringthis exclusive offer, you will receive this handsome The Man fromU.N.C.L.E. miniature attache case that stores your DVDs . . .’’). As thiswas one of my favorite television shows when I was an adolescent, mysense of nostalgia had motivated me to stay on the prowl for episodes ofThe Man from U.N.C.L.E. on DVD. After all, it seemed that a goodnumber of similar television programs, such as The Wild, Wild West,were making their way to DVD. After several years of disappointment,imagine my surprise when one night I came across a late-night TV adfrom Time/Life for the complete DVD set of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.I may have broken the land-speed record as I zoomed to my telephone;my fingers were a blur of motion as they punched the toll-free ordernumber. A ‘‘mere’’ three weeks later, my prize was delivered right tomy doorstep. I spent the weekend in pure bliss as I followed the heroicespionage adventures of Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin in theirnever-ending battle against the sinister forces of T.H.R.U.S.H.

My bliss, however, was to be short-lived, as common sense even-tually caught up to me. Remember, I told myself, how great you feltwhen you purchased your first film on Beta videotape, your first film onLaserdisc, your first film on VHS videotape. The common point here isthat all of these video formats became obsolete. DVDs will also becomeobsolete, actually are becoming obsolete as you read this, and all thoseDVDs that I have bought over the past three or four years (including

The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 41, No. 3, 2008r 2008, Copyright the AuthorsJournal compilation r 2008, Blackwell Publishing, Inc.

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my complete The Man from U.N.C.L.E. set) will at some point becomea mere technological oddity in history.

For now, Blu-ray appears to be the top dog. It has recentlytriumphed over the HD DVD format, but its current preeminenceshould also be short-lived. History has demonstrated similar progres-sion in recorded music: vinyl records, 8-track tapes, cassette tapes,CDs, digital downloads. The recently settled writer’s strike was pri-marily concerned about digital downloadable formats for film andtelevision, which I believe will eventually replace all other object-delivered venues for entertainment.

Ironically, the most durable format for popular culture is also theoldest and the most ‘‘low-tech’’: the book. It will perhaps continue tosurvive the digital onslaught, such as Amazon’s ‘‘wireless reading de-vice,’’ the Kindle. For some reason, the tactile experience of holding abook and reading it has encouraged readers to resist the ‘‘cold’’ tech-nology of digital books. (A relatively small group of recorded-musicaficionados argue a similar claim to the value of vinyl records over CDsand music downloads.) When all other popular culture entertainmentwill be little zeros and ones that have to be fed via the internet to high-tech devices, I believe books will continue to be published and enjoyedfor many years to come, the alpha and omega of popular culture.

Which, at this point, provides little comfort as I peruse my trea-sured The Man from U.N.C.L.E. DVD set, soon to be obsolete. Perhapssome dastardly scheme hatched by T.H.R.U.S.H. for technologicalworld domination has triumphed . . .

Gary Hoppenstand

370 Editorial