Decoding DVD Habits

An article with a similar headline to what my blog title for today is caught my eye this morning. I thought for a minute that perhaps it would be an interesting examination of whether or not categorizing DVD's by genre or alphabetizing the collection was a sign of obsessive compulsive disorder or a sign that it was definitely time to re-examine the priorities of life. It turns out that the article wasn't about that at all, but rather about what researchers found to be the case with people who rented versus purchased DVDs.

Now before moving on, I would like to point out that the photo in this blog is not a photo of my DVD collection. Mine is about twice that size. But I joke and digress. What a study by researchers in Spain and England determined was that people who purchased DVDs or added to their general collection were found to be better educated and well-rounded compared to those who simply rented movies. Their conclusions were based on the fact that most respondents indicated a superior knowledge of the movies and sought to see movies that expanded their horizons or had an object lesson that made owning the film that much more appealing an option.

One can argue that it's also simply a way to see a movie without having to contend with going to the store or mailbox to return the film but still, what the study found was that someone who purchases a movie is more likely to have researched or studied film and is likely more interested in independent cinema or specialty genres. Speaking for myself I can say that this is something that applies to me. I have a collection that has grown over the years and continues to grow. Part of it is my desire to own a film that I have either enjoyed watching more than once or simply because it is a film that has some deeper meaning to me. It's also because some movies are good distractions from the toil of life and offer up momentary escape.

Sure there are those of us who collect movies out there who have questionable taste but I can speak to that defamation as well. I believe that one must see bad films or movies that don't even qualify to be called 'films' on occasion so that when you see a good movie you can appreciate it even more. I mean if so many of us had not seen "Batman and Robin" how would we have ever known that "The Dark Knight" was a far superior Batman sequel movie or that the original "Star Wars" movies were so much better than the prequel movies? Now this study is all quite possibly an excuse by some researchers somewhere who were looking to justify their penchant for buying movies with reckless abandon but ask yourself; do you see movies for the fun or because you appreciate the film and films in general?