Why Do Horror Fans Like Physical Media?
The horror community loves physical copies. As someone who grew up with streaming and e-books, I’ve always been somewhat curious as to why (I love physical media myself, but I’ve never actually known the reason). Is it nostalgia, preparation in case of a 1984-type world, the satisfaction of owning the copy, or simply just for the fun of collecting? Here’s what I’ve found to be true.
It’s yours
It almost feels like a more personal experience when you know that you can watch/read something over and over again backwards and forwards whenever you want. The act of actually owning something makes you feel more connected to it than an online copy does. It’s yours.
Digital media is easily deleted. How many times have you planned to stream something only to find out that it had been removed from the platform? With physical media, your copy can’t be erased. That also means that the specific cut you own is forever, and can never be changed. Companies can’t censor or re-edit it without telling you. And you can easily share it with your friends (rather than having to share your streaming passwords).
Quality
One of the biggest reasons for buying hard copies is quality. For film/tv, a DVD/tape comes in the aspect ratio that that work was intended to be seen in (as opposed to the shifted ratios of streaming and VOD). The audio and video qualities are also better on Blu-Ray than they are on streaming (in most cases). Additionally, magazines are literally designed to be in print, so their colors and proportions are often better in person than on screen. Most of us prefer to actually be able to turn the pages of a book or magazine.
Hard copies also often have extras that online versions don’t. DVDs usually contain behind the scenes footage and deleted scenes that can’t be found anywhere else. Certain flyers and advertisements can only be found in printed media. You also don’t have to worry about hard copies taking up cloud storage or buffering.
Physical Media Advanced Horror
In an age where censorship is commonplace, horror often faces a lot of backlash over its gore. Physical media is one of the only ways to ensure that gore won’t be censored (I mean, could you imagine page 54 being in an online issue?).
Home media made a lot of horror fans who they are today. Because kids and teens weren’t allowed to see R-rated movies in theatres, they would rent them on tape. This expanded horror’s audience and introduced a much younger crowd to the genre. Many horror fans today now associate their love of horror with VHS tapes because of this. The TV quality at the time made the VFX look much more realistic and terrifying than they actually were. So, many prefer to watch older horror movies on VHS. Additionally, magazines like Famous Monsters and Fangoria were some of the only access many kids h=ad to horror when they were younger. Which brings me to my next point, physical media is nostalgic.
Nostalgia
I was around to watch the fall of the video store. I remember thinking “Why, Blockbuster, why?” At the time I couldn’t comprehend that Blockbuster needed more than just me renting the same copies of Teen Titans and R.L. Stine’s Don’t Think About It every week to survive. Flipping through my own VHS tapes and DVDs today brings me back to searching the Blockbuster shelves.
Actually holding a VHS tape or a copy of Fangoria magazine in your hands can bring you back to when you were younger. Your inner child comes out and you feel that same excitement you did in your youth. I can’t even begin to describe the feeling of getting a magazine in the mail that I’ve been anticipating for months. Exploring those pages and hanging onto every last word is sentimental, like the days of reading the same comics over and over until your eyes hurt. We should never lose our inner child, and when we find something that connects us to our younger selves we have to hold onto it for dear life. While I adore streaming, and I applaud it for making so much art more accessible, I love physical media more. So at least for me, I’ll continue to collect hard copies and do everything in my power to ensure that physical media never dies.
