Walking Backwards Through Blockbuster
In 1903 Thomas Edison electrocuted Topsy the circus elephant.
Though the execution of an unruly elephant intended to announce the dangers of alternating current, Edison made sure to capture the event on film and distribute it via Kinetoscope — a sort of standing box peepshow for one and a precursor to the film projector, itself an Edison invention. The film was 72 seconds long, lacked narration, and ended with a smoldering dead elephant.
So, in this oddly prescient moment, people entering the 20th century could literally watch the death of 19th-century entertainment set to a 21st-century attention span — a tik-tok length snuff film about a pachyderm and the industry that exploited it.
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As rapidly as anything in the 19th century, the circus stage went from the open field, to a grand tent, to tents, to hanger-like buildings. When the circus “came to town,” it was the spectacle. From the Civil War to the beginning of the Great Depression, the circus established itself as America’s great shared entertainment, an in-your-face experience delivering dazzle among dusty seats and roasted peanuts.
While the circus offered a unique, real-life experience (in color no less) it didn’t matter. With the invention of film, celluloid crept into the pie chart of American entertainment options. With it, vaudeville theaters (effectively the city circus) transmogrified into the cinemas that would illuminate fame and fortune for those on screen.
The magnitude of these fortunes also shifted as we went from circus to cinema. In 1907 P.T. Barmen sold his circus empire for $400,000. Just a few years later, in 1914, D.W. Griffith invented America’s first modern narrative film: Birth of the Nation, itself a darkly unintended statement about what white Americans accepted as story. The film grossed over $18 million — adjusted for inflation, it is still one of the highest-earning films in cinema. More importantly, it signaled America's want for long-form films with dramatic story, putting 15-20 minute films of folly on a death march.
So the first blockbuster was born, and with it, the film industry. And though people still enjoyed the circus, it mattered less. The complexities of the traveling show lost to the sound stage and the simplified distribution/presentation of the film reel. Technology won out by focusing on what it was good at while ignoring what it couldn’t compete with — even today, Netflix doesn't offer the olfactory adventure that circus animals provide.
Unlike the circus, the story of big-f Film is more familiar. We still revere the idea of the theater, yet the realities feel too close to the world of dusty seats and roasted peanuts.
Netflix/MAX/Disney+/Hulu/Tubi/Amazon and way too many others have replaced the circus of AMC and Cinemark. But things of old still carry over — the ticket booth, movie posters, and the visual/acoustic quality of the theater have all been compressed into account signup, endless browsing, and behind-the-scenes video/audio codecs. Like theaters, different platforms give a different experience, changing how you travel through entertainment and influencing when you come back.
We’re not smoldering, but we are plugged in.