The Loss America Didn't Notice

The United States was shocked [perhaps too shocked] by the losses of celebrities Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Billy Mays. Between the three of them, they have the top-selling album, poster and product-pitching business in the world. But there was another loss last week that went largely unnoticed, despite it being that of an American icon. It was due to a slow decay, the kind that the paparazzi would have no interest in. I’m talking about the discontinuation of Kodak’s Kodachrome film.

At this point, you may be chuckling to yourself; how could I possibly have compared the phasing out of a line of film to the death of the King of Pop? I don’t see Kodachrome as a product title, but rather as the representation of an era. The time of analog technology is drawing to an end, and it with it goes much of our culture, our history. Kodachrome was the first mass-marketed color film, going on sale in 1935. Since then it has sold in dozens of variations, including 16mm movie film and 35mm camera film. There’s a halfway decent chance that your parents’ or even grandparents’ wedding photos were done in Kodachrome. It proved to be such an important part of our cultural identity that its name was used for the title of a 1973 Paul Simon #2 hit.

Analog has been creeping out of our lives for years now, and most people have hardly noticed. February of this year marked the end of analog television, rendering more than ninety percent of TVs made since 1946 effectively useless without a special box. The switch was made out of necessity, as there was no longer enough airspace for the broadcasting industry’s rapidly ballooning amount of programming. All the new advanced cell services like 3G have begun to stake their claim over wireless capacity in the United States, and the switch to digital TV helps to free up space. It’s too bad for the estimated three million Americans who didn’t get properly set up before the switch and turned on their sets to darkness on every channel.

Music may be the most swiftly-changing industry, mostly because the modes of recording and selling music change almost constantly. It seems that as time progresses, the technology moves faster. The record player was the primary playback equipment for listeners from the turn of the century until the late 1980s, but the CD may die before it reaches the age of 30. Music download purchasing is expected to overtake CD sales in 2012, and illegal downloading is already one of the main sources for music. There are certainly advantages to digital, like the enormous amount of music that can be stored. My iTunes library is currently 5363 songs totaling 23.69GB and over 14 days of music, which many of my friends consider to be ‘puny’. Still, between my laptop and my external hard drive, I could theoretically store enough music to be played continuously for over one year.

There is a loss, with digital music and picture, in the warmth and depth that is seen in analog technology. Enthusiasts all seem to agree that nothing will ever top vinyl records for musicality, and Michael Mann was blasted for the sloppy and unattractive use of digital film in his upcoming movie, “Public Enemies.” I realized my own switch to digital when in one day this summer the only writing I did by hand was signing a check at a restaurant after I had paid – digitally. It is sad to me that many children growing up now may go their entire lives without ever getting film developed or see an original 35mm print on the big screen. Good luck trying to find a copy of Paul Simon’s “Kodachrome” on vinyl!