DRIVE-INS & B-MOVIES \ 4 of 4

So as the era stumbled into the 70s…the energy crisis, coupled with the spread of VCRs and cable television, made drive-ins obsolete. Americans lived their lives differently now. And the golden age of drive-ins came to a somewhat humiliating end.


Though…in a way, drive-ins and B-movies are still with us. In fact, they may never go away.


Where do today’s teenagers like to go for cheap entertainment…privacy…exploitation content? If cars and television were the mass technology of the post World War II generation, what is today’s?


The same ideas that drove Americans to the drive-in in the 40s and 50s, are driving them to the World Wide Web today.


Facebook give us all the kind of social interaction people used to have at the drive-in picture show. YouTube gives us the B-grade movies. The Internet thrives of personal space, privacy. And it also is the single largest distributor of exploitative content the world has ever known. You can see anything online. Anything. And guess what? 99% of it is FREE.


So. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is it a better thing than the old drive-ins with their B-movies?


I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to think of the drive-in and B-movies as mere kitsch. Like all cultural movements and fads, these social trends express a solution…an answer to our needs as people…as humans. And even as one fad fades into something new…you can see the same motivating factors at work.


Maybe...we really don’t change as much as we like to think we do.