4 Reasons to Switch from Your Current Streaming Service to the Criterion Channel
Hey y’all,
Just wanted to write a quick article before going to work with the ambitious goal of having you think about switching from your current streaming service to the criterion channel, so here it is!
Reason 1: It’s good to take a break.
I feel like many of us are so bored of streaming services. The same content gets shuffled back and forth from Netflix to Hulu to HBOMax and the only thing that keeps me on one or another is the occasional beloved original series which usually lasts a few months until the season is over, and unless that service has a crazy good lineup like HBO will occasionally have, one is left rudderless and typically subsisting off of the comfort shows. And comfort shows only do so much before becoming a kind of anesthetic.
This can often leave one buzzing with an unacknowledged sensory overload as we binge through addicting content and try to supplement with the oldies but goodies. The shows themselves tend to be structured in such a way that once you end one episode, it fluidly and effectively leads into the next. The shows demand your continued attention through the use of cliffhangers, sensationalism and pacing.
The Criterion Channel doesn’t suffer from the same compulsory need for repeated views and sustained watching. The collection is patient and well-curated and you’ll tend to want to take a moment after watching a particularly contemplative piece to daydream and wonder.
I wanna emphasize this need to take a moment of silence to think and breathe without the need to put on additional noise. Especially in this day and age, we have become so unaccustomed to silence. Take a break.
Reason 2: Explore the Globe
While streaming offers the option and the potential to view styles, architecture and cultures from afar, many viewers remain geographically or regionally confined in their catalogue due to language.
Netflix is probably the most successful at providing international appeal and language access with its extensive supplement of audio descriptions, subtitles and dubs. However, whenever I go Netflix the homepage starts playing whatever trailer Netflix is promoting. Then when I scroll down to stop the trailer another plays wherever my mouse cursor rests and it drives me crazy. I’ve tried to find ways to shut it off but have been unsuccessful. Please email me if you know a method. This feature alone is enough to have me always contemplate cancelling.
The Criterion Channel also features directors making films typically in their original country with that country as an audience. The films contain a nativism that naturalizes and normalizes everything that an outside viewer might find foreign about them. This allows viewers to sit and settle with the world presented without the discomfort of culture shock in a way that is far more organic than reading a travelogue or watching as youtuber’s travel vlog since those mediums are always interpreting the space for the viewer or even selling those spaces as tourist destinations.
Oh and I don’t know if you’ve looked into the expenses of travelling but it is what I would call exorbitant and otherwise financially unwieldy. Foreign films are an incredibly subjective and cost effective way to travel both space and time without breaking the bank.
Reason 3: Expand your Palate
Each service will also usually have a few eclectic series that demonstrate a departure in common aesthetics, but make no mistake that all of these shows are calculated to pander to one niche market or another. The first value for these streaming services is acquiring and retaining viewers and will always take a safe narrative choice over an avant garde direction. A colleague of mind pointed out that Twin Peaks: The Return was wholly unique in that the SHO network producers had absolutely no clue what they had put so much of their money into when they invested in the legendary reboot and had to nervously watch week to week to contemplate their return on investment.
The Criterion Channel is host to such personalities as Werner Herzog who ate his shoe as an act of artistic expression and called the producers of The Mandalorian cowards for even contemplating using CGI for that little green guy. These are artists with strong stances who are communicating both their complex interiority with their interpretations of the worlds that surround us. These directors fuse their personalities and perspectives into their work and it stimulates our sense of art, politics, lifestyle and worldview.
The criterion isn’t composed of just arthouse films or meandering contemplations in French or Swiss or German. It’s also full of delicious pulp films and striking sensory journeys that are meant to entertain as well as sooth and comfort. Many of the films that have stayed with me have been incredibly life-affirming or optimistically critical. You can also find an excellent assortment of corny B-movies and Euro-thrillers and Hollywood Classics. It’s quite the human spectrum.
Reason 4: SAG-AFTRA Strike
The contracts formed between movie networks and their pool of talent including actors and writers were made in a time before streaming platforms, and the effect that streaming has had on the working and living conditions of the people who make the entertainment machine run is now visible. Streaming services aren’t paying nearly as much in residuals and want to replace background actors with CGI scans of the performers and writers with scripts generated by artificial intelligence. The AI in question is less of a sentient sci-fi computer capable of creating strong literary works and more of a mass plagiarism program capable of remixing the work of others very much like Disney’s 2004 movie Pixel Perfect when Raviv Ullman’s cyber girlfriend tried writing a song and it was just a Frankenstein of a bunch of already existing pop songs. Does anyone remember that movie? No?
This has led to an industry-wide strike with both the Screen Actors and Writer’s Guild withholding their labor to bring the AMPTP back to the table to negotiate a fair contract (stay tuned for the auto-workers version coming soon.) The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers are hoping that the strike will end when workers start losing their homes and ability to sustain themselves, and this plays into a much larger national and even international discussion about how we treat labor and value humans.
The major ways people on the ground outside of the industry can help is to donate money, spread the word and make their voices heard to the streaming companies. And since I don’t have Bob Iger’s number I’ll stary by joining many others in cancelling my major streaming platforms and watching some wild ass films. I’ve made a list of some bangers below but shoot me an email if you have a particularly itch you’re trying to scratch and I’d love to curate a movie or two to suit your mood. Thanks for reading!
Recommendations
Tampopo by Juzo Itami
House by Nobuhiko Obayashi
La Jette by Chris Marker
Jane B par Agnes V by Agnes Varda
F for Fake by Orson Welles
Ikiru by Akira Kurosawa
The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman
8 1/2 by Frederico Fellini
Cronos by Guillermo Del Toro
After Yang by Kogonada
