Scarecrow Video: Cinema’s Library of Alexandria
Nothing can date a film quite like the presence of a Blockbuster. That blue and yellow ticket immediately lets us know that we’re in a specific 20-year window. As a child of the ‘90s and of a self-identified cinephile, I was well acquainted with our own local video rental store. My dad always left with a sizable haul of rentals and blank tapes.
At home, we had two VCRs; he’d record the movies onto carefully labeled tapes. By the time I was in school, he’d amassed an impressive collection. Hundreds of tapes, each containing multiple movies.
Walking into Scarecrow Video in Seattle’s U District isn’t quite the same as the rental stores of my childhood—if anything, it’s better. The first thing I felt was the enormity of the place: Two floors of wall-to-wall shelves stuffed with movies. And the selection isn’t limited to DVDs and Blurays. There are VHS tapes, of course, but also available are less popular formats, including an entire shelf of Laserdiscs.
Cyberzone section of Scarecrow Video
The Evergreen Echo
When I began meandering through the various sections, I found hidden gems in every corner: a seasonal Christmas Crimes section tucked into an alcove, a Cyberzone upstairs next to a shelf of opera recordings with lights, and Johnny Mnemonic prominently displayed. There was a level of care put into each display that spoke to a love for film. It was easy to imagine each microsection as an employee’s personal passion project.
Scarecrow Video isn’t just a video rental store. In fact, since 2014, it has been a nonprofit and recognized media museum. With over 147,000 titles, Scarecrow has the largest publicly available media library in the country. Its collection even rivals The Library of Congress, boasting rare titles that aren’t available anywhere else. And with films from 138 countries in 126 languages, this cultural repository is certainly not limited to American cinema.
The availability of movies and shows through services like Netflix quickly sent the video rental giants, along with most other physical rental services, to an early grave. Streaming platforms at the time offered convenience on the cheap. In the wake of their success, we have since seen a familiar decline as service prices increase while availability decreases; a tale as old as capitalism itself. While such platforms spent a couple decades reinventing cable, the presence of physical media has continued to face depletion.
Beyond the inconvenience and the costliness, why does this matter? In a world (read in the voice of Don LaFontaine) dominated by streaming services, availability is now determined not by the ubiquity of physical media, but by companies avoiding residuals and licensing fees. Even purchasing a movie outright does not guarantee that it will always be available to you; it’s only available as long as it’s still on whichever platform you purchased it on.
Nearly endless shelves of movies with millions of genres sectioned off / The Evergreen Echo
Then, there’s the question of historical preservation. It’s estimated that approximately three-fourths of all silent-era films have already been lost. Half of all American films made before 1950 have perished as well. Many historically significant films never make it to streaming services at all; their goal is to make money by providing popular titles, not to offer a comprehensive library.
And even if they did, the designation of “historically and artistically significant” would be left to the discretion of executives. We already saw how this worked out with self-censorship guidelines like the infamous Hays Code: they will never want to showcase marginalized voices, not when it could potentially offend their particular demographics to do so. So instead, we are presented with caricatures and amalgamations of various stereotypes and prejudices, all told from the perspectives of predominantly cis/het white men.
Scarecrow Video provides a unique service. While the media landscape has transformed into a virtual domain, Scarecrow remains firmly planted in the physical world. And because of the vastness of their collection, along with their commitment to preserving cinema history, your selection won’t be limited to popular titles. Why is that important? For the same reason representation is important: We need to see ourselves reflected in our art. Otherwise, we become monstrous to ourselves.
LGBT+ section of Scarecrow Video
The Evergreen Echo
When I was young, no video store I’d ever been to had a queer cinema section. The best trans representation I ever had in a movie was in Rocky Horror Picture Show. I didn’t know about the Hays Code or artistic censorship. So, I thought being gay and/or trans was a joke, since that’s how most of the movies I watched treated those ideas and characters. I wonder now, if I had a media library as comprehensive as Scarecrow, if I would have understood myself sooner; if I could have learned how to talk about my identity without shame at a younger age. Who would that person be?
When visiting Scarecrow for the first time, I saw young adults in the throes of myriad identity crises and families with children in tow. It warmed my queer decrepit heart to see young people with the kind of access that, when I was their age, I could only dream of. I may not get to meet the version of myself that grew up with media they could identify with, but it’s enough to know that others have that privilege here and now.
The crew knows how important this kind of access is. Scarecrow Video employees and volunteers said the following when asked: “Why are places like Scarecrow Video important?”
“I see it as kind of like a library/archive. There’s so much here you can't find anywhere else. Streaming is making watching movies…not quite an inconvenience, but you have to pay for 12 different services for movies you might want to watch.” They described it as a modern day Library of Alexandria.
“All libraries are very important, but we’re fulfilling that need of being a repository of the past while we look toward the future.”
“The more we spend time in the virtual world, the more we crave the real world. To have a place that aligns with a passion or a love just makes it that much more special.”
