Re: Jeff's Che post about something Karina Longworth wrote about Che appeal to the 20something generation...

As a member of the Generation of Doom, I'm an anomaly in my unrepentant eagerness to see Che for a couple reasons: I was reared on movies like Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia and not only tolerate but expect 3-hour plus running times and vague moral perspective from great films, and on top of that, my father's direct immersion (I'm gonna withhold using the word 'involvement') in the Cuban revolution of '59 makes me more interested in El Che than the average 25 year-old who thinks they know a lot about movies. When I worked on a campus programming board when I was an undergrad, there was always great resistance to anything that ran over TWO hours, let alone 3. Well, unless there were hobbits in it.

The anecdote that a reader passed along a while back about some idiot in Best Buy not knowing what Citizen Kane was reminded me of these meetings where I would be alone in the room when I brought up Antonioni or Bresson, and any time I would mention Lawrence or Zhivago, one person or another would pipe in with "my dad likes it a lot, but isn't it, like, 60 years old or something?" At a certain point, it was like the High School Student Council was deciding that The Little Mermaid or Hackers made a better "Midnight Movie" than El Topo or Pink Flamingos.

Culture of Demand is a recurring feature of Arthouse Cowboy focusing on the growing on-demand nature of how people think of and consume media from an anthropological perspective. If I miss a "digital" option of how to watch something, please let me know.