I return to Juan Cueto, and specifically to a column that he wrote some time ago in El País Semanal, new wedding dinners, about what downloading television series via P2P has meant in our lives. Specifically, this paragraph that refers to how we should understand these social gatherings, which now become clandestine, and how the way of watching the premieres of television series has changed.
“The other day, when I was invited to one of those new DVD wedding dinners to watch the first six episodes of the third season of Lost, the same episodes that Americans have just seen on their TV (ABC), I immediately accepted. the invitation. And breaking with all my old concerns, I did not ask the host about the rest of the guests, if odd numbers were admitted or only couples (…), and the last straw, without questioning him about the origin of the precious narrative merchandise that they were going to offer us: if Emule, BitTorrent, iTunes, Amazon or what. That was the problem of the host with Teddy Bautista or the minister of the branch that they do not find out. But I would also have immediately accepted the invitation if the reason for dinner had been the seventh season of The Sopranos, the fifth season of the West Wing of the White House, the third of Prison Break, the second of Big Love or the first of Heroes (.. .)
For now, they are clandestine meetings, since we are talking about pirated copies. Secondly, during the weekend we practiced that new version of internationalism that are those new fictions of globalization that have with a blow retired the great stories from Hollywood, the little ones from Sundance and, alas, the short stories from the Goyas. And while we are reunited again we are both elite and mass because we consume the most popular days or months before the national majority consumes it (…), and because in these new wedding dinners with pirated DVD of Lost, Heroes, it is mandatory , for the first time in our lives, also invite the new generations more or less single. Your children will never forgive you for such a narrative slight, and even your grandchildren will demand an account from you tomorrow.”
Very satisfied with the last part, not to leave aside the new generations, which in many cases are the ones that bring these novelties. And looking at what he says, one thinks about the era of prohibition in the United States, and the visits that citizens made to those clandestine places where they served alcohol. What happened in the end? That consumption had to be legalized because that’s how people demanded it. Very curious, yes sir.
In Vaya Tele | The new telephiles and the meaning of television
