Commentary: The Timeless Power Of Streaming

It’s easy for people today to take the power of streaming for granted. It’s not as impressive when it comes to new releases made specifically for the age of streaming. It’s also hard to appreciate it at a time when corporations are becoming increasingly protective over their intellectual property. Shows and movies sometimes vanish from services overnight without any warning, never to be seen from again. People are embracing physical media to regain control over their content. But not all content is as accessible as others. Looking back into works that are almost or even over a century old, such as Disney’s The Barn Dance, Camping Out, and Barnyard Olympics, streaming is a power that those filmmakers never dreamed of being a part of.

During the early days of animation, if a family wanted to see a short cartoon they had to go to the theater. There was no broadcast television or recorded devices let alone streaming. It was a singular experience that granted the audience the same amount of control movie theaters have today. They couldn’t pause the film, rewind, or watch it again. What they saw was what they got. And it was created by an army of creatives, animators, sound engineers, and more, who thought their work would be reserved for this type of theater viewing.

Fast forward to today when a seemingly endless amount of content can be sent to a handheld device anywhere in the world. Not only is the access unprecedented, but the transformation in how these works are being viewed is revolutionary. The short cartoons on Disney+ are an especially interesting example. At the end of these shorts there’s a long list of credits. There’s a strong possibility a lot of the people involved in the making of the film are now dead. But it would be interesting to know what they thought of how their work is being viewed today. It probably never dawned on them just how easily someone in the future can watch what they created. Streaming has a lot of enemies nowadays, but it does have a rather unique power to allow the content of old to be viewed much easier than it was originally intended.

The Barn Dance, Camping Out, and Barnyard Olympics are now streaming on Disney+.