The Gutenberg Press, But For Video?
A Semiplausible Analogy Between Martin Luther and Casey Neistat
People like to use the printing revolution analogy a lot nowadays for the spread information and misinformation. Smart phones. Google. Social Media. Now AI. Our information ecosystem is a straight up jungle in 2024.
But let’s run with the analogy. I especially like it when comparing what the Gutenberg press did for print to what technology in recent decades has done for video.
There’s no doubt we’re living through a historical shift with our media and consumption habits. For more on that, see my recent posts on dopamine culture, the “death” of cinema, and artists becoming ultra attention-seeking.
In short, our video-creation tools are becoming more democratized. And as a result, the entertainment world has become quite fragmented. I call this battle YouTube vs. Netflix, with Netflix represents streaming platforms as well as the old studio system.
And what’s more illustrative of this new reality than a headline story from last week:
French YouTuber Inoxtag sold 350,000 movie tickets in 24 hours for his new documentary about climbing Mount Everest.
Inoxtag (real name Inès Benazzouz) got his start posting Minecraft videos on YouTube in 2015 before transitioning to MrBeast-style challenges and travel vlogs. Last year, he announced his goal to climb Mount Everest in 2024, and the other week, he released his documentary Kaizen, which follows his journey.
The film sold 350,000 tickets in a day, which makes it a certified blockbuster by Hollywood’s standards. But not only did he get that kind of viewership. He also made his documentary available FOR FREE after turning down offers from paid platforms.
The documentary got 30 million views in 10 days. That’s a lot of views.
A little while after reading about Inoxtag, I was reading about the Gutenberg revolution (I always wind up reading about the Gutenberg press when I do a dive on media history) and it hit me. The Gutenberg era feels intimately close to what we’re living through today with video. What the Gutenberg press did for print, social media and smartphones are doing for video.
Think about it. Before the Gutenberg press, the Catholic Church was the big arbiter of religion. To be religious and educated, you needed access to canonical texts and literacy. And that was the domain of the Catholic Church, which produced and controlled the manuscripts. People literally had to attend church to access knowledge and the teachings of Christianity.
Then the printing press comes along and a few years later Martin Luther (aka the first YouTuber) brings on the Protestant Reformation by translating the bible from Latin to German for the lay people to read on their own. Luther is tired of the Church lining their pockets and argues that individuals could be saved only by their personal faith in Jesus Christ. He helps disseminate the bible and goes, “hey we don’t actually need this whole Catholic Church.” Let people read the bible on their own, at home, on their own time. Sound familiar?
And so the Gutenberg press created this wave of new information and misinformation. All kinds of books and pamphlets were published that couldn’t have been otherwise, and many them stoked panic in Europe around things like witchcraft. Just read Yuval Noah Harari’s new book Nexus and you’ll discover that yes, there were Alex Jones-style conspiracy theorists back then, and they built their conspiracy theories around misogynistic rumors and supernatural superstitions. Before Pizzagate, there was Salemgate.
So let’s keep this analogy going. The Catholic Church for the film world would be the big studios — the Warner Bros and Paramounts — and the theater chains would be the physical churches. Before the Gutenberg press, everyone had to physically go to church. And before television, we would have to go to theaters for film entertainment. And even with the advent of television, the programming content still had gatekeepers in the hallowed halls of studio lots. No one had the resources to make films, even if we could disseminate them in individual homes. So the papal supremacy of the studio system still stood strong.
But then, once smartphones were invented (and social media to follow), soon anyone could go out and shoot a movie, or become a vlogger, and all hell broke loose. But it took a few decades for us to really feel the effects of that video explosion.
So what does it really mean to live in a Gutenberg press age for video?
First of all, there are people who will profane “content” when compared to traditional film. They will complain that people should have the proper respect for video and see it in widescreen 16:9 format over the blasphemous vertical format. Many folks in film do this. I do this sometimes.
As filmmakers, it is hard for us to work with a mere slice of the artistic real estate that we hoped to have coming into the profession. Imagine telling Van Gogh to save his ear and instead lop off the sides of his canvas. He would probably slice YOUR ear off.
And yet vertical series are taking off.
During the tumultuous era of the Protestant Reformation, priests and religious leaders thought it ridiculous for people to worship at home, with their own bibles. A personal relationship to religious text? Blasphemy! Watching a show or film on an iPhone? Blasphemy!
Okay, okay. I’ll admit there may be disanalogies here. You can argue entertainment is not religion. It’s going to play out differently. And there are obvious differences between print and video. The two technologies have their own nuances that complicate each revolution. Moreover the geopolitics of 15th Century Europe are not the geopolitics of the 21 Century. A lot has changed.
But maybe there are lessons to learn. Maybe the Hollywood studio contraction that we’ve seen over the last few years, along with declining theatergoers and the rise of YouTube as a formidable competitor to Netflix is signaling a greater shift.
Our video culture is moving from the MACRO to the MICRO, from Studio to Creator, and with it, we may be living through a renaissance where entertainment is going to be permanently democratized, for better or worse.
This means that the age of movie stardom may be behind us. Hollywood as we romanticized it may come to represent a certain golden age of film, but not the living and breathing center of art and culture moving forward.
Regardless, we should be comforted in the fact that good art and good storytelling has always been valued, at every scale. And the Catholic Church is still around today isn’t it? AMC’s reclining sofas are pretty nice. They’re more comfortable than MY living room couch anyhow.
Nothing is going to die, but things are changing and will continue to change.
It’s pretty fucking cool to be living through history.