The Last Blockbuster

I was a professor at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee in the 1990s. We had a university-wide faculty meeting just before the beginning of each new school year. The president of the university would address us.

One year—it was probably 1994 or 1995—he said something like this: “Blockbuster Video is one of the great success stories of our time. And it will be gone in ten years.” He said this would happen because people would get their movies by other means, such as through delivery to their computers. I don’t remember him using the word “streaming,” but that’s what he was talking about.

It took longer than he said it would, but he was right. In 1994, Blockbuster had about 4,500 stores in the United States. As of this writing, only one Blockbuster store remains. It’s in Bend, Oregon, and I suspect that if you want to see it, you’d better get out there as soon as possible. I hear Bend is a nice place to visit.

What happened? Lots of things. Netflix’s movies by mail happened. So did Redbox’s movies by kiosk. And most recently, movies by streaming services like Netflix and Amazon. In short, change happened. It wasn’t that long ago that it was hard to imagine a world without Blockbuster. We’re now living in it.

It’s not that watching movies at home has gone away. It’s just that methods of providing them for home viewing have evolved, and the evolution has left video stores in the graveyard of historical footnotes. It’s survival of the most convenient.

But they still make movies, don’t they? Hollywood keeps churning them out, and people keep going to theaters to see them. There’s still nothing like seeing a good film on a big screen. So the fact that we’re down to the last Blockbuster doesn’t mean that we’re down to the last movie.

Methods of home movie delivery come and go. But they still make movies and show them in theaters.

There are different ways of doing church too. Some of them have stood the test of time, and the jury is still out on some. But all churches still worship the same God, follow the same Jesus, and read the same Bible that they have for almost two millennia. We may struggle over meanings, quibble over details, and argue over methods, but we all keep going back to the same sources.

There are different ways of being American too. Different groups, movements, and individuals have different perspectives, approaches, and priorities that lead them to emphasize some ways other than or more than others. But we read the same Constitution we’ve been reading for well over two centuries now. We may struggle over meanings, quibble over details, and argue over methods, but we all keep going back to the same source.

Video stores offered a very helpful way of bringing movies into our homes, but that way has now become extinct because better ways have been developed. Maybe we sometimes develop better ways of practicing faith or of exercising citizenship.

But we keep going back to the movies. We keep going back to the Lord and to the Bible. We keep going back to the Constitution.

As we continue moving forward, we need to keep looking back.

As we go where we need to go, we need to remember where we come from.

The Star-Spangled Banner

As the sun arose on September 14, 1814, a man on a ship several miles away from Fort McHenry, which guarded the Baltimore harbor, saw that the American flag still waved over it after many hours of British bombardment. Inspired by the sight, that man, whose name was Francis Scott Key, wrote the first verse of a poem that he later expanded to four verses. And thus was born what we know as “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

You can see the flag that flew over Fort McHenry if you visit the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History in Washington D.C. It’s not as large as those humongous banners flying over car dealerships, but it’s still a big flag. If you go visit the flag, or if you look at a picture of it online, you’ll notice a couple of things about it.

For one thing, it has fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, as it had since 1795, not long after the fourteenth and fifteenth states—Vermont and Kentucky—were added to the Union. The nation has changed a lot since then, as has the American flag, which now has fifty stars for the fifty states and thirteen stripes for the thirteen original states.

For another thing, the flag that inspired “The Star-Spangled Banner” is damaged. Some of the damage occurred in battle, some from handling over the years, and some from people cutting pieces off as souvenirs. The first two kinds of damage are understandable, but not the last. It’s a shame that people damaged the flag out of selfish motives.

When we sing our national anthem, let’s give some thought to the fact that the song originally referred to a damaged flag. Let’s also think about how the pristine flags that fly over our government buildings, stadiums, and homes represent a damaged nation. That is always the case, no matter who is in the White House, in Congress, or on judicial benches.

Some damage to the nation is inevitable, given the imperfections of the humanity that comprise its citizenry and its leadership. Damaging actions are especially egregious, though, when they are carried out from self-serving motives. Our leaders should always strive to do what is best for all Americans rather than for one segment or for themselves. Leaders will always lead imperfectly, but they should at least lead with the interests of the entire nation uppermost in their minds.

Let’s also remember that the damaged flag that flew over Fort McHenry inspired Francis Scott Key to celebrate it in verse because it persevered and survived. Our democracy—indeed, our very nation—will also survive and persevere if we will commit ourselves to continually working to help it more fully live up to its ideals.

To love our country is to want it to be the best nation it can be. “My country, right or wrong,” people say, and indeed it is. When it is right, we should celebrate and try to make it even more right. When it is wrong—and sometimes it is—we should work to make it right.

“America the Beautiful” is another of our cherished songs. Every time we sing it, I reflect a lot on this line: “America! America! God mend thine ev’ry flaw.” That’s a good prayer. We should stay alert to how God would have us contribute to the mending process. What can we do to help make America better?

We deal with the fact that Americans have differing visions of what it means for America to be America, much less that it means for America to be damaged, to be whole, to be right, or to be wrong. But we need to find ways to work together to move toward ever greater equality and justice.

We sing about a damaged American flag. We love a damaged American nation. We need to build on what’s right and to correct what’s wrong. We need to keep moving toward “liberty and justice for all.”