Be Kind, Rewind
From the seventh or eighth grade onwards I was a “latchkey kid,” which was a newsworthy-in-the-90s way of saying I was given a housekey to lose, and I lost it often. This was a huge point of contention with my parents—and I get it. They both worked full-time and wanted me home after school, and replacing my key every other week had to have been annoying. (I remain, however, a Frontal Lobe Truther. Blanket pardons for dumb sh*t until age 25 [please].)
By logical extension, I was left to my own devices during the summer—and my key didn't get a lot of use. I’d laze in the air conditioning and watch hours of MTV and daytime talk shows—Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, Oprah—and also Comedy Central, back when the programming consisted almost entirely of stand-up specials and Whose Line Is It Anyway? reruns. Supermarket Sweep and The Price is Right were obsessions, Are You Being Served? was a BBC fave, and I’d long been indoctrinated into the ongoing drama of All My Children. I’m sure I also read books, but they certainly weren't my default.
These expansive, unsupervised moments of youth and impressionability (along with our parents’ specific basic cable package) had a way of shaping our brains for the rest of our lives. It is a core belief of mine, however, that most over-40 personalities were truly informed by the unique and highly uncurated collection of VHS tapes to which we had access.
These were the movies whose lines you and your siblings still speak like a private language, and which required arms longer than your own when they fell into the back of the television armoire. Some were hastily taped onto blanks during free HBO weekends and Pay-Per-View rental periods. Others, purchased legitimately from the Erol’s bargain bin, kicked off with an ominous copyright warning screen and a Pee-Wee Herman anti-drug PSA.
You’d learn later that not everyone spent Saturday mornings watching the Sports Illustrated Video Collection of Super Duper Baseball Bloopers (1989), nor would they have the desired reaction to your insertion of a contextually perfect, all-timer quote from Clue (1985) or The Princess Bride (1987) into an otherwise normal conversation. But your people are out there.
There’s a certain subset of millennials for whom Martin Short and BD Wong’s pronunciation of “George BAHNKS” in The Father of the Bride (1991) is a constant underlier in the whirring machines of their minds, and whose immune systems beg for the double-VHS healing powers of The Sound of Music (1965) at the first sign of a sick day from school work.
PERSONALITY TRAITS
AS DETERMINED
BY VHS VIEWERSHIP
Jumpin’ Jack Flash (1986)
Ever since you were a little girl, you always knew you wanted to be on the computer.
Working Girl (1988)
Being transfixed by Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver) or on Team Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) was a late-80s precursor of gay son/thot daughter culture.
Candyman (1992)*
The antithesis of a John Hughes film, in the sense that it instilled a lifelong avoidance of the Chicago area (both as destination and as abstract concept).
Labyrinth (1986)
Labyrinth kids—Labubus, respectfully—it might need to be said that you did not personally “discover” David Bowie, but you did end up with exquisite taste in music and films. I’ll give you that.
Home Alone (1990)
If you suffer from delusions of DIY grandeur and “You're what the French call ‘les incompetents’” is an intrusive thought, you are entitled to compensation…but Uncle Frank is out of cash.
*Please note that no one’s family actually owned or condoned Candyman; it was, instead, passed around by way of
the high school VHS black market (unlabeled, no box).
In 1997 (or shortly thereafter), our parents came home holding DVD players over their heads as if presenting Simba to the pride—The Lion King (1994)—and our VHS collections immediately began to dwindle. They were sold at yard sales (suburbs), put out in a box on the street (city), or simply never retrieved from the back of the armoire, where many remain to this day.
Now, in an era of streaming indecision, we look longingly back at our very first Criterion Closet: that haphazardly organized bookshelf or commandeered cabinet, smelling faintly of plastic and riddled with the detritus of nowhere-near-sturdy-enough cardboard cassette sleeves. And it is in these moments of nostalgia that we involuntarily begin to chant: Feel the rhythm! Feel the rhyme! Get on up, it's bobsled time! Cool Runnings! (1993), because sure, our brains are absolutely a little broken, but we have nothing if not an appreciation for the triumph of the human spirit.
“Be Kind, Rewind” emailed out 7.2.2025 with newsletter-exclusive extras. Subscribe here.