What Does It Mean To “Consume Content”?
I enjoyed reading Molly Templeton’s thought-provoking article, A Reader Is Not a Consumer of Books. However, the more I thought about it the more muddled her argument became. This is partly because she switches freely between several definitions of “consume” throughout the article without defining or differentiating between them.
Templeton spends much of her time making the point that art still exists after we engage with it. We don’t make it disappear, so how can we say we consume it? Despite framing ourselves as “consumers of content” the thing is still there waiting for the next person to engage with it. This point is rather obvious. Of course, it is still there.
“Consumption” implies something in its definition whether we are talking about eating, purchasing, using, or owning whatever it is. The thing no longer exists in the same form or is no longer accessible to others in the same way. Why do we talk about books or articles, music or movies in this way?
I think Templeton lacks the language to properly articulate her criticism of using the word consume to describe how we interact with other’s creations. I’d like to take a stab at clarifying and expanding what she’s done with her article. What matters is not that the art still exists (in reality) but how the art exists in our minds after we have engaged with it. This is where “the thing no longer exists in the same form.”1
We “consume” content when we come to it for our own purposes. When we use it for our own ends. When we approach something do we, in any sense, stop to receive it in full? Or do we see only what we want to see? Accept only what we like and reject the rest.
This is a failure on our part. We are using the “content.”
Long before we ever started describing other people’s work as “content” to be “consumed,” C.S. Lewis was identifying the same tendency in his book, An Experiment in Criticism. First, he discusses how “the many” and “the few” approach pictures and music, and then he applies that same dichotomy to books.
He writes that “real appreciation” of something requires a certain approach:
We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand any work of any art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.2
He continues:
In general the parallel between the popular uses of music and of pictures is close enough. Both consist of ‘using’ rather than ‘receiving.’ Both rush hastily forward to do things with the work of art instead of waiting for it to do something to them. As a result, a very great deal that is really visible on the canvas or audible in the performance is ignored; ignored because it cannot be used. And if the work contains nothing that can be so used—if there are no catchy tunes in the symphony, if the picture is of things the majority does not care about it is completely rejected. Neither rejection need be in itself reprehensible; but both leave a man outside the full experience of the arts in question.3
Lewis refuses to equate the way “the many” approach art as “base or degraded itself.”4
Let us be quite clear that the unliterary are unliterary not because they enjoy stories in these ways, but because they enjoy them in no other. Not what they have but what they lack cuts them off from the fullness of literary experience….For all these enjoyments are shared by good readers reading good books.5 ****
Essentially there is nothing wrong with enjoying the plot line of a book or the “top tune” of a song. Good listeners and readers do this as well, but they go beyond that. They go beyond themselves. They open themselves up to being transformed by the work as opposed to only ever using the book or music for their own limited purposes.6
If we only ever use others’ creations in this sense I would argue that that is “consumption.” We make them our own. We change the work to fit our purpose, even if that change is only in our minds. We may even go so far as to engage this way to avoid being challenged. The art no longer exists, internally, as the creator intended.
At the same time, I don’t want to overstate my point. C.S. Lewis clarifies that one can enjoy a work on multiple levels, but “the many” only approach a work in a limited and selfish manner.
Parker Palmer makes a similar argument in To Know As We Are Known, but instead of referring to other’s creations, he is talking about engaging with reality, knowledge, and truth. He writes, “We are well-educated people who have been schooled in a way of knowing that treats the world as an object to be dissected and manipulated, a way of knowing that gives us power over the world.7
This way of knowing allows us to remain in control at a distance with the power of manipulation and without the call to transformation. With this distance, “we become manipulators of each other and the world rather than mutually responsible participants and co-creators.”8 We must remain at a distance since this grants us the power of consumption.
Palmer invites those pursuing knowledge to enter into a certain kind of relationship with other knowers (students and teachers) and the subject itself. He calls this type of relationship troth.
“With this word one person enters a covenant with another, a pledge to engage in a mutually accountable and transforming relationship, a relationship forged of trust and faith in the face of unknowable risks.”9
This sounds eerily familiar to C. S. Lewis’s admonition to “surrender.” The goal of both men is to push their readers past themselves, to engage deeply with knowledge or art in a way that allows us to be transformed. It is in this vulnerable place that we truly encounter one another and the world around us. If we refuse we are just “detached spectators”10 who remain in a position of control out of fear.
All of this has implications for the way we learn, the way we read the Bible and the way we approach other people. Pay attention to your motives when you interact with others, when you sit down to read you may find this tendency to coerce the text, to see only what you want, to subtly sidestep challenges everywhere. It is incredibly humbling and insightful which can be a terrifying mix.
How can we approach and receive first before looking to use something? Can something speak to us that also challenges us? What does it mean for something to resonate?11 How can we incarnate the truth that we face in another’s creation? Should we? These are questions that are worth exploring and can pull us deeper into the spiritual life. They are firmly opposed to consumption which has us gliding on the surface of life, engaging and responding only to what is easy, what is already within us. How can we practice submitting ourselves to another person’s thoughts, ideas, and art?
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But if we are subjective creatures won’t our internal image of the created thing be different from the thing itself anyway?↩︎
An Experiment in Criticism, pg 19; see also this quote on page 21, “The real objection to that way of enjoying pictures is that you never get beyond yourself. The picture, so used, can call out of you only what is already there. You do not cross the frontier into that new region which the pictorial art as such as added to the world.”↩︎
pg 25↩︎
pg 23↩︎
pg 38↩︎
These purposes might include entertainment, distraction, persuasion, etc.↩︎
To Know As We Are Known, loc 291↩︎
loc 841↩︎
loc 748↩︎
loc 841↩︎
This may seem like a random question, but I find it to be perhaps the most challenging personally. When I am reading a book or the Bible and I find something deeply resonating with me, I often correlate that with God speaking. Am I then just taking what “I can use from the text”? How is that any different? I’ve started to understand resonance as something that reflects what is going on within me. Perhaps there is a turn of phrase that captures me that God can use to illuminate what is within and address it.↩︎