The idea of consumption is something I often puzzle over. There is the anti-materialist expression: “You are not what you own”. I tend to agree with this, in so far as my worth is not connected the status of any particular objects I own. But in a more abstract sense, I do feel a strong sense of identity to the objects around me, particularly the books stacked up on my shelves, my laptop computer, my ipod. These objects are my portals to imaginative realms beyond my ordinary existence, and on a strictly technical level these objects are vehcles of consumption, even if the things I am consuming are words and music.
Perhaps it is not consumption that is the problem, but rather the nature of the things consumed and the process by which we consume them? My own view towards onsumption, whether it is a Porsche, a cheeseburger, or an art house film ticket, is that we each have such idiosyncratic relationships with the objects in our lives that to label a one set of objects soulless or somehow less spiritually satisfying is misguided. I make a living right now trying to convince teenagers that somewhere in their realm of consumed experiences they ought to make room for novels, short stories, plays, and poems, but I’m not convinced my objects are necessarily more worthy than the ones they prioritize right now. (Basketball sneakers, video games, cellphones, ipods.)
Speaking more broadly, I am tempted to put aside questions about what we consume and discuss how we consume. I am put off by the way the business model of consumption permeates the world of art. New product is always the center of attention, whether we are talking about film, books, or music, on whatever sub-stratus of community. Media caters to the new, so that every magazine and newspaper covers the latest output.
This isn’t a negative per se, but it doesn’t reflect how we actually experience art. I would rather read a critic’s viewpoint an old album with which they are experiencing something profound than have them review something just because it is new. I’d also rather read a review in which a writer discusses a very personal take on on old Neil Young album instead of reading a review of a new Neil Young album, especially if that review attempts to find some kind of objective rating on a star-scale.
There is a lot of room to explore issues concerning consumption. I have a very unique way of consuming books- I like to read slowly, and often read two or three books at once, usually books in different genres. I don’t understand people who consume a book in a short period of time, since part of the pleasure is savoring the book, and thinking about the characters and themes when you are away from it. Part of the reason I read different books at the same time is (aside from ADD or whatever) I enjoy the unique connections that can arise from disparate topics.
Now, a different reader may consume books in a different way, thus rendering us little in the way of common ground. I think this happens more than we think. When I am in a record store, I often think that the record collector looking for an obscure work for his collection is from another planet, and that he has more in common with a stamp collector than with me. The guy behind the counter might have more in common with a history professor given his interest in knowing obscure arcana. Obviously I privilege my own method of consumption, but my point here is that how we consume is perhaps more important than what we consume.
To take this point to one last destination: I’ve recently fallen in love with movies again. I can’t say I’ve fallen in love with the actual depictions on screen, though that could be a part of it. But I have become enamoured with the process of going into a dark room and completely losing myself in events on the huge screen. I have little interest in renting a film to watch on a small screen these days, though I’m sure that will change. For now, I seem to be entranced by a certain kind of film-watching, not film itself. Is this something worthy of discussion, at in a broader scope than we do currently?
I don’t think consumption is a bad word, nor should we shirk from thinking of ourselves as consumers. The key seems to be the degree to which we examine and reflect upon our habits of consumption.
19 Comments
I am fascinated with professional reviewers, those who are paid to walk into films they do not necessarily want to see and then they have to come out and compose some sort of snappy analysis of the work. I deliberately avoid writing about films that do nothing for me, and the blog medium is perhaps the wrong sort of platform for this sort of discretion because blogs work on the premise of high consumption… if one’s blog is not continually updated it ceases to be a place for people to return (of course there are other factors as well). If one is devoted solely to film one either fills the gap with news and rumors about film or with daily/weekly reviews irrespective of the impact the film had on you. This is done not only out of an unspoken necessity to meet the acceleration of interest caused by blog culture but also to treat something like ‘film’ as something admirable in and of itself, each worthy of speaking of.
As mentioned on the pan’s labyrinth comment thread I have a problem with this sort of lack of differentiation between the medium and the experience when it comes to reviewing, and the lack of privilege both for oneself and for the potential reader that one has over the other. The emphasis on the medium puts the review in a hypothetical realm of value, it speaks of the mechanics of the illusion and how to replicate said illusion but it cannot account for the effect of the experience. There is a practical purpose for it but much the way a great writer can only admit some gift in the matter of composing, so too is it with the well made film. The hypothetical value of a film takes precedence in too many reviews and becomes the emphasis above and beyond individual relationships to the product.
I think we are a fetishistic society, and I am as much a part of that society as anybody else. The commodity aspect of a work takes an uneccessary precedence in our framing of its meaning and use… a film is a dvd to fit a collection and requires repeatable viewings and perhaps suitability to share with others, to spur on the fetish. Rarely is it a prompt for experience, a relic of an experience that was meaningful, a treasure in this respect because of its personal assocations.
The ipod is a decidedly unnerving addition to our habits of consumption… I remember feeling trepidation twice about the way I was consuming things, first my introduction to blogs and that of the ipod. I felt like something was getting lost in this culture of acceleration, and if I can only have time to stay still more good could come of it. Everything is expendable and I am not sure if it is good ro bad, because after all if the product is expedable shouldn’t that reinforce the importance of the experience… that is if we have time to experience anything at all. I admit I am finding it hard with music to keep still long enough to step inside it.
I have come to embrace the ipod as a positive way to experience music. I am less beholden to the vision of the artist, since when buying on itunes one doesn’t have to buy an entire album. Nor is my experience of the music colored (literally) by the album’s artwork. The songs I buy go into my pool of music and fight it out on their own merits. The idea that music ought to be coupled with a piece of art was never compelling to me.
As for the larger issue of how to best engage the true natuer of how we consume things like films and music, I have to admit that I don’t have a good answer. Like you, I am frustrated by the lack of differentiation between medium and experience, but I don’t necessarily see a substitute at hand. Too much of a focus on the individuated experience and one risks isolation.
Perhaps most frustrating is the way in which critics take a highly personal gut instinct and cloak it in some kind of objectivity. This is particularly irksome when they pan something for not conforming to their own taste.
Now, on the topic of keeping up the current fads, you are right- it is absolutely necessary in order to be relevant. I suppose one could adopt a hyper-modernist approach and enjoy newness for its own sake. I wonder if our desire for the latest new thing is really a manifestation of our desire for mystery and even redemption. We’ve heard or seen all the old albums, books, and films, but maybe the next one we experience could be the one to provide us deliverance. (Of course, part of my original post was that newness is a relative term: if I haven’t heard an old Neil Young album then it is new to me, and I’d rather a critic review initiate that Neil Young art experience than pan the latest No Doubt album- which is largely pointless anyway, since No Doubt fans probably don’t hurry to the record store after reading reviews in the paper.)
that last part reminds me of something I came up with in my rationalist days… which I called ‘now-ism’ and which if I remember right had something to with the notion that the only thing that ultimately matters is what exists within our lifetime because there lies in this ebb and flow of mutual existance some possibility of relevant knowledge of self… I think I was a bit too enamored with zen at the time and was thinking of things as embodying oneness… but even then it does not make a whole lot of sense… I cannot remember if I was serious about this or was playing devil’s advocate.
I don’t know… it reminds me of that Nietzsche quote I have in my quotations section, maybe that inspired it… about learning from life rather than history, being a specialist of living not of some arcane discipline. We have inverted importance in our culture, we give reverence to the past over the present. But how much more bountiful the present is, I mean every living person has more potential then even the greatest individual beyond my lifetime. We share some common element that binds us whether we want to be or not.
Then I found dostoevsky and I recanted now-ism
I am going to be writing a fairly lengthy essay on Decadence in 19th century literature this semester so I will have a lot to say in it about issues of the sublime and whether the sort of dreamer hyper-individualism evoked in ‘Notes’ and Huysmans’ ‘Against Nature’, and later, Pessoa’s ‘Book of Disquiet’ has any merit.
Great post!
I think all of us are consumers, whether we’d like to admit it or not. Marketing execs know this – they know that these things play a pivotal role in our identities. And that’s why many of these PR ads are so effective – as gimmicky as they are, they do tap into something quite real.
As you mentioned, in a hyper-capitalist society such as ours, there is a tendency amongst many (myself included) to overconsume.
But alas, what’s even more terrible than overconsumption is when the individual puts too much faith in his materialist possessions and thereby, becomes disappointed when he realizes that all the objects in the world ultimately can’t fulfil his spiritual needs.
Here is my curious little contribution to the recent discussion on ‘consumption’. Robert Graves spent his entire long life strung between the two highly disparate poles of stalwart foot-soldier and goddess-obsessed (literallly) lunatic bard. He lived in extremis in both camps. While he would have described most of his adult life as fitting the lifestyle of a rustic Majorcan peasant (true enough) there were more than enough periods of near-insanity and bizarre obsession almost unbelievable in their weirdness. By the time he began to get old (the attached little essay was delivered in 1961, he was well into his 60’s) I think the constant strain of his divided personality began to take its toll. His writing maintained a singular lucidity and scope but certain unmistakable quirks crept in. The essay on “baraka’ has a certain quirkiness. Yet it stays at the front of my mind everytime people talk about our attachement to material possessions, consumption, obsolescence, etc. I am sure Wm Morris for example has equally good peices on the subject, certainly Thoreau does, but this is the one I like. Its so long out of print good luck ever trying to find a copy anywhere. For me, it has the quality of baraka.
despite being from toronto and being a teacher, this guy makes a good point. i like certain things that i buy. for instance, we just bought some new furniture in the summer. we were consumers, but i really love the stuff we bought (and i mean really love) because i think it is beautiful (and i think i may mean beautiful in a platonic sense). it makes me sad to think that i may have done a bad thing by buying something that i believed to be beautiful and found to be useful (i had to get a william morris ref in there somehow). we are at an odd period in time when we are bombarded with stuff proffering consumer goods (for the most part of dubious stuff) and we are obliged to find stuff that we really need and love (my wife’s new iPod shuffle is extraordinary! okay, so, i will pretend that she needed it).
but then again, i wonder if people were saying this in the mid-1600s as well
Interesting points all around. If I might iterate my initial query: I don’t know if consumption is all that wrong, but that an unreflective consumption can be quite harmful. An unreflective lack of consumption might be just as spiritually barren, for we perceive the world through our senses, and to deprive one’s various appetites of comfort might as well be soul-destroying.
I would so add the the uninhibited consumption of Westerners has had the convenient effect of aiding billions of Chinese and Indians as they fight to get out of poverty. And don’t forget the Soviet Union. Societies in which the government restricts natural habits of consumption are rarely ones in which we would choose to live.
I’ll offer a dissent on the view that consumer capitalism is a mixed bag. I think it’s an unqualified positive good, effects on the environment aside.
In the past, pretty much everyone in India and China was poor. The fact that these countries now have emerging middle and elite classes doesn’t mean that capitalism is responsible for the people who are still poor. If there was no Western consumption there would be even more poor people in these countries, and even more child labor. It is not a question of good and bad, but better and worse. Living in those countries is undoubtely better for more people than it was before they were a part of the world consumer economy.
“The fact that these countries now have emerging middle and elite classes doesn’t mean that capitalism is responsible for the people who are still poor.”
But capitalism can make it even worse for the poor – selling them off as cheap labor (and it has to be cheap, mind you – considering the main incentive is to make profits). Consumption is all about getting the goods, no matter what the moral costs are.
Of course, one obvious example of the costs behind oil consumption is America’s invasion into the Middle East since the ‘70s.
Bottomline: Consumption offers leeway into socio-economic and cultural imperialism.
Don’t get me wrong, I think communism sucks. But capitalism ain’t all that great. It’s better for some (i.e. the burgeoning middle class), and worse for others (the already impoverished).
As for the question of which is the lesser of two evils? Well, my answers fluctuate on a day-to-day basis.
“If there was no Western consumption there would be even more poor people in these countries, and even more child labor.”
While the first part of this statement can be argued for, the second part is debatable. Child labor began with the Industrial Revolution. Folks like Marx, who lived between the first and second Industrial Revolutions, were appalled by how young these kids were, not to mention the ridiculous working conditions they were forced upon.
Sorry, Tram, not sure why your comment was filtered as spam but I brought it back.
I certainly would agree that capitalism has a lot of problems. But as I say in my post on “The End of History?”, none of those problems are better addressed by an alternative system of economics.
I disagree that consumption is all about getting goods despite the moral costs. Those of us who live in advanced capitalist countries have shown an evolving sense of moral standards that we apply to the goods we consume. While we may have a ways to go, I thnk this proves we don’t only look for the lowest price.
Now, the question of child labor is more complicated, but to my mind it has little to do with capitalism. Children worked on the farms before capitalism, then transitioned to working in factories during the Industrial revolution. The qualitative difference in the type of work kids were doing may have prompted societal views of child labor to shift, or it could be that industrial societies became wealthy enough to afford the luxury of sending kids to school instead of working. But the notion of an agrarian paradise existing in the era before capitalism strikes me as a myth. I have trouble imagining starving peasants allowing their kids to cavort in the meadow as they fought off famine.
I’m still a bit puzzled by your argument that capitalism is worse for the poor. Worse that what- a communist system in which everyone is poor, so at least the poor have a lot of company? A functioning capitalist country may perhaps not help a certain group of people at the bottom in the short-term. But over time, capitalist countries tend to accrue enough wealth to (a) raise the wages for these lowly workers, and (b) develop a welfare system that assists those at the bottom. Eventually, the poor can become part of the middle class.
There are a lot in inhibiting factors to this glorious transformation process- and I would be the first to acknowledge that capitalism requires a ton of modifications. But overall the system works leaps and bounds better than any alternative.
“Children worked on the farms before capitalism, then transitioned to working in
factories during the Industrial revolution. The qualitative difference in the
type of work kids were doing may have prompted societal views of child labor to
shift, or it could be that industrial societies became wealthy enough to afford
the luxury of sending kids to school instead of working. But the notion of an
agrarian paradise existing in the era before capitalism strikes me as a myth. I
have trouble imagining starving peasants allowing their kids to cavort in the
meadow as they fought off famine.”
I’ll agree with you that it wasn’t an agrarian paradise (Thomas Jefferson,
ironically, perpetuated that myth). But on farms, the kids weren’t hardcore
laborers. They worked with their families (and by most accounts, they weren’t
“peasants” either – they lived adequately on an informal bartering system). By
contrast, kids who were unfortunate to have been born in working class
households had no choice but to enslave themselves in these factories, underpaid
and overworked.
As for the luxury of education in the 18th and 19th century… well, that’s what
it was – a luxury for privileged kids. And in the 21st century, the capitalist
system once again favors the kids with well-upbringing with superior private
education.
“Worse that what- a communist system in which everyone is poor, so at least the
poor have a lot of company? A functioning capitalist country may perhaps not
help a certain group of people at the bottom in the short-term. But over time,
capitalist countries tend to accrue enough wealth to (a) raise the wages for
these lowly workers, and (b) develop a welfare system that assists those at the
bottom. Eventually, the poor can become part of the middle class.”
In a capitalist society, raising wages for lowly workers is not encouraged. Why?
Well, for one thing, these corporations live for profits. Cheap labor allows me
and you and everyone we know access to Walmart and the like (it’s a great
opportunity for consumption, but comes at a terrible consequences for those
factory worker kids in China). Low wages allow this type of consumption to
persist. If the employers don’t get the profits they want, they’ll enforce lay
offs. Secondly, economists tend to be cautionary over raising the minimum wage.
One recent cautionary tale is the U.K, in which Blair’s raises have contributed
to great inflation.
As for the welfare system, well, here in the U.S., they’re rolling back
drastically – at the expense of the impoverished who are forced to go to work
with low wages and no benefits (i.e. health insurance) and childcare. Sure, a
lot of Republicans and some Democrats will tell you that post-welfare reform
act, there have been many people off welfare. What they would not care to
divulge, however, is that folks below the poverty line have increased at an
all-time high.
And besides, upper and middle class taxpayers don’t want their money to be “wasted” on poor people (the capitalist mentality is to keep on climbing the
ladder as farther as you can… setbacks suck).
(Sorry, about the weird spacing in the earlier post.)
ETA:
The American Dream is pretty much a myth unto itself. My parents fled from the oppressive confines of communist Vietnam… only to discover a different kind of oppression here in the U.S. Sure, they have better electricity and food, but they’re still living in poverty. Middle class life is all but a dream.
I hear your arguments, but I just don’t share your assumptions about economics or your cynicism about the current state of affairs in the U.S. I am certainly skeptical of any claims that the oppression (and poverty due to collectivization) carried out by the post-war Communist government in Vietnam is in any way comparable to the oppression the poor experience in America.
As the liberal historian Paul Berman has pointed out, many liberals made the same argument during the Cold War to their brethren in the Eastern Bloc- that the subliminal oppression caused by free market consumption and mass media conformity in the West was similar to the the overt oppression of the Soviet secret police, censorship bureaus, etc. Needless to say, those actually living in Eastern Europe did not find this argument persuasive.
“I am certainly skeptical of any claims that the oppression (and poverty due to collectivization) carried out by the post-war Communist government in Vietnam is in any way comparable to the oppression the poor experience in America.”
Actually, the poverty in Vietnam can be attributed to two things: 1) capitalist imperialism by the French and the Americans for decades and 2) the collectivization of communism. I’m no fan of communism (like you’ve said, everyone is practically poor in such a stagnant economy), but capitalism should not be let off the hook.
“I am certainly skeptical of any claims that the oppression (and poverty due to collectivization) carried out by the post-war Communist government in Vietnam is in any way comparable to the oppression the poor experience in America.”
I didn’t say it was comparable. I just said that it’s a different kind of oppression. The poverty in America, for my parents, at least, is better than the one in Vietnam. But it’s poverty, nevertheless. The people back home in Vietnam think they’re leading a comfortable life – that, sadly, is far from the truth.
That is why I always cringe whenever I hear the phrase “American Dream” thrown around too often. I’ve experienced poverty (and yes, the devastating rollbacks of the welfare reform in my own household) firsthand in a first world country, and so it bothers when conventional wisdom says that if you work hard, then you’ll reap your rewards.
One last word on capitalism’s exploitation. I’ll utter a quote from Abbie Hoffman: “It’s universally wrong to steal from your neighbour, but once you get beyond the one-to-one level and pit the individual against the multinational conglomerate, the federal bureacracy, the modern plantation of agro-business, or the utility company, it becomes strictly a value judgment to decide exactly who is stealing from whom. One person’s crime is another person’s profit. Capitalism is license to steal; the government simply regulates who steals and how much.”
Put it this way, if I was forced to choose between capitalism and communism, then I’ll choose the former. It is, after all, always better to be the oppressor than the oppressed. You’re the big fish – you get to call the shots and abuse power.
I’ll just end the discussion on this note (Shall we call it a truce? I have to study for a midterm
): Capitalism has a beaming light towards the end of the tunnel; communism does not. But for people like my parents, that light is rapidly fading in the distance. I’ve witnessed too much of their pains and struggles to be optimistic of capitalism. It’s always better to keep your hopes low, so that way you won’t be sorely disappointed in the end.
Okay, a truce. Thanks for the discussion, I enjoyed it. You bring up some interesting points about the American Dream that I might discuss in a future post on the role of national myths in an increasingly technological, trans-national world. I don’t think they are ready to disappear, but I’m interested in both the people who have a pathological need to embrace such a thing as the American Dream (or any nation’s collective myth) and those who have a visceral need to reject it.
Which makes me wonder, since we have a Canadian readership here: what exactly is Canada’s national myth? I would presume it has something to do with rustic hardiness, but other than that I’m at a loss.
The Canadian National Myth? hmmm… the antithesis of America… I do not know, I have little vested interest in Canadian politics. The concept of a nation at the size of America or Canada… it is too big to be meaningful… too sublime a concept. Give me Hegel’s dialectics over that sort of intangibility any day. If we were small fiefdoms maybe I could extract a meaning, but all I can think of about Canada is its notion of being polite and concerned about the environment, two things which really are not that true when you probe into it.