the current state of consumption

When winter hit, I was forced to settle with this idea my boyfriend’s been trying to get me to understand for months now. “You like to be on the go,” he’d said, groggily one morning as we sat in Forest Park, drinking coffee and watching wildlife slowly greet the day. Going to Picnic Island was part of my routine long before I met him and the mornings were only sweeter as he struggled to function by my side. He doesn’t love early starts as much as I do. 

The herons are always my favorite to see. I love how grumpy they look, how still they stand, and how easily they hide between the leaves of trees that have been around for hundreds of years. Of course, there’s also the geese who are either too comfortable with humans or desperate enough for food that they’ll swim right up to you, eager to score a treat (don’t feed wildlife!). Or the turtle that will pass underwater, poking his head up every once in a while just to make sure he’s still safe. Then there are the starlings that dance over us, dipping their wings in the water, playfully chasing each other as they coast the breeze. And don’t let me forget the fawn that popped out of the tall grass one morning, settling with a raft of ducks on the bank of the creek. But what does my slow morning, romanticized with a lavender latte and animals have to do with the current state of consumption? Reader, I am so excited to break it down for you. 

A couple of weeks ago, I along with every other human (who isn’t living under a rock) watched His & Hers, a limited series that was recently released on Netflix. A six episode thriller with a twist that left many people stunned was, in my opinion, one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time. I, of course, told my friend about it and encouraged him to watch it with his girlfriend. I was so excited to see what he thought as a fellow creative and was honestly shocked when he told me he thought it was ‘just okay.’ Naturally, I probed. I needed him to explain where it fell flat for him and he told me he wished it was a movie instead. He’d made a similar critique when I suggested Pluribus, an Apple Original that’s been renewed for season two. He wanted things condensed so he could get the information faster. It took me a minute to pull my ego out of it (my stamp of approval was riding on these recommendations and I take pride in my stamp of approval) and to find the root of what he was telling me and I came to a single conclusion:

We aren’t experiencing art anymore. We’re simply consuming it. 

I argued with my friend for a few minutes and pointed out that 1. The show was literally six episodes, 2. We have to be encouraged to care about these characters and with something as complex and misleading as His & Hers was, that couldn’t have been pulled off as seamlessly in an hour and thirty minutes. There also needs to be time to build intrigue and suspicion, for viewers to create their own theories and watch them fall apart episode by episode. If we received it in a movie format, it might’ve been harder to see how the writing and acting are influenced by the character we’re focused on and how that influences the story we’re receiving (hello, unreliable narrators!!). The experience of the show mattered more than the story itself because it forces us to misunderstand Anna and Jake and sit with the uncomfortability of being wrong about them. This conversation led me to believe that we’re losing the art of emotional patience. This isn’t a diss on my friend or on anyone else with similar critiques but hopefully an invitation to talk about a toxic ecosystem that we, the consumer, continue to feed. 

I see discussions from people that center around not getting what they want from media.This trend doesn’t just flow toward quick consumption, but in the opposite direction as well. People crave real, complicated characters just as much as they want to be able to devour a book/movie/show but don't understand that those ideas are mutually exclusive. We cannot have the quick dopamine hit that comes with receiving content quickly alongside the slow-burn understanding of complex characters who require (and deserve) nuance and patience. Depth requires time and we’re participating in a cycle that rewards speed over substance. 

I wish that we could blame this on the many industries at play but we have to be honest here. We feed the model by participating in content that doesn’t reward our capacity for emotion and complexity and the model gives us what we continue to buy/watch/participate in. The gag is that it’s a fallible ecosystem that hinges on enough people demanding more substance, more stillness, and more emotion over quick reward. It takes us opting for intentional stimulation over instant gratification and not confusing the two because we don’t want to do the heavy lifting of expanding our emotional intelligence. If we don’t demand better, we retroactively train ourselves out of the emotional patience we need and the empathy that we deserve. 

At the start of this post, I invited you to sit with me on a bench at the park. Did you stay or did you skim? Did you opt for quick information or did you choose to stay in stillness with me, despite the potential redundancy? We are all capable of so much and I truly encourage you to choose content that forces you to pause. There is nothing more I can ask of you as another human being than to be willing to broaden your worldview and boundary of opinions by selecting art that forces you to be uncomfortable. Uncomfortability, as grimy as it feels, is where we’re given space to think. If you sit long enough to think, there’s a chance you’re sitting long enough to grow. 

So, as much as I like to be on the go, I will always shout about the importance of sitting on a bench as the sun begins to rise, watching other creatures exist without rush. Whatever that looks like for you, I hope you choose it every time. 

Love,

Kaye