User, not Consumer

On All Things Considered a few months ago I heard an interview with a programmer employed by Netflix to create the equations used to figure out what movie you might like if you knew you liked _____. While the programmer claimed it was easy for him to predict which Netflix customers might like Sex and the City, say, based on other movies they had enjoyed, he lamented the challenge of movies that throw a wrench in his system. Napoleon Dynamite, for example. He just couldn't write the code to predict which consumers would respond positively to that film. Listening to his frustration, I thought, amen and hallelujah. I cringe at the idea that my tastes and predilections can be mathematically generated or predicted. I don't want to be so static and decipherable. More importantly, I want to believe that each human is moved and inspired and diverted by factors too specific and infinite to be reduced to a single consumer identity.

It's no surprise, then, that I took an immediate shine to de Certeau's premise that in our everyday lives we are active users of culture as opposed to passive consumers of it. He writes, "the consumer cannot be identified or qualified by the newspapers or commercial products he assimilates: between the person (who uses them) and the products (indexes of the 'order' which is imposed on him), there is a gap of varying proportions opened by the use that he makes of them" (32). For example, we can (and do!) compile statistics about what kinds of people watch which shows on TV, but just knowing that ___% of ____ demographic watches ____, or that viewership of ____ is comprised of these various demographic segments, tells us nothing about what that show means to the individuals and groups who watch it. I think, and it seems de Certeau would agree, that a more interesting question than, Who watches what? is, Why and how do people watch what they watch? What meaning do they make from watching it? What do they seek or resist in watching?

Later, in the section on Reading as Poaching, de Certeau elaborates on the notion of active consumption. He says that we make a mistake when we assume that "'assimilating' necessarily means 'becoming similar to' what one absorbs, and not 'making something similar' to what one is, making it one's own, appropriating or reappropriating it" (166). This reminds me of the bell hooks essay, Beauty Laid Bare: Aesthetics in the Ordinary, that we read several weeks ago, in that she describes having beautiful things as something necessary for the spirit. When we consume beautiful objects we aren't (necessarily) engaging in a passive act--more likely, we are opposing forces that might say we aren't worthy of the beautiful things. It's important to note, though, that hooks is careful to address the costs of unmindful consumption alienated and oppressed in "a culture of domination that recognizes the production of a pervasive feeling of lack, both material and spiritual, as a useful colonizing strategy" (124). While hooks emphasizes consciousness, de Certeau's focus is making do. I think there's a difference, in that making do can be done unconsciously.

My major disappointment with de Certeau is that I just couldn't get interested in walking and reading and riding the train! I was intrigued by his discussion of indigenous people's ability to "escape" Spanish colonial domination "without leaving it" and would have been interested to investigate particular instances(xiii). I look forward to exploring more concrete examples of people using and assimilating in de Certeau's sense of these acts.

- Esme