Creator and Content

If you consume content, does that consumption constitute an endorsement of its creator?  This at first seems like a simple question to answer, but when you start to think about it and break it down, the lines become blurred and the two sides of the argument no longer create a definitive division.  On the one hand you have the argument that content is distinct and separate from its creator, and as such should be appreciated for what it is.  Like a child that should not be held to account for the actions of its parents.  On the other hand you have the argument that content is forever linked to its creator and that no matter how much life of its own it takes on, the creator can never be completely severed from it.  Like a child who may become legally emancipated from their parents, or estranged from them, the fact remains from a biological standpoint at least, they are still their parents no matter what they say or do.

It's easy to make the argument that you can appreciate a creative work for what it is, and feign ignorance of its creator, this argument however becomes harder to maintain when your ignorance is challenged.  Consider a painting in your house that has been there for decades, one you quite like that you bought at some second hand shop or a car boot sale many years ago.  You may like the painting and appreciate it for its artistic merit.  You may also be blissfully unaware of who actually created it.  What happens then, if you were to find out that painting was one of the many that Adolf Hitler painted?  Would you still feel as comfortable with that painting hanging on your walls?  Does the fact you now know who painted it override any appreciation of it and lead you to get rid of it?

There is the argument that this is an extreme example and is unrealistic.  Whilst I accept there is truth in that, I believe the fact that Hitler created something as benign as a painting exemplifies the nature of the debate this post centres around.  The point I am making is that even the people we can hate the most can still be creative.  The very act of creation and the trait of creativity are not inherently good or evil, they are part of life, they're not even exclusive to humans, other animals have been shown to demonstrate creativity.

When it comes to the question of whether or not you can separate creator and content, or perhaps more specifically, creator and creation, there's no easy answer.  Whilst you likely view the above example as extreme, you will more than likely concede in that situation you would draw the line.  Where you draw the line however isn't easy to define, partly because you would need to contemplate every scenario in order to draw it definitively, and partly because we don't actually make up our minds until we are in the moment.  We can say we would or would not behave in a certain way but as is so often the case, in the moment, what we thought we would do, sometimes gets thrown out the window.

In a world where social media is dominant, I have written before how this enables us to access creators more easily.  Those that would have been impossible to even speak to decades ago because of the layers of publishers, marketing, distribution, and management, are now only a tweet away.  Whether they reply on the other hand is an entirely different topic of conversation.  For now let's simply focus on exposure.  We are exposed through social media to much more insight into the creator than their work alone.  In decades past you relied only on their creations and the limited information disseminated through interviews etc.  Now you have an abundance of tweets, often in the order of thousands, that give you a tremendous insight into what that creator thinks about anything and everything.

When it came to the question of the Hitler painting above, your reaction was likely motivated by the fact that you knew who he was, you knew what he did, and you knew exactly whether you agreed with him or not.  All of these things made you make a decision that was informed not by the content or the creation, but by the context.

There is a philosophy of sorts known as the death of the author.  This philosophy states that once an author creates a work and releases it into the world they lose control of that work.  It takes on a life of its own.  The intent of the author becomes irrelevant, they can no longer give definitive answers to questions raised by the work because their answers are deemed from then on to be expressions of opinion and the meaning of the work itself becomes defined by those that read it and their interpretation thereof.  This philosophy when extended to all creation would imply that all content and creations once created are no longer the creative property of the one that created them - this is in a metaphorical sense, there are legal restrictions and things like copyright that make this untrue in the legislative sense.

Taking those legal implications further there are also commercial implications too.  It's not as much of a concern when talking about someone that died a long time ago, more of a concern in regards to those who are still living.  By consuming their content in almost all scenarios the creator of that content gains some form of payment.  This is often monetary although in other cases such as this blog the only payment is through increased exposure and some anonymous data if you chose to allow cookies or not.

To make the argument that consumption of content is not an endorsement of the creator, that is very difficult in the modern world owing to the fact that they receive payment and then use that payment however they wish.  In other words, you consume the content, they get paid for your consumption, which in turn funds further creativity but also funds everything else in their life, including the activities which you may not agree with.  You can't explicitly restrict the creator to using the payment only for future creativity.  Even when you engage with someone who operates a business or produces content on an industrial scale, they still get a salary they pay themselves from that business which is paid from the revenue of that business so your consumption is funding their personal life as well as their profession. This is perhaps exemplified by social media campaigns that called for boycotts of large corporations such as Chick-fil-a in the wake of controversy, the ultimate intent of such boycotts being to restrict the use of the profits of consumption only to that which consumers approve - although not a creative output, this is a reiteration of the same question of separating producer and product. 

Despite the obstacles that prevent us from pursuing this narrative and the futility of this endeavour, if we insist that the question is answered by saying you cannot separate creator and content any longer, then a new question emerges, was it ever justified to separate the two in the first place?  If the answer is no, that puts you in an awkward state of cognitive dissonance over the Hitler painting.  On the other hand if the answer is yes that it was once justified, then that raises the question of what has now changed and why you can now separate the two, the most likely answer as it appears for the most part is that we were simply ignorant before - able to live completely oblivious to what the creator actually did with the money we paid for their creations because of the fact that we just didn't know.