Photo by Urijamjari
In my previous post I said that the fact that entertainment is a form of play doesn’t mean it’s not serious. On the contrary, our play—like our rituals—often forms part of the very basis of our social life by cementing emotional commitments to key cultural principles and values. In entertainment, this is accomplished in large part through experiences of which we are all aware but that we seem oddly uncurious about.
We all are familiar with the possibility of becoming “caught up” in a book, a game, or a movie. Caught in Play argues that these experiences of losing ourselves in entertainment activities are not just oddities but rather central to our way of life, for they are moments when we briefly live in the world of our dreams. When we become caught up in one of the many fictions that surround us, we momentarily forget the mundane world of our day-to-day existence and escape into the realm of entertainment, the realm of adventure, romantic passion and glamour.
The joy of stepping outside the self
Recent research in psychology and neuroscience helps us to better understand these experiences and their effects on us. It is especially important to understand that in becoming caught up in the fantasies of entertainment, we are likely to experience powerful changes in our sense of authorship of our own actions. Much of the reason that we enjoy becoming caught up is that we feel pulled along by the activity we have undertaken. This slightly out of control feeling is exciting and stimulating.
These powerful bodily experiences turn out to have some interesting consequences. In particular, they continue to shape our desires when we return to the drudgery of the day to day. The world of entertainment is in fact the means whereby a society that must demand discipline and hard work maintains an alternative set of values stressing self-indulgence and leisure. It all works out very neatly, except for the fact that this situation leaves some baffling mysteries in its wake, mysteries that turn out to have a considerable impact on our personal lives. Take, as an example, the question of addiction–the topic of my next post.
