Photo by Aaron Escobar
If you are a typical American, you spend about a quarter of your waking hours watching television. And that’s just the beginning of the time you spend in entertainment activities (vacations, going out to eat, to movies, to sporting events, reading for pleasure, etc.) Isn’t it a little odd that you so rarely pause to evaluate something that is so central to your way of life? “No” you may say, “it’s not odd at all. Entertainment is how we have fun. People love to have fun, and so it’s no mystery at all why people want to be entertained.”
Why is entertainment so much fun?
That’s a convenient answer to the question, and it seems to put the matter to rest. But suppose we ask why entertaining activities are so much fun? Suppose we try, at least for a moment, to step outside our almost unquestionable notion that of course having fun by being entertained is the highest goal we could aspire to. There are many other pleasures in life: lively conversation, successfully completing a challenging task, connecting with a friend or loved one, it’s a very long list. So why don’t we spend almost all of our available free time on one of these latter activities? In the end, the “fun” answer won’t stand close scrutiny. This answer is actually a clever disguise that hides a deep and potentially disturbing set of questions. The disguise is the equivalent of: “there’s nothing happening here folks, move along, everything’s fine, keep doing what you were doing” So what are we hiding from ourselves?
Entertainment and our values
Just this: Entertainment is a form of play, and even in non-human animals play is often an important means of regulating social interaction. Entertainment shapes some of our most important social values, values that are central to our way of life but which we are reluctant to acknowledge. In our society, the play of entertainment allows us to celebrate and indulge the values of consumption and in doing so endows us with a gluttony for emotional and physical pleasure.
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I knew there was SOMETHING insidiously dangerous about the way that our culture is so freakishly and myopically focused on all things related to celebrity and/or consumption! But I couldn’t quite figure it out. It seems harmless, on the face of it. After all, we work hard, why shouldn’t we recreate?
There is some suspicion regarding entertainment in our culture, though. It gets expressed in all the warnings and directives parents are given about limiting their children’s involvement with electronic media of various sorts. Personally, I’ve never bought the standard explanations of what damage would be done by watching too much television, say, or playing on the computer too long. My children have, at times, watched many hours of t.v.and/or played an online “virtual world” game for many hours (I did make sure they weren’t watching or playing anything violent or inappropriate), and they still read voraciously, get straight As at an academically challenging school, and have varied interestes (music, sports) and friends (and they even like being with their parents, even though one is a teenager!). I also spent many hours watching television growing up and I think I turned out basically O.K.
Your blog suggests that the real damage from overexposure to media is the risk of embracing values that are different from the ones we would hope our children will embrace. This makes sense to me, and if this is the true danger, then parents need an entirely different set of instructions regarding how to protect their children from these dangers. Talking to them, perhaps, or spending time with them. Or even (perish the thought) being their children’s models for how to live in accord with a more worthy set of values (!). Wow. What a concept.
Thanks for providing a fresh and thought-provoking look at one of the defining features of 21st century culture. I look forward to reading more.
I really like your comment. You make the point(more clearly than I do, actually) that the familiar criticisms of entertainment seem to miss something. I don’t mean to join the chorus of voices saying we need to turn off our TV sets. Probably many folks could do with a little less TV, but I agree with you that the evidence of everyday life does not support calls for total TV abstinence. In a way, the line of argument you are advancing here is compatible with authors such as Bruce Alexander and Stanton Peele who write about addiction. To boil it down to a sentence, they both resist the claim that a substance such as alcohol carries within it a potential for inducing addiction in any user. Rather, the problem arises when a person begins to prioritize alcohol over other values and social relationships. Likewise, TV (or entertainment media more generally) are not inherently bad or dangerous–after all, people like to play. But it is a problem when the values of entertainment (and the values expressed in entertainment) begin to conflict with one’s conscious commitments to principles and people.
I get your point .In fact ,I’d like to extend it further to say nothing is inherently bad it is really how we use them . Alcohol ,if I may cite as an example is not bad ,if it stays on the bottle and not occupying space in one’s liver . But then we invented social drinking ,so that alcohol passes as the lubricant of social interaction . So we have an excuse for using alcohol .
As with entertainment, ,since time immemorial there were some forms of it, momentarily tying us together in solidarity like in traditional singing and recitation of heroic legends .Transport that now to a new obsession Korean Popular entertainment part of so called Hallyu Wave replacing Hollywood dominance in Asia . Entertainment transcended borders through the internet and that dominance is increasing day by day with creation of agencies such as cultural centers under the guise of improving the image of Korea. Actually the government has recognized its actual potency as money earner . It is big business ,that several management companies have banded together to corner the big chunk of entertainment clientele with its steady release of dramas ,movies , music albums , concerts , pop idols on performance tours, selling of celebrity merchandise ,tourism, global merchandise such as beauty products ,clothes ,food endorsed by celebrities . Entertainment in Asia now borders on collective consumption . Yes, we are collectively and individually swamped by it. The wave is already a Tsunami . Yes, like you said we were caught by it . As to its value ,I don’t know . Solidarity ? Repulsion of Western influence ? It was just replaced by another .
You raise the whole issue of how American-style entertainment is being appropriated in other cultures, and to what effect. Anthropologists have started to look at this question, but to my mind the topic needs much further study. As you point out, it is a tsunami of tremendous political, economic, and cultural significance.
Thanks, for commenting.