Caught in play : how entertainment works on you / Peter G. Stromberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stromberg, Peter G.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Amusements--Social aspects.

Amusements.

Play--Social aspects.

Play.

Recreation--Social aspects.

Recreation.

Physical Description:

xii, 218 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, [2009]

Summary:

in a book or game or movie that the activity temporarily assumed a profound significance and the outside world began to fade. Although we are likely to enjoy these experiences in the realm of entertainment, we rarely think about what effect they might be having on us. Precisely because it is so pervasive, entertainment is difficult to understand and even to talk about.

To understand the social role of entertainment, Caught in Play looks closely at how we engage entertainment and at the ideas and practices it creates and sustains. Though entertainment is for fun, it does not follow that it is trivial in its effect on our lives. As this work reveals, entertainment generates commitments to values we are not always willing to acknowledge: values of pleasure, self-indulgence, and consumption.

Contents:

Caught up in the game

Romantic realism

Romanticism and the birth of consumer culture

Role playing

Looking under the hood

Meta-action (the bird's-eye view)

Romance and the romantic

Play and agency in legal drug use

The oscillation between boredom and stimulation

Entertainment and our understanding of the self.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780804761109

0804761108

9780804761116

0804761116

OCLC:

257556294