What We Choose for Entertainment

“Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions, they argue with good looks, celebrities, and commercials.”

-Neil Postman 

The 20^th century gave us two great literary forecasts of our future. The first, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932), painted the portrait of a society designed to fulfill each and every human’s superficial desires: free sex, social acceptance, fulfillment with one’s job, a happiness drug with no side effects, and all the entertainment they could ask for.

The second and seemingly more sinister, 1984 by George Orwell (1948), envisaged a government so controlling and intrusive that every action and thought of its citizens is carefully monitored.

It is 1984 I hear referenced far more often when citing the shortcomings of our modern era.

But in the 1980’s, Neil Postman published his prescient discourse Amusing Ourselves to Death which compared Huxley’s and Orwell’s vision of the future, concluding “in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” Mankind, as we well know, possesses an almost infinite appetite for entertainment, distraction, and triviality – and Postman warns us that it was Huxley’s dark vision for the future that is already being fulfilled.

Give Me My Distraction, Now

What strikes me about Postman’s analysis is that it came almost 40 years ago, before the advent of the internet, YouTube, movie streaming, video gaming platforms, social media, MP3s, high-definition, mobile smart devices, email, and 5G. While these technologies have revolutionized our lives, they have also dramatically broadened our access to entertainment and triviality.

2020 teaches us that we now have access to more entertainment options in more formats than ever before. I can listen to almost any song I want to, watch any movie or show I want to, at any time, from anywhere, all through my smart TV, smart phone, or tablet. I can flick through hundreds of random posts featuring video and images on my social media. I can surf the internet with my thumb, accessing any article, YouTube channel, or tidbit of information. I can play video games not just in the solitary confines of my household, but anywhere else I choose to port my system – and I can connect with others who are playing live as well.

The ubiquity of glowing screens only compounds the dilemma. We put screens everywhere. They’re installed in our cars for our children to watch; we hang them in our bedrooms; we carry them in our pockets everywhere we go.

Not only can we freely access this barrage of stimulation, but we clamor for more. Fans want their sports, despite the enormous challenges for leagues and teams to coordinate safety protocols. LA Lakers veteran Dwight Howard dared to suggest, “Basketball, or entertainment period, isn’t needed at this moment, and will only be a distraction.” The New York Times goes on to muse, “A distraction is precisely the point, at least to some. Sports occupy an elevated place in American culture, and part of the mythology is that they are not just wanted, but needed, especially in times of crisis.”

2020 offers us the perfect storm for distraction. We have an over-abundance of access to entertainment, and we have – seemingly – the increased time for and need for entertainment. But have we asked ourselves this question: are we entertaining ourselves too much?

Being Entertained Should Not Be Our “Default Mode”

The abundance of entertainment sources has had a jarring, pernicious effect on society over the past generation. Being entertained and distracted has become our default for experience. If we are not entertained, if we are not distracted from reality, if we are not engaged in some trivial experience, then we feel something is wrong.

Take, for example, the way some technology services advertise themselves: we can now immerse ourselves in our screens on the bus, in the car, at work, at home. No matter is going on around us, the commercials suggest, we can find entertainment and solace in our glowing portal of entertainment.

Entertainment as our default setting has serious impacts on our perspective towards all else. First, boredom, free play, reflection, mindfulness, rest, creativity, and thoughtfulness are terms we admire in others, but we sense these take work to actually engage in. Entertainment, on the other hand, is easy. We don’t have to think; we just absorb the content and enjoy the tiny jolt of joy it provides.

This goes on to have the effect of causing us to expect to be entertained by almost everything. As Postman puts it, “Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education, and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business…The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.”

I think of entertainment like I think about food: the limitless availability of inexpensively produced food has led to dramatic increases in our obesity rates. The narrative of our waste line teaches us that just because more food is available doesn’t mean that it is all equally beneficial. We have learned we must recognize quality food ingredients, understand snacking versus meals, and develop patterns of wellness surrounding our eating habits.

The same is true with entertainment – and we are, in a sense, growing obese from our gluttonous consumption of frequent, cheap stimulation.

Choosing What and When

I am not saying that entertainment is a bad thing altogether.

What I am saying is that we must carefully choose what entertains us and when we choose to be entertained. We should absolutely be finding ways to be entertained, but because it is so invasive in our cultural psyche, we must raise our cognizance and become far more intentional with our choices.

The Atlantic recently decried the “most viewed” list released by Netflix, suggesting “the pandemic has popularized a series of forgettable productions that each offers a fleeting, miniature facsimile of communal attention.” Basically, we’re wasting our time watching junk.

Being entertained is good. Being entertained all the time, by anything, is not. We must be judicious with our time, recognizing that the abundance of entertainment options are – like the abundance of food choices – there to tempt us away from a healthful diet of sincere thought and creative action.

Let’s consume entertainment before us like we would a good meal and eat when we’re hungry, with the occasional sugar-laden snack. When we’re not hungry, eating is at best unhelpful and at worst dangerous. Similarly, we ought to approach our appetite for entertainment with due caution, or else we run the risk of wasting our time with idleness, tantalizing our minds with distraction and softening our endurance for sustained thinking.  

Are we being entertained by that which is morally inspiring? Are we surrounding ourselves with images and sounds that edify our characters? Are we able to distinguish between entertainment and news, politics, religion, and art? Are we conscientiously tuning out the distractions and trivialities when they are unnecessary? Is our default set to a life of love, attention, and sincerity?

Every once in a while we may have a chance to book a trip to Las Vegas. When we’re there, we dive into the culture of the city with abandon and soak in the entertainment with little regard for propriety, sobriety, or conventional commitments. This is well and good, but we cannot live in Vegas permanently. We must enjoy from it what we can and return to the homes we have built elsewhere.

The society of Brave New World has, in a sense, established a sort of permanent Vegas and claimed they have found utopia.  

But then again, there were characters who opted to throw the wonder-drug out the window so they could create art and pursue love instead