We tend to speak of entertainment as the lighter half of culture—the sugar that helps the medicine of information go down, the harmless sedation after a long day of labor. But to dismiss popular media as mere "content" or "escapism" is to misunderstand its profound, almost geological power. Entertainment is not the opposite of the serious; it is the disguised shape of the serious. It is the dream life of the collective.
Popular media, at its most potent, performs three deep functions: Babes.13.03.25.Selena.Rose.Lay.Her.Down.XXX.108...
We do not live in an age of information. We live in an age of immersion . And the question is no longer whether entertainment distracts us from the real—but whether the real has become just another genre, waiting to be streamed. We tend to speak of entertainment as the