Caught in Play: How Entertainment Works on You / Edition 1

by Peter G. Stromberg

Overview

Most of us have become so immersed 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.

For more information, please visit www.caughtinplay.com.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804761116
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	05/28/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	951,854
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Peter G. Stromberg is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tulsa. He is the author of Language and Self-Transformation: A Study of the Christian Conversion Narrative (1993) and Symbols of Community: The Cultural Systems of a Swedish Church (1986).

Table of Contents

Foreword by Bradd Shore vii

Acknowledgments xi

1 Caught Up in the Game 1

2 Romantic Realism 21

3 Romanticism and the Birth of Consumer Culture 35

4 Role Playing 53

5 Looking Under the Hood 76

6 Meta-Action (the Bird's-Eye View) 97

7 Romance and the Romantic 110

8 Play and Agency in Legal Drug Use 126

9 The Oscillation Between Boredom and Stimulation 140

10 Entertainment and Our Understanding of the Self 160

Conclusion 174

Notes 179

References 199

Index 211

Editorial Reviews

"Overall, Stromberg's cleverly argued case for becoming caught up as a cognitive process is quite convincing, and casting play and ritual as forms of becoming caught up offers new avenues of exploration, especially for bringing together recent thinking on imagination and consumption in anthropology."—Nick Gadsby, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

"Caught in Play is an important contribution to the study of fun, play, and entertainment. It advances our understanding of some of the psychological, social, and economic functions of entertainment in contemporary Western Culture."—Rebecca Sachs Norris, Anthropological Quarterly

"Stromberg's book is admirable ... He write clearly and in a way that invites participation from the reader. His book—in the spirit of its subject—has a light, almost playful touch that encourages readers to draw connection between its arguments and what they know about these matters from their own disciplines."—Thomas Henricks, American Journal of Sociology.

"Stromberg (anthropology, U. of Tulsa) explores the effects of entertainment on values of pleasure, self-indulgence and consumption and notes the ease in which fans succumb to media ideas and practices. Written for students and scholars, this book explains the links between romantic realism and consumer culture and examines the writings of noted social theorists to reveal how entertainment has replaced rituals in modern societies. The author also describes the methods employed by the entertainment industry to satisfy 'stimulus hunger.'"—Book News

"The surfaces of play mask some surprising hidden dynamics of modern life. Stromberg delivers a high-flying set of reflections on what lies behind our capacity to get caught up completely in the world of entertainment. Exploring our ever-intensifying 'stimulus hunger,' his excursion into the history of modern desire provides a new way to think about the forces shaping contemporary entertainment. It's a thriller!"—Bradd Shore, Emory University

"With its lively, ambitious examination of how entertainment has replaced ritual as a means of creating and affirming social ideals and motivations, Caught in Play extends the insights of major social theorists such as Durkheim, Weber, and Goffman. It is a stimulating read that will evoke productive debate over the effects of contemporary forms of imaginative involvement."—Daniel T. Linger, University of California, Santa Cruz

From the Publisher

Starred Review.

Author and anthropology professor Stromberg (Language and Self-Transformation) examines popular entertainment of all kinds for their societal effects, past and present, in this rigorous and readable study. Books, movies, and shopping come under the microscope, but so do forms like advertising; intelligently twining propagandistic effects with the idea of romantic realism to find the motivation for consumer spending and product appeal. Stromberg also delivers an array of information about early theater and the origins of the European and American obsession with fashion. Drawing from a collection of established researchers and authors, Stromberg's all-encompassing text is, itself, a meta-narrative on his idea of being "caught up," that entertainment maintains its grip on society because it replaces mundane, every day existence with a more colorful, peaceful, meaningful world. Reading this smart commentary on the grand spectrum of entertainment is an addictive experience, a sharp example of the very phenomenon it illuminates.
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Publishers Weekly

"Stromberg's book is admirable ... He write clearly and in a way that invites participation from the reader. His book—in the spirit of its subject—has a light, almost playful touch that encourages readers to draw connection between its arguments and what they know about these matters from their own disciplines."

Thomas Henricks

"Overall, Stromberg's cleverly argued case for becoming caught up as a cognitive process is quite convincing, and casting play and ritual as forms of becoming caught up offers new avenues of exploration, especially for bringing together recent thinking on imagination and consumption in anthropology."

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute - Nick Gadsby

"With its lively, ambitious examination of how entertainment has replaced ritual as a means of creating and affirming social ideals and motivations, Caught in Play extends the insights of major social theorists such as Durkheim, Weber, and Goffman. It is a stimulating read that will evoke productive debate over the effects of contemporary forms of imaginative involvement."

Santa Cruz - Daniel T. Linger

"The surfaces of play mask some surprising hidden dynamics of modern life. Stromberg delivers a high-flying set of reflections on what lies behind our capacity to get caught up completely in the world of entertainment. Exploring our ever-intensifying 'stimulus hunger,' his excursion into the history of modern desire provides a new way to think about the forces shaping contemporary entertainment. It's a thriller!"

Emory University - Bradd Shore

"Stromberg (anthropology, U. of Tulsa) explores the effects of entertainment on values of pleasure, self-indulgence and consumption and notes the ease in which fans succumb to media ideas and practices. Written for students and scholars, this book explains the links between romantic realism and consumer culture and examines the writings of noted social theorists to reveal how entertainment has replaced rituals in modern societies. The author also describes the methods employed by the entertainment industry to satisfy 'stimulus hunger.'"

Book News

"Caught in Play is an important contribution to the study of fun, play, and entertainment. It advances our understanding of some of the psychological, social, and economic functions of entertainment in contemporary Western Culture."

Rebecca Sachs Norris