Narrative Logo - Click for Main Menu
Entertainment - and what it does and doesn't mean! "Entertainment" is a term we commonly use to identify communication that is believed to be devoid of information. We say, for example, that some movies are "just entertainment" and in that way dismiss the possibility that they might have a message, or that the audience would detect a message. Entertainment is seen as a kind of empty box, suitable to make us laugh, shudder, thrill, or weep. But we don't believe that it "educates" us. On the contrary, however, I believe that it is the most enduring form of education, propaganda, and mind-shaping material - the ultimate in communication. We experience an inherent contradiction in the assumption that entertainment does not communicate content or persuade us about anything in the real world. If we look at the scientific evidence about how the brain works and current theories of learning, we can see just how this conflict plays out. The Five Senses: First, we do know that everything we learn is recorded first by the sensory mechanisms of the brain. If you didn't receive it through your eyes, nose, mouth, skin, or ears, you didn't record it. Following this line of thought, it would make sense, first, that messages we acquire when our senses are stimulated are likely to be remembered better than messages which arrive when our sensory receptors are dormant. So, right away, we see that "entertainment," which appeals heavily to our senses, is likely to be very memorable. Memory is Memory: Next, many artificial intelligence experts (such as Marvin Minsky) maintain that the brain does not actually distinguish an "artificial" memory from a real one when it stores the memory. The difference between seeing Switzerland on TV, for example, and from being there is not that the brain "labels" one memory as make-believe and another as real. The difference lies, instead, in the corollary memories: packing, traveling by plane, etc. In other words, the scope of the memory is likely to be smaller for the TV version of Switzerland, but individual images may be equally as vivid. Evidence is Evidence: If we believe Minsky about the stored memory, then things we see as "entertainment" are quite likely to exist side-by-side in our brains with things that really happened to us. Since we make decisions based on the preponderance of "instances" we have regarding a certain subject, imaginary evidence can be as influential as real experience. In this way, entertainment becomes merely another instance in our "brain-log" of manifestations of the real world. Folktales and the Senses: We can see this phenomenon at work in the folktales we have studied. Folk material is often communicated in an atmosphere where our senses are heightened. Moreover, oral literature (and all entertainment) depends heavily on image, metaphor, symbol (all of the mechanisms that require the senses to be active). If folklore was often intended to provide a message - as in the "moral" in the Perrault tales - then it follows that we have always recognized (though not acknowledged) that even the silliest and most innocuous of folk tales are meant to stimulate the senses, give us a version of the world, and encourage us to learn from the narrative of the characters. The Perfect Example: Let us go back, for a moment, to The Little Mermaid. Both the Anderson version and the Disney version could be considered "entertainment"- and were/are! But the message that the reader has to conclude, revisiting these stories in the mind, is quite different.
Caption: The Disney Video cover for The Little Mermaid One version of the story stresses the message that the Little Mermaid will have to pay for her transgressions (out of her class and out of her submissive gender role) with hundred of years of penance. The other story encourages the Little Mermaid to take a chance on changing her life, and minimizes the downside of the costs for such a change. Even the music to accompany the two different version indicates that Disney's message far more optimistic compared to that of Hans Christian Andersen. |
