In his essay, “Art, Entertainment, Entropy,” Wallace Stevens argues that the entertainment media stifles change by providing redundant information. Because commercial entertainers are driven by profit, they don’t attempt anything new or startling at the risk of alienating audiences – instead, they give the public what they think they want and expect.
With new interactive entertainment media and social networking media, audiences become producers and creators instead of just professional commercial entertainers. In other words, audiences can partake in the creative process – something that Stevens said was stifled by commercial entertainment media. Ordinary people can create their own videos to post on youtube, can photograph their own works of art to post on facebook or twitter, and spread more information and “new language.” Entertainment no longer must be centralized and redundant, and therefore, information can spread. With information spreading, learning can happen, and that sparks change.
Stevens makes a distinction between art and entertainment – art is revolutionary, a catalyst for change, and entertainment is opposed to change, working against art by exploiting the boredom of the public and conditioning responses. With new interactive media, it is possible for more art to circulate. There are no commercial entertainers that censor social media, and thus, there is nothing stopping a spread of art and change from happening. The system of conditioned responses and feelings of alienation of audiences can be broken – audiences can finally gain the ability to appreciate the creative process in addition to participate in the creative process.
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