I don't have a television

“More and more, if you are looking for common ground with family or colleagues, it will be in a shared entertainment experience…” (Wolf 38)

In “The Entertainment Economy” Wolf touches on how this growing portion of our economy has altered our means of relating to each other. One of the reasons people form relationships is through shared interests. Wolf states that “entertainment products put the mass audience on the same wavelength and, while engaging the emotions, they replace the sense of shared community that is disappearing in regular life” (38). It seems that because of everyone’s shared interest in entertainment, that particular economy has been able to infiltrate every part of, at least, the middle class American world. Supposedly, all of us can find common ground through our desire for entertainment.

He talks about the “daily grid,” in which we have slots of time that are dedicated to certain activities. Checking in on news and other entertainment outlets, which now have a price and are definitely commodities, occupies our free time.(note) We enjoy this stuff and are drawn to it, but we also partake in entertainment in order to talk about it with other people.

Sharing entertainment with other people feels rewarding because we are having fun or relaxing with others, but are we also sacrificing something by paying for it? Has our mentality really shifted towards an increased need for entertainment? Perhaps. If so, what have we left behind? Wolf argues that we were more concerned with objects in the 80s and 90s. Entertainment has always been around, but in different forms and at different levels. This interest in entertainment products has only been exaggerated and pushed on by those who provide them and by our own desire for diversions to occupy our free time.

Note: Is there fun without spending money? I knew some kids a few years ago who had a dance party in the Abercrombie store at our very own Carousel Mall. Video:
abercrombie fun without money