Caught in Play : How Entertainment Works on You
ISBN: 9780804771276
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Stanford University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Sport &; Recreation; Social Science;

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. (June) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

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).

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