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The British Journal of Aesthetics 2003 43(3):289-307; doi:10.1093/bjaesthetics/43.3.289
© 2003 by British Society of Aesthetics
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Entertainment: A Question for Aesthetics

Richard Shusterman1

1 Department of Philosophy, Temple University, Philadephia, PA 19122, USA. Email: shusrich{at}temple.edu

Underlying the stubborn hierarchical dichotomy between high and popular art, there is a far more basic contrast at work—art versus entertainment. Yet the complex network of language games deploying these concepts reveals that entertainment is not simply contrasted to art but often identified with art as an allied or subsuming category. The arts are themselves sometimes described as forms of entertainment. Because the concept of entertainment is deeply and complexly related to the concept of art, and because it is also broader and older than the concept of popular art, its analysis can be instructive not only for the question of popular art but for aesthetics as a whole.

This paper, which is guided by pragmatist insights, provides a genealogical analysis of the concept of entertainment and its relation to aesthetics that offers some lessons for contemporary art and theory. In providing an aesthetic defence of entertainment's multiples values, the paper re-examines two concepts—pleasure and functionality for life—that have been used to condemn entertainment for triviality and narrowness but that are central to its value and to the value of art.


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