How Can We Value Entertainment? And, Why Does It Matter?

Entertainment plays a significant role in our culture. The entertainment industries generate billions of dollars each year, and employ hundreds of thousands of people. Yet entertainment has too often been dismissed with surprising ease within the academy, and seen as unworthy of serious analysis. This chapter sets out to explain how entertainment differs from other types of culture, why it is a useful term for defining domain of study, the limitations associated with medium-specific approaches, and why entertainment should be better understood.