Sex, Drugs, and Boredom

Why we should take entertainment more seriously than we do.

Peter Stromberg is an Anthropologist and author of Caught in Play: How entertainment works on you. See full bio

June 30, 2009, Media

Shadow values and, one more time, doublethink

There's a downside to holding values you don't acknowledge

In my first couple of posts in this space I discussed our strange ideas about celebrities; more recently I've talked about "shadow values," the fact that the world of entertainment allows us to indulge and cultivate values that we deny. The two topics are related, of course. That is, the world of entertainment allows you to indulge your fascination with celebrities while denying that fascination at the same time. Or-to take a more disturbing example-it allows some people to be lustfully attracted to images of under-aged persons while never even remotely considering that this is a form of pedophilia.

Why should "shadow values" exist?

Who benefits from shadow values? That's a question with more than one answer, but I'll start with the simplest one. The companies that make entertainment are quite happy to be able to offer products that people will be attracted to without pausing to reflect on whether this attraction is lined up with their values. Our ideas about entertainment are what allows this to happen: you end up doing something you wouldn't endorse as a good thing to do because entertainment doesn't count as real activity.

Of course, my point isn't that there are actual individuals plotting all this. Rather, this is just the way our culture works, and it works this way because of the advantages it provides. This system not only provides economic advantages to certain organizations, it provides pleasure to consumers, who have access to a convenient and conflict-free source of strong emotional stimulation.

Are there some hidden costs to holding shadow values?

There are also a few disadvantages, one of which goes like this: We live in a culture in which people are encouraged to enjoy strong experiences of emotional stimulation without thinking too hard about whether they would consciously choose these experiences. People find themselves being strongly attracted to certain things without really understanding why. That situation may have something to do with the spectacular incidence of addictive behavior in our society, a possibility I will consider in future posts.

Peter Stromberg is author of Caught in Play: How Entertainment Works on You (2009, Stanford) Photo by Jack Brodus.