Bryant, Jennings
2010
Foreword in Sayre, S et al. ~ Entertainment and Society: Influences, Impacts, and Innovations

XXI
“The resulting phenomenon has numerous dimensions, the sum total of which has led some scholars to suggest that we’re living in the entertainment age (Zillmann and Vorderer, 2000). Others have emphasized the dysfunctional aspects of the entertainment explosion and have lamented that we are Amusing ourselves to death (Postman, 1985).”

“The concomitant proliferation in entertainment scholarship has evoked abundant changes in the academy.”

XXII
“Such developments indubitably have laid waste to Fischer and Melnik’s (1979) claim that “theories of entertainment per se are practically nonexistent” (p. xi). Moreover, the widespread acceptance of the myriad theories of entertainment presented and refined in these volumes casts considerable doubt on Freud’s century-old dictum that “we do not know what it is that gives us pleasure and what we laugh about” (p. 107).”