Are We Taking Our Entertainment Too Seriously?
The movie “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” is coming to theaters soon, so early reviews for it started showing up in my YouTube recommendations today. One review from an online critic I follow and trust (but not always agree with) talked a lot about this being the first Ghostbusters movie that seems to exist without a purpose. That notion seemed to fit with some questions I’ve been asking myself some lately. Are we taking our entertainment too seriously? Should entertainment have a purpose other than simply…to entertain? Are we expecting too much out of the movies, TV shows, books, and other entertainment that we consume?
I believe we definitely have the right to be critical of the entertainment we consume and to expect a certain level of quality, if for no other reason than much of entertainment is not free. We have to pay for theater tickets, movie rentals, streaming services, books, music, concert tickets, subscriptions, etc. Even when the consumption of the intellectual property is free, we still had to pay for the TV, streaming box, computer, phone, or tablet, that we viewed it on and the electricity to power those items. Even if we go to a free local event, like a non-profit concert or play, we still had to pay for the fuel to get there.
Aside from the financial expense, there’s also the investment of time. Any time we sit down to put…
