On Artertainment

We of the blogging community, children of the late 20^th century, young adults of the 21^st century, are no strangers to the effects of what I call “artertainment”. What is artertainment? Well, I consider it a fusion of the deep meanings and intricacies of art with the emotional and attention-grabbing aspects of entertainment. Essentially: movies, books, good television shows, music, etc.  With the internet, the ability of humanity to both create, distribute, acquire, and consume artertainment has rocketed up exponentially. I have a list of a hundred books I want to read, a hundred films to watch, a hundred albums to listen to, a good amount of shows I want to watch; I know I’ll never make it through these lists, as I’ll keep adding to them for the rest of my life. I can easily acquire almost all of the artertainment on my lists. Because of this, I’ve familiarized myself with many of the critically acclaimed fictions of the recent decades and consider myself somewhat of an authority of these things, in the way that inevitably leads to the occasional cries of “hipster” and “pretentious”. As I’ve discussed elsewhere the irrelevancy of these words, I’ll concentrate instead of the part of artertainment that worries me.
                Everyone classifies themselves in their own way, based on their own criteria for what defines a person. For some it’s family, some it’s race, some it’s religions or politics or whatever cause they’ve chosen to adopt. For my particular sub-group of people, it’s artertainment. We define ourselves based on our tastes, on the books, movies, shows, music, art, fashion that we like and those that we equally dislike. I don’t have any particularly amazing talents: I’m reasonably intelligent, I hope I write slightly better than the average person, I can play guitar (although only chords and some fingerpicking patterns), and maybe I can get along with others better than a good number of people. However, that’s not an impressive array of skills; I can’t define myself by my talents or by my actions, but instead by having a “better” taste in artertainment than others, or at least a better knowledge of artertainment. Therefore, having established that one of the main pillars of my own self-concept is my taste in artertainment, the question inevitably rises: what’s the point? Does artertainment even matter?
                A number of my college friends, of an intelligence I cannot hope to match, are on their ways to careers as engineers, doctors, lawyers, politicians, and the like, while I manage with my Psychology and English degrees; pieces of paper that won’t help me much in the “real world”. I will occasionally find myself caught up in watching a new show on Netflix (right now my obsession is Breaking Bad), reading a book for pleasure, watching a movie, or listening to a new album. Sometimes my friends will catch me doing this and deride me for “wasting time”. Sure, such activities would be wasting time if I had a paper due the next day that I hadn’t started on, but the accusation that maybe all these books, movies, shows, and music aren’t a valuable use of my time, aren’t concrete, aren’t…important, cuts deep. So when someone challenges the core of your self-concept, you can’t help but react negatively.
                I know that artertainment has moved me in ways I can’t express, shown me fictional characters in fictional situations that have nevertheless impacted me and changed my thoughts on issues and on life in general. I know that I rarely feel as much sheer fascination and joy as what comes when experiencing a truly great piece of artertainment, so I know that despite any criticisms lodged against me, I will hold fast to this piece of joy and meaning in my life. But again I ask myself, should I be doing something better with my time? Any thoughts, followers? Thanks for reading. More to come in the coming days.