BLOG 4- Art, Entertainment, Entropy -Afshan Khan

Wallace Steven's article, "Art, Entertainment, Entropy" sheds light on what he believes to be the growing lack of creativity and originality in commercial entertainment, as well as its fall into gimmicks that are conceived solely for the manipulation of the target audience. He is concerned as well with the audience's dejected acquiescing to the formulaic product presented. There comes from this a certain "what came first? the chicken or the egg?" situation in which the entertainment media feeds the audience low quality work that the audience starts to tolerate, which then allows the media to continue to produce low quality work, and so on.

This artless media argument is interesting in the face of networking and self-publishing websites such as facebook.com and youtube.com. On the one hand, because these websites reach an even larger mass of people, stale trends and patterns in entertainment have an even larger means to catch on. This in effect would reinforce Wallace's argument. On the other hand, because these websites are available for individuals to express themselves, there is more of a chance for published creativity.