Abstract
Fun is a vital part of entertainment as a cultural system, but academic writers have tended to value it negatively. In this chapter McKee demonstrates that writers in the aesthetic tradition have excluded fun from their consideration of cultural value or even demonised it as a dangerous distraction from what is truly worthwhile in life (self-improvement, political struggle). Media effects research hasn’t considered fun as an important analytical term. Important intellectual traditions on both pleasure and happiness do exist, but neither of these map comfortably on to ‘fun’ as the word is commonly used. By contrast, in entertainment and in vernacular working-class philosophies, fun has been given a central position and is valued highly.
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McKee, A. (2016). In Defence of Fun. In: FUN!. Palgrave Entertainment Industries. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49179-4_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49179-4_4
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