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The "I" of Enthrallment
Author(s) -
Stromberg Peter G.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
ethos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.783
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1548-1352
pISSN - 0091-2131
DOI - 10.1525/eth.1999.27.4.490
Subject(s) - entertainment , subject (documents) , sociology , mental state , state (computer science) , aesthetics , sort , media studies , advertising , epistemology , psychology , art , visual arts , cognitive science , computer science , philosophy , algorithm , library science , business , information retrieval
The culture of the contemporary United States is powerfully shaped by the discourses of advertising and entertainment; cultural anthropologists must develop ways to analyze and understand these discourses. Here I suggest that the subject's engagement with advertising and entertainment may take the form of enthrallment, a mental state characterized by simultaneous engrossment and disbelief In this article, I describe one sort of entertainment activity, science‐fiction‐based, roleplaying games. I argue that enthrallment manifests itself here in a form of the first‐person pronoun that occurs in the speech of the players.