Entertainment gets a bad rap. Contrary to popular beliefs, however, entertainment is not a waste of time. Good stories make us and our lives better. Self-reflection, emotional connection, increased empathy and real life impact. Stories are fundamentally social, linking people through shared experience and meaning. What’s not to like?
Whether it’s historical dramas, romance, sci-fi, thrillers, superheroes, mysteries, horror or navigating a story-driven video game—anything that tells a story can give us a deeper understanding of the world and events around us. The impact is more than entertainment – a good story often leads to self-reflection. By developing emotional connections to characters and their worlds, we gain empathy that can extend into our personal lives (Bal & Veltkamp, 2013). We can face untenable situations, build emotional repertoires and ease our existential fears.
This makes storytelling sound like it’s solely a personal experience. It’s not. Stories are fundamentally social. Films, television programs and games are shared, responded to, anticipated and consumed collectively. Fans connect over specific events, characters and emotional experiences, negotiating shared meanings while simultaneously affirming relationships. How many times have you chatted with friends about the plots or characters of a show, speculating on the upcoming plotlines and actions?
As narrative scholar Jerome Bruner (1991) noted, we understand narratives because of an implicit set of assumptions that kick into action in our brains once we’ve become willing participants in the story. When we speculate and discuss stories with others, these assumptions provide an unseen agreement at the basis of our conversation. For example, we assume that the plot will make sense in the context of the larger narrative being told, that the story will, more or less, fit within a given genre, that characters will behave “in character,” and that what happened in the past is relevant to the present and future within the rules of that world. It is these very assumptions that allow us to be surprised and delighted by deviations.
As our life experiences differ, how we interpret stories varies as well. We are guided, however, by universal or archetypal plots and characters that give us common ground. Your hero and my hero might be functionally different, but we both have an internalized understanding of what a hero might look and feel like—we both acknowledge the role of hero and the role that a hero plays. Stories bridge differences so that we can share fundamentals.
Continued on Screen size Changes the Meaning and Impact of Content
References
Bal, P. M., & Veltkamp, M. (2013). How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy? An Experimental Investigation on the Role of Emotional Transportation. PloS one, 8(1), e55341.
Bruner, J. (1991). The Narrative Construction of Reality. Critical Inquiry, 18.
Dr. Pamela Rutledge is available to reporters for comments on the psychological and social impact of media and technology on individuals, society, organizations and brands.