At Enfield Tennis Academy, for example, there is a whole Entertainment department. Rather, it encourages readers to take a more critical attitude toward entertainment in order to decrease the control it has over society.įorms of entertainment are everywhere in the novel, and in the world of Infinite Jest entertainment seems to be taken more seriously than it is in everyday reality outside of the novel’s pages. Yet while the novel suggests that entertainment (and the Entertainment in particular) can have a seriously negative effect, it does not imply that entertainment should be shunned altogether. This is particularly true of the most significant example of entertainment in the novel, which is simply known as “ the Entertainment.” James Incandenza’s invention takes entertainment to its logical, horrifying conclusion-watching it is an experience so engrossing that viewers lose all interest in their basic needs and eventually die. In the world of the novel, entertainment is an often dangerous force, a phenomenon to which people are compulsively drawn and which can even be used as a weapon. The novel takes a suspicious, if not entirely condemnatory attitude toward entertainment. Entertainment is a powerful element of Infinite Jest’s America.
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