Popular Entertainment and the Good Life

There is perhaps no easier role for a Catholic to play in our contemporary culture than that of the critic of popular entertainment. The overt progressivism of much of today’s entertainment media—as we find it in film and streaming television, music, and gaming, as well as fiction and live theater—makes it not just easy, but necessary in certain instances, for us Catholics to rise up and condemn that which is so plainly contrary to the Gospel. It would be tedious to produce a list of examples with which we are all too familiar. But as a token of the problem, allow me to cite just one disturbing development taking place in the world of popular cinema. Beginning in 2024, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences introduced new “representation and inclusion standards” for films seeking to be eligible for the Oscars. These standards amount to a list of quotas, and among the groups listed by the standards as underrepresented is the one that has come to be known as “LGBTQ+.” Thus, the new quotas will doubtless make even more prevalent in popular movies characters and storylines that embody a rejection of the Church’s teaching on human sexuality.

An obvious decadency, or at least banality, characterizes so much of what passes for entertainment today. And yet, my contention is that the role of the critic of such decadency and banality is not the only, nor the most important, role that a Catholic must play in regard to popular entertainment. 

I have been an academic philosopher for most of the past three decades, and the colleagues I have had the pleasure of working with along the way have been notably brilliant. These are people who spend their days reading, interpreting, and teaching abstruse texts in one area or another of the Catholic liberal arts tradition. But I cannot think of one of these brilliant scholars—not a single one—who has not in some way revealed an enthusiasm for a favorite popular musician, movie, or television show. In a coffee shop, I once ran into a friend, one of the most talented scholars I know, who over the course of our conversation regaled me with his extensive commentary, not on the subtleties of St. Augustine’s
De Trinitate, but on the hidden meanings of the television show Lost.

My point is not that even Catholic intellectuals have their weaknesses. Rather, my point, is that everyone—including those whom we might think are most disinclined to it—has a love for popular entertainment and that such a love is natural and good. We are made for entertainment, and in support of this claim I draw upon the wisdom of one of Christendom College’s most beloved authorities: St. Thomas Aquinas. 

DEFINING “ENTERTAINMENT”

If anyone is in doubt that the theme of popular entertainment is important for any Catholic to reflect upon, let him consider that one of the Church’s foremost theologians, as well as one of its exemplar doctors, himself reflects upon the positive nature of popular entertainment in his monumental work, the Summa Theologiae (specifically, in the Secunda secundae, the “Second part of the second part,” question 168, articles 1-4). In fact, it is in his discussion of the cardinal virtue of temperance, and, in particular, his discussion of the modesty required in our exterior bodily movements, that St. Thomas Aquinas locates the theme of popular entertainment.

This may at first strike us as puzzling. But as soon as we think of entertainments such as dancing at a wedding reception or singing karaoke at the local pub, it is clear that a certain temperance or modesty of bodily movement is required in these venues. And the more we reflect on it, we can see that Aquinas’s answer also applies to what an actor does on stage or on screen, to what a pop diva does when she performs in concert, to what is depicted in the narrative and images of a video game, and, as well, to the audiences or players who enjoy these shows and games. Entertainment is a matter of what we do with our bodies when we relax them—when we play—and so it requires a kind of temperance or modesty.

Notice how different Aquinas’s approach to entertainment is from that of our popular culture. While Aquinas directly situates entertainment or play within a discussion of modesty, our culture often equates entertainment with the very pursuit of immodesty. More on this problem in a moment. 

First, let us highlight Aquinas’s point that the enjoyment of entertainment is an exercise of moral virtue. Moral virtue is an achievement, an excellence, attained when, after much effort, we bring passion under the habitual guidance of reason. Accordingly, we achieve the virtue of entertainment or of play when we bring our passion for play, a passion that involves our exterior bodily movements, habitually under reason’s sway. 

The thing  is, we human beings are rather easily fatigued. Whether we are doing something practical or something just with our minds, we quickly get tired both in body and in soul. This is where entertainment comes in. We have a great need to relax both in body and in soul, and so the pleasures of relaxation are therefore immensely attractive. The virtue of entertainment helps us to enjoy the pleasures of relaxation in the right way.

So how should we define entertainment? Following Aquinas, I submit that entertainment is “humorous words and deeds of play” that we pursue for the pleasure they give us. This pleasure relaxes us for future labors, but we do not pursue entertainment merely as a means of getting ready for more strenuous activity of body or mind. We also pursue entertainment for its intrinsic enjoyment. Playing a board game with the family on a Friday evening is a nice rest from the rigors of the work week, but playing the game is also a good in its own right. 

HITTING THE “MEAN” WHEN IT COMES TO ENTERTAINMENT

A moral virtue, as we have seen, brings passion under the guidance of reason. Another way of putting this thought is that a moral virtue hits a “mean” between an excess and a deficiency of passion. When it comes to entertainment, we need to be careful that our passion for the pleasures of relaxation and play does not run to either excess or deficiency. Our passion needs to be guided by reason so that it hits the mean and we make progress in virtue. Aquinas gives us some broad guidelines to help us discern the mean when it comes to the virtue of entertainment.

First and most obviously, the entertainment we enjoy must not be sought in any deeds or words that are shameful and harmful. The ignoble, the disgraceful, the immodest or obscene mar, if not roundly condemn, a piece of entertainment.

Second, in the enjoyment of entertainment, “the mind’s seriousness,” as Aquinas puts it, should not totally be lost. Yes, in enjoying a piece of entertainment we can and should “let our hair down” a bit, as we like to say. But we shouldn’t do so at the expense of our dignity as human persons. We must enjoy our fun as rational animals, not as beasts. 

Third, the entertainment we enjoy must fit the circumstances we are in. Joking, dancing, games, and the like are all perfectly good and acceptable in the appropriate contexts, but they can be morally offensive when pursued in the wrong ways. A serious problem we have with video entertainment on the internet, for example, even when it is morally appropriate in itself, is that we simply indulge ourselves in too much of it. There is a time and a place to play and there is a time and a place to work or to pray: and we need to be vigilant in living this distinction clearly.

But remember, we can miss the mean of moral virtue not only when our passions run to excess, but also when they are deficient. There is a moral defect in not taking part in entertainment. The killjoy who cannot enjoy a joke, or a game, or a film or television show, is, Aquinas says, imperfect in his moral development, and so a burden not only to himself but to others.

ENTERTAINMENT AS BOTH SERIOUS AND SENSATIONAL

The philosopher Iris Murdoch once wrote that much art is no more than “consoling fantasy.” Such art is false because it blurs the line between reality and the fantasy produced by passion unguided by reason. This is another way of saying that no art, not even the most popular entertainment, should completely lose contact with what Aquinas calls “the mind’s seriousness.”

Works of entertainment therefore have their own mean to hit. They should in some way manifest the reality of the human experience, but do so in a way that brings immediate pleasure and relaxation. If a piece of entertainment is too “serious” it will be a strain, and so not provide the pleasurable relaxation we need. But if a piece of entertainment is not serious enough, if it does not do something to reveal a truth about human life, then it will be frivolous or even decadent.

 I have always appreciated what Anthony Trollope, the 19th century British novelist, had to say on this point. Trollope was considered by many to be an anti-sensational, or realistic, novelist; his friend and fellow novelist Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone, was considered a sensational one. But here is how Trollope himself, in his Autobiography, viewed the matter:

The readers who prefer… [realistic novels] are supposed to take delight in the elucidation of character. Those who hold by the other [i.e., sensational novels] are charmed by the continuation and gradual development of a plot. All this is, I think, a mistake—which mistake arises from the inability of the imperfect artist to be at the same time realistic and sensational. A good novel should be both, and both in the highest degree. If a novel fail in either, there is a failure in art….Let an author so tell his tale as to touch his reader’s heart and draw his tears, and he has, so far, done his work well. Truth let there be—truth of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and women. If there be such truth, I do not know that a novel can be too sensational.

Trollope affirms here that a certain sensationalism is essential to literature, and that the perfect artist is at once “realistic” (showing us the truth) and “sensational” (i.e., entertaining). In this I believe Trollope is right, and I also believe that his point can be applied to all popular entertainment. Good entertainment must aspire to beguile our minds with the truth, but also to captivate our senses (involving, remember, the appropriate exterior bodily movements).

What I like especially about Trollope’s comment is that it collapses the distinction between, on the one hand, what is often called “high art,” and, on the other hand, what is often called “low” or “popular” entertainment. The greatest works of art invite no such distinction. No poetry in the ancient Greek world was more popular than that of Homer, yet no poetry was more substantial than Homer’s in portraying the truth of the human condition. Shakespeare’s plays, too, were the popular entertainment of his day. It is only in our obsessively analytical and compartmentalizing age that we divide the popular taste from the thoughts and artistry that allure the scholar.

THE SWORD AND THE TROWEL

One of the most interesting aspects of Aquinas’s discussion of the virtue of entertainment is the spotlight he places on what might be called the roles and institutions of entertainment. Because entertainment is necessary to the good life, then certain roles and institutions related to entertainment must be necessary as well. Aquinas considers in particular the role of the actor. The professional lives of actors are ordered to giving others the pleasure their natures so badly require. Consequently, Aquinas argues, the actor has a crucial place within the common good of the community.  To imagine a community without actors—and, extending the point, without singers, dancers, acrobats, and clowns, without directors, producers, screenwriters, choreographers, and technicians of various sorts—would be to imagine a diminished community. It would be to imagine an environment ill-suited for human flourishing.

Of course, these roles and institutions must contribute to the human good by observing the mean of the virtue of entertainment. They must not involve the ignoble, the immodest, or the downright obscene. They must not provide us with consoling fantasy. They must not lose contact with the mind’s seriousness. 

Needless to say, this is not what we find very often in our current entertainment culture. Which means that if we are to enjoy the entertainment we need for our flourishing—not just we Catholics, but all human beings—then we either have to settle for the few nutritious morsels that today’s entertainment industry feeds us, or we have to think and make anew the roles andinstitutions of entertainment. 

G.K. Chesterton, in one of his writings about cultural renewal, speaks of the importance of both the sword and the trowel. The “sword” is the weapon of defense: this is the power of analysis showcased in argument. But to change a culture, avers Chesterton, we need more than arguments. We also need the “trowel.” The trowel is the tool by which we build the artifacts of a new culture of life. It is the tool we use to build the bridges that will span the gap between ourselves and those trapped in the entertaining images that obscure the real.

We Catholics are quite good when it comes to the “sword,” that is, in making arguments against the offensive claims of our progressive anti-culture, including in the realm of entertainment. But we Catholics are often less good when it comes to the “trowel,” to reconceiving roles and building new institutions, particularly in the area of entertainment. It was not a Catholic production company that crowdfunded The Chosen, a surprisingly popular Christian television show of recent years. Why not? Why cannot we take the realm of entertainment as seriously as St. Thomas Aquinas did and build a new entertainment culture that will give, not just to ourselves but to the whole world, the kinds of stories and games and shows that match the dignity of the human person?

We  Catholics need to continue to take up the role of critic and interrogate all forms of entertainment that contradict the Gospel. But we also need, even more urgently, to take up the more creative and demanding role of the imaginer and builder of a new entertainment culture. We need to restore the “entertaining things” to Christ, so that we can show the world: that’s entertainment!