Abstract
Which recreational pursuits do you enjoy? Perhaps you love reading? Or a drink and some dancing at your favourite nightspot? Maybe you’re a connoisseur of cinema? Or, do you have a penchant for pugilistic combat? Whatever tickles your fancy, you can bet it’s stoked the ire of one group or another over the years! From Ancient Rome to Puritan New England, we take a whistle-stop tour of the enduring entanglement between entertainment and disapproval. And, with rapidly evolving leisure landscapes centred around Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality technologies – and indeed emerging and novel forms of censorious behaviour – what might the past suggest about the potential futures of our vital pleasures and the (inevitable) outrage which follows them? Through a careful analysis and interpretation of the academic (and non-academic) sources – and with a Foucauldian inclination to examine power dynamics – this study offers vivid imagery, an amusing historical anecdote or two, and most important of all: intellectual nourishment and food for thought! Just don’t enjoy it too much, or somebody might try to ban it!
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Changing Dimensions of Contemporary Leisure
KEYWORDS
HISTORY, LEISURE, MORALITY, MEDIA, POWER, CENSORSHIP, ENTERTAINMENT
