Trauma as Entertainment

A Blurring of Boundaries

Despite the long history and increasing contemporary evidence of new means of consuming trauma, only relatively recently have academics focused attention on the increasing integration of entertainment and trauma into new modes of staging and visualization. In particular, scholars have coined the term traumatainment to describe the process by which tragic events and catastrophes are transformed into consumption-based entertainment experiences and sources of corporate revenue. The term also refers to the dominance of amusement and commodity-images in the marketing of trauma to global audiences. Traumatainment expresses trends toward the adoption and insertion of entertainment codes and performance into information production frameworks, transforming trauma into “infotainment.” Although information suggests collections of facts and verifiable statements about past and present events, entertainment is amusement or diversion intended to hold the attention of an audience. Traumatainment represents what social theorist Jean Baudrillard calls the “implosion” of reality, where the boundaries between trauma and entertainment blur and become indistinguishable.

The blurring of boundaries between trauma and entertainment reflects several trends, including the increasing vulnerability of human settlements to trauma such as disasters (e.g., hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and terrorist strikes), the globalization [Page 703]of entertainment and media, and the proliferation of 24-hour news networks that are able to transmit human tragedy around the world in a matter of seconds. In an era of intense global competition, mainstream corporate media processes traumatic events, information, and knowledge in the form of media spectacle to attract audiences and advertising dollars. Entertainment firms and news corporations have an incentive to be more and more spectacular in their presentation of news and information because the “fun factor” can give them a competitive edge over rival firms. A news world driven by spectacle and entertainment recognizes and embraces trauma as a major opportunity and vehicle for maximizing audiences, creating new markets, and accumulating profits. Today, digital communication, virtual reality, and the Internet have joined the arsenal of media technologies that large corporations use to showcase tragic events for global consumption. New media technologies enable the globalization of trauma to the extent that any tragic event can be slotted in with similar events and circulated worldwide as soon as it happens, thus reducing human tragedy to an instant and adaptable image. In a media saturated world, people are increasingly subjected to a wide variety of nonstop traumatic events, catastrophes, and disasters.

...