Books in the Palgrave Entertainment Industries series

This book examines queer characters in popular American television, demonstrating how entertainment can educate audiences about LGBT identities and social issues like homophobia and transphobia. Through case studies of musical soap operas (Glee and Empire), reality shows (RuPaul's Drag Race, The Prancing Elites Project and I Am Cait) and "quality" dramas (Looking, Transparent and Sense8), it argues that entertainment elements such as music, humour, storytelling and melodrama function as pedagogical tools, inviting viewers to empathise with and understand queer characters. Each chapter focuses on a particular programme, looking at what it teaches-its representation of queerness-and how it teaches this-its pedagogy. Situating the programmes in their broader historical context, this study also shows how these televisual texts exemplify a specific moment in American television.

It demonstrates that fun is at the heart of entertainment's effects - entertainment both offers its consumers fun and provides them with the intellectual materials to think about the nature of fun. More than this, the book argues that entertainment shows us that fun - pleasure without purpose - is at the heart of living a good life.

This collection brings together the work of a range of scholars from around the world with different perspectives on one simple question: How can we assess the value of various entertainment products and forms?Entertainment is everywhere. The industries that produce it earn billions of dollars each year and employ hundreds of thousands of people. Its pervasiveness means almost everyone has something to say about entertainment, too, whether it be our opinion on the latest Hollywood blockbuster, a new celebrity couple, or our concerns over its place in the world of politics. And yet, in spite of its significance, entertainment has too-often been dismissed with surprising ease within the academy as a ¿mindless¿, ¿lowbrow¿ ¿ even ¿dangerous¿ ¿ form of culture, and therefore unworthy of serious appraisal (let alone praise).Entertainment Values, challenges this assumption, offering a better understanding of what entertainment is, why we should take it seriously, as well as helping us to appreciate the significant and complex impact it has on our culture.