Symbolic valorization in the culture of entertainment

Abstract

Durkheim argued that a society's central ideals are valorized through a process of emotional transfer that occurs as the excitement of intensive interaction comes to be associated with key symbols. In this article, I argue that a very similar process may occur in contemporary society as people interact with, and become deeply engaged in, the practices of entertainment and consumption. The argument is based upon a single example, routines of early phase legal drug consumption among college students. Legal drug use, like many forms of entertainment and discretionary consumption in contemporary American society, can in some cases be understood as a form of play. Often participants become caught up in their play, so preoccupied with the fictional world of the play that the cognitive and emotional salience of the day-to-day world begins to fade. Here I argue that for some beginning users of alcohol and tobacco, becoming caught up in this way enhances users' convictions about the capacity of the drug to produce strong transformative experiences and thereby valorizes the cultural conception of the drug as a substance that can override the ability of the person to direct his or her own action. I conclude by suggesting that becoming caught up in the fictions of play is a practice that may have relevance for understanding the effects of a broad range of activities that we classify as entertainment and consumption.