Escapism

The definition gives a mechanism rather than a genre. What makes something escapism is that it supplies secondary anima cheaply and leaves the endoreality intact, and the reason it is easier to watch is that no expenditure of conscious will is required. Primary anima can only be accessed with conscious engagement, so anything demanding no engagement can only be delivering the other kind, which is why the ease is diagnostic rather than incidental. The strengthening of the emotional will over the conscious one follows from repetition, since each is exercised by use. Marsh's contrast case makes the boundary visible. Plots built around great men losing status challenge endoreality by requiring the audience to acknowledge a villain in the endo-ideal, and these are plots for serious drama rather than escapism because they are uncomfortable to watch. Comfort marks which side of the line a work falls on. The supply side of the definition is less obvious and more troubling. Where secondary anima comes from the depiction of suffering, audiences drawn to see people like themselves in traumatic situations are being supplied with anima extracted in the depiction, which is why Marsh says news and entertainment should be very careful about what they are providing. The word carries no judgement of the audience. It describes what a work does to the balance between two wills.

Escapism has been discussed since the Frankfurt School, where Adorno and Horkheimer's culture industry argued that standardized entertainment produces passivity and forecloses critical thought, and Neil Postman made a similar case about television. Media psychology takes a more neutral view, studying mood management and recovery and finding real restorative benefits and distinguishing self-suppression from self-expansion motives for escapist consumption. Marsh's account resembles the critical tradition in its conclusion and differs in its reasoning. Adorno's objection is ideological, that the content reconciles audiences to their conditions, while hers is energetic, that the ease of consumption is itself the problem because effortless attention cannot access primary anima whatever the content happens to be.