Welcome to Enterbrainment!

Is our society going to hell in a shopping cart?

Headlines are screaming about the death of books and the rise of "reality" television. "Independent" film is being coopted by big studios, fiction writers by the gaming industry, and everybody else by YouTube and MySpace. Trash seems to be winning against treasure.

I'm one of those screaming the loudest about this, even while I spend my reading hours online, watching The Pussycat Dolls Present Girlicious and blogging my heartbreak over the decline of Battlestar Galactica.

At the heart of this ongoing kerfuffle are two dichotomies: the one between high art and low art, and the one between public and private.

The terms "art" and "entertainment" are often used to divide "high art" (classical and modern dance, music, theater, art film, literature, and visual arts) and "low art" (commercial pop music, anything hip hop, television, gaming, anything internet-based, and industrial design). As if commercial arts didn't require high levels of skill and creative sensibility ... as if high art wasn't supposed to be entertaining.

A lot of critics and artists have been busy defeating the high/low dichotomy in this generation (there's always a high/low dichotomy), but more interesting is the breakdown of public and private space.

Because right now, "entertainment" coverage in the media definitely has a different focus. If you look up R. Kelly in "arts," you'll find reviews of his almost yearly album releases, but if you look him up in "entertainment," you'll get up-to-the-minute reports on the progress of his child pornography trial.

That's because "entertainment" is a category of focus that does double duty. The first is "arts" review and discussion for genres too low-brow to interest the artsy-fartsies (mainly television, gaming, and social networking celebrities). The second is news about the personalities that make the "arts and entertainment" happen: not just artists and producers, but also high-profile hangers-on. Not just Brit-brit's custody battle, but also Adnan's stabbing drama.

So entertainment coverage is actually a public battle between publicists and paparazzi for control of celebrity stories. Which is to say, celebrity coverage is itself an art form: storytelling using real lives as material.

So, who gets to tell the story? And what story are they telling?

Well, thanks to the power of the internet, who cares who's telling it, because I'm spinning it. And let me take this opportunity to declare myself beyond caring about "high" and "low" art. Poot. (public and private, as far as celebrities are concerned, are inextricably mashed up, at least for now. We'll check in on that issue again, though, believe me.)

I want to talk about TV and YouTube and World of Warcraft as if they were high art. Let me dish dirt about MoMA's latest show stoppers or which National Book Critics Circle Award winner is having an affair. Let me engage your minds and intellects on behalf of Brit-brit and Kelly ... and Flav, and Clay, and Ashley Alexandra Dupre. Let me bring you whatever the hell we can find that is artistic and entertaining and trashy and true.

Welcome to EnterBrainment.