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Kelly Boggs shows in her article „Our unhealthy obsession with entertainment“ that the Americans, particularly the younger generation, has become a slave of the irresistible force of the growing entertainment.
In the last two decades the entertainment branche has experienced a massive boom according to technology, popularity and availability. Consequently, it has spread all over America. Entertainment uses people’s desire of satisfying their needs shamelessly to force them to consume and suck up everything which has at least a minimum of entertaining potential.
Kelly Boggs minds two examples: first sports and second the church. The spirit of sports and the belief in god have become unimportant to the people. The issue is not important anymore. People do not longer care about a thing itself. They neither want watching sports nor going to church and simply believe – they are just looking for something that satisfies their addiction to entertainment. With the time, people lose their capability of thinking rationally and critically thus they let their mind get led by the superficial entertainment where is no place for deeper thoughts and critical questions. Finally, people become egoistic individuals. Everyone is focussing and emphasizing on his own pleasure and does not care about the people’s feelings around him. They only live for the moment, here and now, the present without perspective and a fulfilled past.
All in all there are similarities between the facts given by the article and the society in “Fahrenheit 451”. Though, the society described in the book has much more a hyperbolic character. In the book the development, practically the way, of the existing system is foreshadowed. People do not want to ask questions, think critically and use their minds. Instead they want to be happy, equal, so nobody plays the role of a minority, and they want to be free of sorrow and responsibility. I think that these reasons exist in our current system. Kelly Boggs has written basically the same. Though, we still have the chance to make up our mind and realize that we are on the best way to become such a dumb and narrow-minded society and do something against it.
Mildred is the best example (for?) a person which is in the final stage of the article’s issues and problems. She is sucking up everything from the TV and her Seashell ear-thimbles. She has neither eyes nor ears for the happenings around her. She has become an egoistic individual, just interested in herself. That is exactly what Kelly Boggs describes as the conclusion and consequence of all the entertainment addiction. It leads to a development where people have no moral, tradition and values. They would do anything to fill the deep and dark hole inside their soul with amusement. In the book, teenager even try to kill people with their cars to feel something like pleasure. Actually, people turn into soulless monsters without the capability of a human being to think rationally and have a moral.