ETS and the Entertainment Business

From Corposcindosis

by songboy1234

Every businessman must understand what business he is really in. In the early 20th century, the giant railroads made the mistake of thinking they were in the railroad business, when they were actually in the transportation business. It turned out that their customers didn’t really care how their goods got from point a to point b, so long as they got there. Blindsided by the new upstart trucking industry, the railroads lost most of their market.

It might appear that the entertainment industry is in the business of producing movies, TV shows, and music. In reality, these are just the media through which the product is transmitted. The real product being sold is - feelings. The reason customers are willing to pay for entertainment is that it engenders emotions. When an entertainment customer judges that a certain work, say a song, is “not good”, the customer is making that judgment based on it having failed to stimulate the emotions, the way other “good songs” had stimulated them in the past.

The entertainment industry is based upon, and could not exist but for, the fact that human beings derive pleasure from changes in body function triggered by emotion. The messages for these body state changes are, for the most part, delivered by the sympathetic nervous system.

I refer to changes such as an increase in heart rate, goose bumps, and tears. Human emotion is complex to put it mildly, and still only partly understood. But thanks to the research of Dr. Critchley and others, we’re gaining an understanding of the crucial role played by the autonomic nervous system in the ongoing experience of emotion.

You Can't Buy That A short video on the importance of goose bumps in the enjoyment and passion of music. Featuring Jennifer Lopez and Jon Bon Jovi as they mentor contestants on American Idol.

Let us take the example of the emotion known as “thrill”. First, some external stimulus occurs, such as watching and listening to an exciting movie. The conscious mind has already decided this is a safe thing to do, but the autonomic control center, a more primitive part of the brain is not convinced. Being evolutionarily conditioned to fear falling, being chased, threatened, etc.; the fight-or-flight response is initiated. Heart rate increases. Pupils are dilated. Hairs stand up. This peculiar combination of feeling safe and afraid at the same time brings on a unique pleasure response, along with accompanying changes in brain chemistry.

Notice that all of these physical changes are brought on by the sympathetic nervous system. We could do a similar breakdown of emotions like “passion”, “fear”, or “falling in love”. All these are accompanied by characteristic body-state changes, all associated with the sympathetic nervous system. To everyone in the entertainment industry, I say: Whether you know it or not, you are in the sympathetic nervous system-tweaking business.

There is compelling reason to suspect that ETS surgery would diminish the enjoyment of entertainment, and human emotion in general. In fact, there is no reason to suspect that it would not.