Escapism is a diversion of the mind into entertainment or imag- inative activity to escape from routines or reality. In this study, the researchers focused on how escapism impacts individuals while playing video games. The research goal was to find out what affective outcomes of the individuals that used gaming to escape from reality but also explored if the pandemic could have any impact on it since the study was conducted during a pandemic. The results show that recovery was the main form of escapism in non-harmful escapism and coping in harmful es- capism among the 7 participants. The pandemic did also have an impact on the respondents, and most of them thought es- capism had a positive affective outcome.

When Peter Jackson sought to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to film, many fans worried about the changes that could be made to such a beloved story. Though the response to the films was generally positive, all three movies did have their detractors. Many of the complaints centered on his badly adapting the source material, specifically the characters. When Jackson released The Two Towers, fans were outraged further by how Jackson had handled Faramir. However, these interpretations of The Lord of the Rings and Faramir are a narrow evaluation of the larger problem facing fan and scholarly communities, that being, the devaluation of Escapism and what Tolkien calls, “escapist texts,” in today’s society. Tolkien claims that the main purpose of escapist texts is that they allow audiences to recover previous experiences that gave them feelings of happiness or joy. Despite criticism of Escapism, escapists texts don’t urge people to abandon their lives and seek something else. Rather, escapist texts encourage audiences to identify with and empathize with the characters represented in these texts, in order to return to their lives and accept responsibility for and connection with other people. When audiences see The Lord of the Rings and Faramir (whether in book form or in film form), they identify and connect with these stories and characters and seek responsibility in their own lives, which brings them, and those around them, hope.

This essay discusses the effects of mass culture on the Loman family in Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman. The focus is to identify whether conformation to mass culture and alienation have caused the characters to be lonely and to give up what they enjoy and to fall in line with a system where individuality is replaced by totality. The theoretical framework used is the Frankfurt School’s critical theory which further developed Karl Marx’s socialist economic theory by putting an emphasis on the role of media and culture. The Frankfurt School critical theory purports that people in a mass culture society are estranged from themselves and others as large corporations and machines eradicate individual skills. Consumerism and meaningless media control and keep fatigued workers happy in their leisure time and thus distract them from starting a revolution. Advertising and entertainment create heroes to be revered which leads to a society where people strive for success, but this also results in competition and further estrangement. The conclusion is that the behaviour of the Loman family members is a result of conforming to the expectations of a mass culture society. Willy and Biff fail in their professional fields as they are not engaged in the manual work they are qualified for and that would fulfil their true needs. The constant effort to live up to expectations leads to immoralities, lies, contradictions, and loneliness. A false consciousness conveyed through media has indoctrinated a belief that someone who is not successful should be excluded from society. Willy’s escape after his own and his sons’ failures is suicide.

History welcomed the screwball comedy genre in 1934, a time where cinema was in urgent need of providing escapism to audiences victim of the Great Depression. Screwball films, therefore, chose to underline the distinction between social classes and to emphasise on the imperfections of the upper class. The following thesis aims to determine how Depression screwballs (screwball comedies released from 1934 to 1938) used their narrative power to establish this distinction between opposed social classes and how this reflects the undeniable importance of an overlooked genre. It is with a socio-historical approach, personal analyses and observations, that the following research has been conducted. In conclusion, it has been recognised that the genre drew its importance, not only in the way it represents social classes but also how it depicts their mutual interactions, therefore forming a significant whole.

No description available.

Everyone participates in escape. The drive to escape is something we are born with. It is a force that has ties to our curiosity, as well as our profound psychological restlessness, and can even be seen in our displeasure with boredom. This thesis introduces three forms of escape: pure diversions, games, and play. Focussing on a play-based escape, this thesis argues that this is the most important form of escape, because, through play, we promote our cognitive health and creativity. This thesis develops three lines of investigation: first an understanding of what play is; second, through understanding the conditions, context, and disposition necessary in order to engage in a play-based escape; and third, a study of play through the review of architectural case studies. It is through these investigations that this thesis will identify ten key strategies that architecturally accommodate play. These are: nature, complexity, dynamic, loose-parts theory, scale, the primitive, along a path, mystery, risk, and unmonitored feel. In order to develop a method of design which engenders an architectural atmosphere of play-based escape these characteristics are organized into three interconnected themes: a desire to explore the world around us, a desire for a dynamic stimulating environment, and the desire to be active and move our bodies. Finally, an architectural application of the design method concludes this thesis, with hopes to activate a play-based escape capable of awakening our creativity.

Everyone participates in escape. The drive to escape is something we are born with. It is a force that has ties to our curiosity, as well as our profound psychological restlessness, and can even be seen in our displeasure with boredom. This thesis introduces three forms of escape: pure diversions, games, and play. Focussing on a play-based escape, this thesis argues that this is the most important form of escape, because, through play, we promote our cognitive health and creativity. This thesis develops three lines of investigation: first an understanding of what play is; second, through understanding the conditions, context, and disposition necessary in order to engage in a play-based escape; and third, a study of play through the review of architectural case studies. It is through these investigations that this thesis will identify ten key strategies that architecturally accommodate play. These are: nature, complexity, dynamic, loose-parts theory, scale, the primitive, along a path, mystery, risk, and unmonitored feel. In order to develop a method of design which engenders an architectural atmosphere of play-based escape these characteristics are organized into three interconnected themes: a desire to explore the world around us, a desire for a dynamic stimulating environment, and the desire to be active and move our bodies. Finally, an architectural application of the design method concludes this thesis, with hopes to activate a play-based escape capable of awakening our creativity.

Diploma thesis "Media as an Agent of National Self-Confidence: Analysis of the Victory of the Czechoslovak Ice Hockey Players at the 1947 World Championship" deals with the reflection of the major sport event in the Czechoslovak media and how this reflection inspired the audience. The goal of this diploma thesis is to describe the dependance between the media coverage and the national self-confidence, which results from the national identity. Therefore, I focused on the chosen newspaper titles to analyze the content they produced during the 1947 Ice Hockey World Championship. I defined a hypothesis, based on observation and scholarly literature, that the media used the coverage to strengthen the national self-confidence and redefine the national identity. My second hypothesis was the idea, that this kind of coverage led to an active response among the audience. Before I started analyzing the three chosen titles (Lidova demokracie, Rude Pravo, Prace), I delivered complex structure of theoretical concepts, describing the influence media have towards the audience and also reasons why the members of the audience use media in their everyday life. I also focused on the historical and political context, as well as the media landscape that shaped the content of that time. I conducted the analysis and...

No description available.

This thesis compares and contrats the abnormal escapism of characters created by Eugene O'Neill, Henrich Ibsen, and Thomas Hardy.