Afterword

So, what is this thing called entertainment? How is it related to mass media? And why

might this relationship be relevant to scholarship on contemporary Indonesia? Each

of the four articles contained in this special issue implies a partial answer to these

questions. In this brief afterword, I wish to pull at a few of the critical threads that

both hold these articles together and suggest the possibility of their unraveling. Far

from undercutting the importance of the arguments presented by our authors, I

propose that this potential for unraveling*or, to switch metaphors, for unsettling the philosophical foundations on which they are based*implies both their originality as well as the radicality of their implications for future research on

mass media in general, and on Indonesian entertainment media in particular.