ABSTRACT
Using four vignettes as a device to discuss ethical issues in art and entertainment, we can identify enduring issues such as appropriation, transnational flows, race and gender, and the profit motive. This chapter explores ethics in entertainment as they apply across the media studies spectrum: Political economy, audience, content, and effects. Furthermore, the transnational dimension of art and entertainment has concerned philosophers for centuries and media theories since the eighties. Given the contemporary global situation wherein neoliberalism, with its drive for privatization and commoditization go nearly unchecked, art and entertainment as profitable components of a globally produced and circulating media circuit of culture have to be analyzed in terms of ethics and be subject to some form of ethical standards. The problem, of course lies in the tension for some form of global ethical standard, or protonorm, and the need to pay attention to cultural differences and sensibilities.
