Administered play only shifts duty onto prescribed models

Evidence

Its bestial seriousness consists in the fact that instead of remaining faithful to the dream of freedom by getting away from purposiveness, the treatment of play as a duty puts it among useful purposes and thereby wipes out the trace of freedom in it. This is particularly valid for contemporary mass music. It is only play as a repetition of prescribed models, and the playful release from responsibility which is thereby achieved does not reduce at all the time devoted to duty except by transferring the responsibility to the models, the following of which one makes into a duty for himself. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 104

Categorization

• DEFINE: Operationalizes ‘administered free time’: play-as-duty that relocates responsibility to the model instead of abolishing it.
• XREF: Connects to the ‘free time is administered continuation of work’ thesis in the reader’s stated purpose; also pairs with the ideas-extinct-less chapter on ritual discipline. — connects to: A rule only counts when enforced in practice — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 54