The act of entertaining, a pleasure or amusement.
According to Oliver and Barstsch (2010), entertaiment is understood objectively; encompasses communication between text and audience; includes external stimulus; offers pleasure; requires an audience to exist and is a form of consumer activity.
Many stories can entertain, for example the story of Scheherazade – part of the Persian professional storytelling tradition about a woman who keeps her husband alive by telling her endless stories – inspired composers Rimsky-Korsakov, Ravel and Szymanowski to create orchestral works; director Pasolini made a film version; and a video game was also created. The brain was evolved to react deeply to stories like these, which often hit the points that people care about such as social backstabbing and murders.