This is a silly question, of course it can.

What, you’ve never enjoyed a movie or a tv show?

You’ve never had a bad day, and then watched something that made you laugh despite it?

If this is the case, I suggest consuming different media, because what you’re watching must not be doing it. Do you want recommendations?

Throughout all of history people use story and song to transport the mind to other places, to make real what isn’t.

Entertainment needs escapism like bread needs butter.

Yes because you forget when you Fokus.

I think it’s not just possible, but easy, because entertainment cannot grant some true, genuine escape in the first place, so we understand mere distraction by it, of varying degree. Actually escaping the society would mean taking some real action, like packing your stuff (if that) and leaving for the woods or some other remote location where it’s you and the wilderness. Sitting in an building likely surrounded by other buildings, most likely connected to the sprawling electrical grid to power the actually hi-tech devices required to enjoy the entertainment that is very likely streamed to you in real time, produced in an actually hi-tech environment by other members of society, all dressed in some industry-produced PJs or something, enjoying something ultra-processed or even delivered to you after a couple of clicks over virtual buttons on your pocket super-computer that you swap for a new one at most every few years - that is pretty far from escaping society.

But you can take your mind off of it for a while.

For example, if I’m tired of all the AI and wars and right-wing aging people taking power, but play something like No Man’s Sky, flying around in space and digging some stuff and building my ships and as of recently decorating my space stations, I occupy my mind and let it cling to something else, often managing to mute the thoughts filling me with dread, even for a couple dozen minutes.

Something less peaceful surprisingly can serve purpose, too, by similarly hijacking my attention and though process and causing my nervous system to respond to different things: like watching Mad Max: Fury Road, which is pretty far from anything calm or soothing, especially when you take its lore into account, but watching it, I can almost guarantee I’ll be glued to the screen, following the action, feeling all sorts of things for the characters, thinking things of them and their actions, and actually feeling good by the end of it, almost cathartic because I’ve been emotionally shaken and stirred similarly to an amusement ride.

And surprisingly still, anything that is filled with hope and faith in humanity almost always makes me feel worse, because it actually reminds me more of the issues that are being ignored or mismanaged or even exacerbated. I remember reading Project Hail Mary and feeling heartbroken and desperate over some of the events that seemed so unrealistic and far from the reality already seen during the 2020s disasters, because I just knew that the kind of response depicted would be too big of an ask.

Escapism is just distracting yourself from life and worries, so yes, it can. I can read a book or listen to a song and become untethered from this world and part of a new one that only exists for me.

Tell that to my box of coconut cookies, my belly and The Office.