From "Psychopathic Characters on the Stage," Freud profiles the spectator, theater goer, and their relationship to theatrical performance, stage dramas and comedies. But I'd suggest also trying as a little thought experiment substituting readers and writers, pop fans and pop stars, or music fans and music makers, or movie fans and film makers. Blowing off steam "in every direction," concludes Freud, "in the various grand scenes that form part of the life represented on the stage" is as concise an encapsulation of the popular arts in the 20th century as I've come across and Freud wrote these words in 1905. Just add books, movies, TV, radio music and sports and, notice, how in the final twist here the spectator is transformed or disappears into the artist:
The spectator is a person who experiences too little, who feels that he is a 'poor wretch to whom nothing of importance can happen', who has long been obliged to damp down, or rather displace, his ambition to stand in his own person at the hub of world affairs; he longs to feel and to act and to arrange things according to his desires-- in short, to be a hero. And the playwright and actor enable him to do this by allowing him to identify himself with a hero. They spare him something, too. For the spectator knows quite well that actual heroic conduct such as this would be impossible for him without pains and sufferings and acute fears, which would almost cancel out the enjoyment. He knows, moreover, that he only has one life and that he might perhaps perish even in a single such struggle against adversity. Accordingly, his enjoyment is based on an illusion; that is to say, his suffering is mitigated by the certainty that, firstly, it is someone other than himself who is acting and suffering on stage, and, secondly, that after all it is only a game, which can threaten no damage to his personal security. In these circumstances he can allow himself to enjoy being a 'great man', to give way without a qualm to such suppressed impulses as a craving for freedom in religious, political, social and sexual matters, and to 'blow off steam' in every direction in the various grand scenes that form part of the life represented on the stage.