Without
exception, and no matter where in the world, human beings
love their entertainment. So much so that an imprudent percentage
of the world's disposable income is set aside, and much of
it on credit for it. Casinos, sporting events, the arts and
computer games generate billions of dollars in revenues because
we crave being entertained. Never before in the history of
the planet has so much entertainment been available, much
of it accessible with a simple mouse click or verbal command.
"No
man is a hypocrite in his pleasures," observes Samuel
Johnson. He also acerbically notes that "Almost every
man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities
which he does not possess." In our public life, we profess
to admire the great achievements in the arts -- classical
music, ballet, Renaissance art and architecture, theatre,
literature -- but if you want to know what we really love
follow the money trail, or, as it has been said, you don't
know a person until you know what he wants. La
Scala, one of the world's most famous opera houses, has a
seating capacity of 3,000; Barcelona's Camp Nou soccer stadium
holds 99,000.
We
note with relish, marinated in revenge, that when it comes
to shaping our entertainment preferences, even the most sophisticated
marketing strategy will fall on deaf ears. To wit: no quantity
or quality of persuasion will convince me to abandon the 'beautiful
game' (soccer) for hockey, football or baseball: in the latter,
in a typical three and half hour contest, the ball is in play
(strikes and balls, grounders and fly balls) for no more than
2-minutes and 40-seconds.
Theodore Dalrymple, in the New English Review, writes:
"sport is thus more important than any other field of
human activity, at least in the West, where such minor matters
as the membership of university faculties, entry to professions
such as law and medicine, and directorships of public companies
are now to be allocated by demographic weight. The conclusion
is clear: Sport is the most important, or (what amounts to
the same thing) considered the most important, pursuit of
human existence."
Despite
its continuously mutating form and content, is it possible
to identify a common thread or common denominator that accounts
for our seemingly insatiable fascination and appetite for
entertainment, bearing in mind that whatever our preference
(hockey game, Drake concert, Minefield), the highlight of
our day will be the hours allocated to it. What does entertainment
supply that our quotidian cannot?
The short answer is distraction, diversion: from our worries,
boredom, and the non-stop mental activity over which we have
very little control. Taking liberties with Cormac McCarthy:
There are indeed strange affinities between entertainment
and meditation.
Entertainment,
universally prized for its pharmaceutical properties, is the
means by which we access alternative worlds and their very
particularized, and cherished, time and space grids. It is
a world that is explicitly founded on the deliberate obliteration
of past and future. The more intense the diversion (Pinball,
heavyweight championship boxing) the more effective the obliteration.
As
a universal balm the mind can't refuse, all entertainment
is an homage to “now” time. It is the non-denominational
temple where the world goes to worship. Unlike many of the
major religions, there is no crisis of dwindling membership.
The average consumer in 2019 spent 4.5
hours/day on digital entertainment.
No
surprise, the entertainment coffers of the world are awash
in cash and clientele, and the very best of the entertainers
(Woods, Beyonce, Seinfeld, Ronaldo) are near billionaires.
The
promise of entertainment (and it always lives up to its billing)
is that it magically focuses the mind on whatever it is that
is unfolding in the pure present. The first effects of this
are the temporary staying of self-consciousness and putting
the animal brain in the driver’s seat. Entertainment
appeals to raw instinct, to human nature, to the simple binaries
of life: someone wins, someone loses; the slot machine spits
out money or it doesn't. Entertainment temporarily washes
out the multitudinous messy gray areas of life.
The
sheer delight and excitement offered by entertainment throw
into stark relief the mundane aspects of life that we all
negotiate: the daily commute, raising small children, preparing
the family meal, housecleaning, food shopping, car maintenance,
washing and ironing. And while the seriously moneyed are exempt
from all that constitutes the daily grind, they crave the
escape of entertainment no less than anybody when they rudely
discover that meaning and purpose in life cannot be purchased.
There was a time when early man, for whom getting from one
day to the next was the only game that mattered, didn't require
entertainment. But over time, coeval with the discovery of
agriculture, he learned how to secure surpluses beyond his
daily needs and, for the first time in history, finding himself
with an excess of time, began to create primitive forms of
entertainment as a firewall against boredom and prolonged
inactivity. He began decorating his tools and utensils and
living quarters with cave art. He discovered that certain
surfaces, like shells, gourds, lent themselves to percussion
sounds, and that the human body could be used as a canvas
for art or channelled into dance. In an attempt to make sense
of all the unknowns of his world, the cause of thunder and
lightening, natural disasters, disease, man turned to story-telling
in the form of myths. As the religious impulse developed,
ritual and ceremony took on greater importance. These developments
represent man's growing need of entertainment, whose appreciation
was often facilitated by the consumption of alcohol which
in turn facilitated the shrinking of time to the present.
As man's hunger for entertainment increased, the need was
supplied by a growing number of full-time entertainment specialists:
musicians, artists, actors and dancers who would bring their
product to neighbouring villages and towns. Closer to the
present, in order to accommodate mega-events for a rising
middle class, architects were enlisted to design specialized
venues like colosseums, opera houses and sports stadiums.
The
difference between traditional and modern entertainment is
the role of the user. There was a time when if we wanted to
listen to music we had to produce it. That is no longer the
case. As a consequence, there are fewer musicians per capita
today than in the past, and significantly more passive users.
Since most people, lacking either the will or skill, are unable
to provide their own entertainment, they have to pay for it,
which they do to the tune of 99 billion dollars annually,
globally. We now live in a world wired to entertainment, which,
in the current century, has become a defining feature of global
culture.
As
one of the most satisfying forms of entertainment, team sports
allows us to express much of what is now regarded as politically
incorrect: patriotism, intolerance and xenophobia. The thrill
of team sports is not so much the game in and of itself, but
the feeling of being let out o jail -- of extricating ourselves
from the straight jacket of civilization, its suffocating
protocols and rules of conduct. In the sports arena, we can
yell at, boo, insult an opposing player or team with impunity.
At a boxing event, we cheer the drawing of blood, the near
death of the fighter; and in the bullrings of Spain and Mexico,
the death of the bull.
For
those rare persons who are content with their intellectual
and leisure life, for whom vocation and avocation are one
and the same, entertainment's pre-packeaged, ready-made forms
may hold little interest. That we don't single out, much less
admire these exceptional beings for their accomplishments
and self-sufficiency speaks to our disposition to confuse
entertainment with purpose in life, a development frowned
on by philosophy but embraced by those for whom turning a
profit is a life-long form of entertainment.
As
we critically examine the mind-set of Homo sapiens at this
juncture of his evolution (thankfully a work in progress),
we must not only acknowledge his triumphs in the sciences
and humanities, but the fact that on our watch the phenomenon
of entertainment has become the dominant form of global culture,
a development that should give us pause as we look to the
future.
Our
world-wide obsession with sports and gambling is the species
confession that, when it comes to choosing between high and
low entertainment, between the edifying (Bach) and the primordial
(Ali versus Fraser), the latter -- proxy for human nature
-- will aways win the day.
COMMENTS
pconti369@gmail.com
Very insightful piece - has made me reflect on the the
entertainment society that we have built and become prisoners
of.
