art and entertainment essay

Essay on Entertainment

Students are often asked to write an essay on Entertainment in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Entertainment

What is entertainment.

Entertainment is an activity that provides joy and amusement. It includes various forms like music, movies, sports, and games. It’s a way to relax and escape from daily stress.

Types of Entertainment

There are many types of entertainment. Movies and TV shows entertain us visually. Music provides auditory entertainment. Sports and games engage us physically and mentally.

The Importance of Entertainment

Entertainment is important as it brings happiness, reduces stress, and helps us learn new things. It also strengthens bonds when shared with family and friends.

Entertainment and Technology

Technology has transformed entertainment. Now, we can enjoy movies, music, and games on our devices, making entertainment more accessible and diverse.

250 Words Essay on Entertainment

Introduction.

Entertainment, a ubiquitous aspect of human life, serves as a powerful tool for relaxation, education, and social interaction. It is the medium through which we escape the mundanity of everyday life, immerse ourselves in different worlds, and experience a wide spectrum of emotions.

The Evolution of Entertainment

Historically, entertainment was limited to live performances, such as theater, music, and dance. The advent of technology has dramatically transformed this landscape. Today, we can access a plethora of entertainment forms, from movies and music to video games and virtual reality, all at our fingertips.

The Psychological Impact of Entertainment

Entertainment plays a vital role in our psychological well-being. It helps reduce stress, provides a means for self-expression, and fosters creativity. Moreover, it can influence our attitudes and perceptions, making it a potent tool for social change.

Entertainment and Society

Entertainment also serves as a reflection of society. It can both shape and be shaped by cultural, political, and social contexts. Entertainment mediums like films, books, and music often mirror societal issues, providing a platform for discourse and potential change.

In conclusion, entertainment is more than just a means of amusement. It is a dynamic construct that has evolved with time, impacting our psychological health and societal structures. As we continue to explore new forms of entertainment in the digital age, we must also consider its profound influence on our lives.

500 Words Essay on Entertainment

Traditional forms of entertainment.

Historically, entertainment was largely communal. People gathered in public spaces for theatrical performances, sport events, and musical concerts. These activities not only provided amusement but also served as an important medium for social interaction and cultural exchange. Literature, too, was a significant source of entertainment, with epic poems, novels, and short stories capturing the imagination of readers and transporting them to different worlds.

The Impact of Technology on Entertainment

The advent of technology revolutionized the entertainment industry. The invention of the printing press democratized access to literature, making books affordable and widely available. The emergence of radio and television brought entertainment into the domestic sphere, allowing individuals to enjoy music, news, and shows from the comfort of their homes. Furthermore, the rise of the internet and digital platforms has drastically changed the way we consume entertainment. Streaming services like Netflix and Spotify offer a plethora of choices at our fingertips, while social media platforms provide a stage for user-generated content.

The Future of Entertainment

The role of entertainment in society.

Entertainment plays a crucial role in society. It provides a much-needed break from the mundane, offering an escape into realms of fantasy and adventure. It fosters creativity and imagination, provoking thought and inspiring ideas. Moreover, entertainment has the power to influence societal norms and values. Movies, TV shows, and music often reflect and comment on societal issues, shaping public opinion and driving social change.

Entertainment and Mental Health

In today’s fast-paced world, entertainment also serves as a stress-buster. Engaging in leisure activities, be it watching a movie, reading a book, or playing a video game, can have therapeutic effects, reducing anxiety and improving mood. Research has shown that entertainment can contribute to mental wellbeing, underscoring its importance in our lives.

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Home Essay Samples

Essay Samples on Art

While it may seem easy to compose essays about art, it’s not really so because you have to offer background information in your introduction part and explain why some exhibition or a school of thought is important. This should go to your first paragraph because your purpose is to inspire your readers and provide enough background information. When you already have a prompt that must be followed, determine what kind of essay must be written. It can be a descriptive essay, which is great for a description of the works of art or photography. Some other cases may require working with an explanatory tone where you have to explain why an artist has chosen certain palettes or what has been an inspiration. See various free art essay examples below for inspiration. It also helps to learn how to structure your writing and implement quotes or footnotes that are used to highlight the images. Remember to focus on the ways how to cite images and multimedia elements, depending on the chosen style. Your writing should address every image that you have by checking twice with the grading rubric to ensure that you use the sources that may have already been specified.

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Free Media & Entertainment Essay: Prompts, Ideas, and Samples

Can you imagine your life without entertainment? No TV, no video games, no opera, or even newspapers. We could say that leisure has become an integral part of our lives. This and other related ideas can be an engaging issue to explore in the paragraphs of an entertainment essay.

What is the best way to define entertainment?

In essence, it is any kind of activity that brings pleasure and delight. It can be a task, an idea, an event, or anything that brings out positive emotions in people. Nowadays, it has become its own industry, with entertainment news, media, and articles becoming more and more widespread.

If you read entertainment articles, topics for your essay won’t be a problem to find. However, we want to broaden your horizons and offer you an even wider selection. Here, our team has gathered the best entertainment essay topics and writing prompts. Also, you can find free samples below. So, get inspired and compose your outstanding entertainment essay.

Need to write an entertainment essay but have no idea what to start with? Feeling overwhelmed, confused, or lost? Take a look at our prompts!

See some ideas and entertainment writing examples below:

• The role of leisure in our lives.

It is a general topic that can cover a wide range of issues. Just create a simple outline to organize all your ideas. Explain why entertainment is vital for numerous people, if not everyone. How did it happen? Develop each argument and back up your opinion with supporting evidence.

• Modern entertainment vs. entertainment in the past.

Write a comparison and contrast essay on how entertainment has been changing throughout time. Explore the role of technology in the development of the entertainment industry. How do you think leisure activities will look like in 10 years?

• Sports as entertainment : advantages and disadvantages essay.

Explore the theme of sport as the type of entertainment. Can professional athleticism be considered leisure? What are the benefits of doing sports in your free time? What are some drawbacks?

• Entertainment and media in modern days.

Investigate the role of social media in modern society. Compare and contrast different social media networks. For example, consider TikTok vs. Instagram, Twitter vs. Facebook, etc. Also, you can discuss the issue of social media addiction.

• Can entertainment bring money?

How do you think, when a hobby turns into a job, can it be considered entertainment? Can you receive the same pleasure from your hobby when it’s your source of income? In your opinion, is it good when a hobby becomes your job?

• What brings me pleasure and inspiration.

Tell your readers about your hobby. Using descriptive writing techniques, convey your feelings and emotions in words. Why do you like this activity? Does it bring you pleasure, inspiration, help you relax? Write a memorable introduction and a powerful conclusion to make your essay more impressive.

• Why does quality family entertainment play an essential role in creating a positive environment at home?

Investigate the importance of having common hobbies. How can leisure and entertainment strengthen familial bonds? Offer some tips on how to find common hobbies for all the family members.

In this section, we’ve gathered the most effective entertainment essay topics to write about. For more ideas, you can try our title generator .

Try to discuss the following topics:

• Zoos should be banned because animals used for entertainment suffer a lot.
• Video games as a kind of entertainment: pros and cons.
• Violence on television and its impact on children.
• The influence of music on people’s mental health.
• Online entertainment vs. regular activities: is a virtual world more interesting than the real world?
• The most appropriate entertaining activities for students.
• Censorship in reality TV shows.
• Art and entertainment: how to take maximum advantage from visiting art galleries?
• Should entertainment for children carry out a value?
• Reading is the best free time activity: your favorite book, its summary, and analysis.
• The role of the Internet in the development of the entertainment industry.
• Can shopping be considered a form of entertainment?
• The significance of parents’ control over children’s leisure time.
• How to make entertainment meaningful?
• Gambling as an addictive form of entertainment and how to overcome this addiction.
• How do TV series form our personalities?
• The most unusual entertainments in the 21st century.
• Extreme sports: are emotions worth the danger?
• The control of news and information flow on social media: do we have freedom of speech?

Thank you for reading our article! We hope that our prompts and ideas were useful. Check the entertainment essay example below, and good luck with your assignment.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Theater and amphitheater in the roman world.

Bronze grotesque

Bronze statuette of a draped man

Glass gladiator cup

Terracotta oil lamp

Carnelian intaglio of a gladiator fighting a lion

Terracotta statuette of a gladiator

Glass fragmentary beaker with painted decoration

Laura S. Klar Department of Greek and Roman Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2006

Spectacle was an integral part of life in the Roman world. Some forms of spectacle—triumphal processions, aristocratic funerals, and public banquets, for example—took as their backdrop the city itself. Others were held in purpose-built spectator buildings: theaters for plays and other scenic entertainment, amphitheaters for gladiatorial combats and wild beast shows, stadia for athletic competitions , and circuses for chariot races ( 59.11.14 ). As a whole, this pervasive culture of spectacle served both as a vehicle for self-advertisement by the sociopolitical elite and as a means of reinforcing the shared values and institutions of the entire community.

Theater in the Roman World According to the ancient historian Livy, the earliest theatrical activity at Rome took the form of dances with musical accompaniment, introduced to the city by the Etruscans in 364 B.C. The literary record also indicates that Atellanae, a form of native Italic farce (much like the phlyakes [ 24.97.104 ] of southern Italy), were performed at Rome by a relatively early date. In 240 B.C. , full-length, scripted plays were introduced to Rome by the playwright Livius Andronicus, a native of the Greek city of Tarentum in southern Italy. The earliest Latin plays to have survived intact are the comedies of Plautus (active ca. 205–184 B.C. ), which were principally adaptations of Greek New Comedy . Latin tragedy also flourished during the second century B.C. While some examples of the genre treated stories from Greek myth, others were concerned with famous episodes from Roman history . After the second century B.C. , the composition of both tragedy and comedy declined precipitously at Rome. During the imperial period , the most popular forms of theatrical entertainment were mime (ribald comic productions with sensational plots and sexual innuendo) and pantomime (performances by solo dancers with choral accompaniment, usually re-creating tragic myths).

The principal occasions for dramatic spectacles in the Roman world were yearly religious festivals, or ludi , organized by elected magistrates and funded from the state treasury. Temple dedications, military triumphs, and aristocratic funerals also provided opportunities for scenic performances. Until 55 B.C. , there was no permanent theater in the city of Rome, and plays were staged in temporary, wooden structures, intended to stand for a few weeks at most. The ancient sources concur that the delay in constructing a permanent theater was due to active senatorial opposition, although the possible reasons for this resistance (concern for Roman morality, fear of popular sedition, competition among the elite) remain a subject of debate. Literary accounts of temporary theaters indicate that they could be quite elaborate. The best documented is a theater erected by the magistrate M. Aemilius Scaurus in 58 B.C. , which Pliny reports to have had a stage-building comprised of three stories of columns and ornamented with 3,000 bronze statues.

The first permanent theater in the city of Rome was the Theater of Pompey, dedicated in 55 B.C. by Julius Caesar’s rival, Pompey the Great. The theater, of which only the foundations are preserved, was an enormous structure, rising to approximately 45 meters and capable of holding up to 20,000 spectators. At the rear of the stage-building was a large, colonnaded portico, which housed artworks and gardens. Constructed in the wake of Pompey’s spectacular military campaigns of the 60s B.C. , the theater functioned in large part as a victory monument. The cavea (seating area) was crowned by a temple to Venus Victrix, Pompey’s patron deity, and the theater was decorated with statues of the goddess Victory and personifications of the nations that Pompey had subdued in battle.

Pompey’s dedication effectively canonized the form of the Roman theater, providing a prototype that would be replicated across the empire for nearly three centuries. This new building type differed in striking ways from the traditional Greek theater . The latter consisted of two separate structures: a horseshoe-shaped seating area and a freestanding stage-building. The Roman theater, in contrast, was a fully enclosed edifice, unroofed but often covered with awnings on performance days. The seating area in the Greek theater was supported against a natural hillside, whereas the Roman theater was carried at least in part on concrete vaults, which provided access from the exterior of the building to the cavea. In the Hellenistic world , the stage-building was a relatively low structure, ornamented with painted panels but rarely with large-scale sculpture. The Roman theater, on the other hand, was characterized by a tall, wide scaenae frons (stage-front) with multiple stories, articulated by freestanding columns and lavishly ornamented with statues of gods and heroes and portraits of the imperial family and local luminaries.

The architectural differences between the Roman theater and its Greek predecessor are not satisfactorily explained by functional factors such as optics, acoustics, or staging needs. Rather, Rome’s adaptation of the Greek theater seems to have been driven largely by social and political forces. The columnar scaenae frons , for example, may have developed to house statuary looted from Greece and Asia Minor by Roman generals and exhibited at triumphal games as evidence of their military prowess. The architecture of the Roman theater also signals Roman concern for social control and hierarchical display. In contrast to the Greek world, where seating in the theater was largely open, Roman audiences were rigorously segregated on the basis of class, gender, nationality, profession, and marital status. This is reflected in both the enclosed form of the Roman theater, which restricted access to the building, and the system of vaulted substructures, which facilitated the routing of spectators to the appropriate sector of seating.

Amphitheater in the Roman World In contrast to the Roman theater, which evolved from Greek models, the amphitheater had no architectural precedent in the Greek world. Likewise, the spectacles that took place in the amphitheater—gladiatorial combats and venationes (wild beast shows)—were Italic, not Greek, in origin. The earliest secure evidence for gladiatorial contests comes from the painted decoration of a fourth-century B.C. tomb at Paestum in southern Italy. Several ancient authors record that gladiatorial combat was introduced to Rome in 264 B.C. , on the occasion of munera (funeral games) in honor of an elite citizen named D. Iunius Brutus Pera. By the mid-first century B.C. , gladiatorial contests were staged not only at funerals, but also at state-sponsored festivals ( ludi ). Throughout the imperial period, they remained an important route to popular favor for emperors and provincial leaders. In 325 A.D. , Constantine (26.229) , the first Christian emperor, prohibited gladiatorial combat on the grounds that it was too bloodthirsty for peacetime. Literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence indicates, however, that gladiatorial games continued at least until the mid-fifth century A.D.

As in the case of theatrical entertainment, the earliest venues for gladiatorial games at Rome were temporary, wooden structures. As early as 218 B.C. , according to Livy, gladiatorial contests were staged in the elongated, open space of the Roman Forum, with wooden stands for spectators. These temporary structures probably provided the prototype for the monumental amphitheater, a building type characterized by an elliptical seating area enclosing a flat performance space. The first securely datable, stone amphitheater is the one at Pompeii, constructed in 80–70 B.C. Like most early amphitheaters, the Pompeian example has an austere, functional appearance, with the seats partially supported on earthen embankments.

The earliest stone amphitheater at Rome was constructed in 29 B.C. by T. Statilius Taurus, one of the most trusted generals of the emperor Augustus . This building burned down during the great fire of 64 A.D. and was replaced by the Colosseum (59.570.426) , dedicated by the emperor Titus in 80 A.D. and still one of Rome’s most prominent landmarks . Unlike earlier amphitheaters, the Colosseum featured elaborate basement amenities , including animal cages and mechanical elevators, as well as a complex system of vaulted, concrete substructures. The facade consisted of three stories of superimposed arcades flanked by engaged columns of the Tuscan, Ionic, and Corinthian orders. Representations of the building on ancient coins indicate that colossal statues of gods and heroes stood in the upper arcades. The inclusion of Greek columnar orders and copies of Greek statues may reflect a desire to promote the amphitheater, a uniquely Roman building type, to the same level in the architectural hierarchy as the theater, with its venerable Greek precedents.

In addition to gladiatorial contests, the amphitheater provided the venue for venationes, spectacles involving the slaughter of animals by trained hunters called venatores or bestiarii. Venationes were expensive to mount and hence served to advertise the wealth and generosity of the officials who sponsored them. The inclusion of exotic species (lions, panthers, rhinoceri, elephants, etc.) also demonstrated the vast reach of Roman dominion. A third type of spectacle that took place in the amphitheater was the public execution. Condemned criminals were slain by crucifixion, cremation, or attack by wild beasts, and were sometimes forced to reenact gruesome myths.

Klar, Laura S. “Theater and Amphitheater in the Roman World.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/tham/hd_tham.htm (October 2006)

Further Reading

Beacham, Richard C. The Roman Theatre and Its Audience . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Bieber, Margarete. The History of the Greek and Roman Theater . 2d ed., rev. and enl. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961.

Ciancio Rossetto, Paola, and Giuseppina Pisani Sartorio, eds. Teatri greci e romani: Alle origini del linguaggio rappresentato . 3 vols. Rome: Edizioni SEAT, 1994–96.

Frézouls, Edmond. "Aspects de l'histoire architecturale du théâtre romain." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt , vol. II.12.1, edited by Hildegard Temporini, pp. 343–441. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1982.

Golvin, Jean-Claude. L'amphithéâtre romain: Essai sur la théorisation de sa forme et de ses fonctions . 2 vols. Paris: Diffusion de Boccard, 1988.

Welch, Katherine E. The Roman Amphitheatre: From Its Origins to the Colosseum . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Wiedemann, Thomas. Emperors and Gladiators . London: Routledge, 1992.

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Party Question one particular 2 out of 2 points A passing de 2 is a move for _________. Selected Solution: two? Question 2 two out of two points _______________ are what link a single movement expression to another, allowing for a party to? ow smoothly coming from section to section. Picked Answer: Changes? Question three […]

Ebooks and literature These poems are both themed on love, sexual intercourse, romance and seduction. However , the attitudes towards their very own relationships and lovers will be completely contrary to. Andrew Marvell uses almost all forms of marketing both bad and positive to get her into bed with him. On the other hand John […]

Shows and occasions People have photography albums full pictures that capture the very best moments of their lives. Some of these moments indicate the passage of time, holidays, or memories they want to remember. The photographs that I possess represent the actions of the doj that are significant to me. Three events which may have […]

Shows and situations I’m so tired, both equally physically and mentally, although I gamble you, right now there aint nobody in the whole world who can, I mean who does help me. All of this because Now i’m black. Is the fact even fair? Is that possibly my fault? I’m only a man also, I’m […]

Books and literature Got anything been wrong, we need to certainly heard. (N) The Unknown Resident was written by Wystan Hugh Auden in 1939. Having been born in York, Great britain, in 1907 and passed away in Vienna in 1973. The title of the poem parodies a marbled monument that was dedicated intended for the […]

Displays and occasions In Mary Louise Pratt’s composition, “Arts of the Contact Region, ” we are introduced to the thought of contact specific zones, autoethnography, and new ways of looking at common ideas. I needed to see a few examples of what she really was talking about. After reading Ruben Edgar Wideman’s “Our Time” we […]

Reveals and occasions The use of the supernatural is very evident in the enjoy “Macbeth” by simply William Shakespeare. While readers, we could introduced to the world of the supernatural (which was widely thought to exist in Shakespeare’s time) in a number of methods. The nurses show Macbeth his fortune and rise his desire, which […]

Reveals and situations Carl Matheson, in his essay The Simpsons, Hyper-Irony, as well as the Meaning of Life suggests the solution that made The Simpsons the powerful comedy that it must be, lasting for nearly 18 years and heading strong. They have even replicated its success inside the big screen mainly because it opened for […]

Shows and events INTRODUCTION Yasunari Kawabata June (1899 –1972) was a Japanese copy writer whose was awarded the Nobel Award for Literary works in 1968 for his auxiliary, poetic and ingeniously colored type of writing. Not any Japanese writer had received the award prior to Kawabata. Besides fictional works he as well worked being a […]

Reveals and situations The author? s techniques in Rattler convey not only a feeling of misery and remorse but also a sense of the man? s i9000 acceptance from the snake? s i9000 impending fatality. The reader can sense the goal of the author? h effective concept through the usage of diction, imagery, and business. […]

Ebooks and literary works Make clear how the poets of Completely happy is Great britain Now inside the anthology Up the Line to Death present World Battle I The section Completely happy is Britain Now is located at the start from the anthology, The Line to Death. With this section, the editor, Brian Gardner has […]

Reveals and events The relationship Benedick and Beatrice have is usually unusual throughout the play, especially as deception plays a serious role in bringing the couple together. First of all they are deceiving themselves in to believing they feel practically nothing for each additional, and wage a ‘merry war’ trading witty abuse, then both are […]

Literature and literature The Muses had been deities worshipped by the historical Greeks. These were 9 girls, sisters, in whose sole purpose for being is that of the creativity to persona man, commonly in an artistic capacity. The embodiment in the classical concept of the poetical faculty like a divine present, these renowned sisters dwelt […]

Reveals and situations Tomashevsky is actually a Formalist. (From Wikipedia: In literary theory, formalism refers to critical methods that analyze, interpret, or perhaps evaluate the inherent features of a text. The formalist strategy reduces the value of a text’s historical, biographical, and cultural context. ) Introduction to Tomashevsky’s Approach The introduction to “Thematics by Tomashevsky […]

Shows and events English publisher, Virginia Woolf in her powerful composition, “The Fatality of the Moth”, illustrates us with the have difficulties between lifestyle and loss of life when seeing a moth. Woolf’s purpose is to help humans understand value and understand along with grasp the idea of death. The girl adopts a solace sculpt […]

Movies and tv In our associated with advanced technology, we love to watch movies more than we love to read. Sitting in front of a flat-screen TELEVISION SET while ingesting popcorn and drinking soft drinks would audio much more appealing than browsing a book by fire through the night while ingesting a frappucino from Starbucks. […]

Reveals and events Taken in with a well-to-do as well as offered another chance at life, a homeless young grows for being the superstar athlete forecasted to be the first pick on the NFL draft in this sports-themed comedy episode inspired simply by author Jordan Lewis’ succès The Sightless Side: Evolution of a Video game. […]

Shows and events Many people believe in heroes, who are selfless and willing to sacrifice themselves to benefit others. Heroes likewise exist in several cultures, and in addition they usually stand for courage and adventurous. In accordance to Joseph Campbell’s theory, heroes in stories experience a process called “The Hero’s Journey”, which is the classic […]

Reveals and incidents Film production company of the Gods must be crazy shows a blunt distinction among the civilizations of the Bushmen and modern societies within just communications amidst members by two very different cultures. There are plenty of obvious differences in the character types actions, beliefs and divergent worldly views. This video shows different […]

Movies At some time in your life, you probably have been forbidden from viewing a movie possibly by a doorman at a show theater or perhaps by your parents, simply because of the rating. Need to say, I actually never really taken notice of how motion pictures were ranked, or who was behind the rating […]

Shows and events The poem “The Ex-Basketball Player” simply by John Updike dramatizes the conflict among dreams and reality when it comes to Flick Webb. Flick shows such assurance in his teen years, yet he leads to the pathetic reality of helping out in a car port and playing pinball in a luncheonette. The poem […]

Shows and events In Washington Irving’s “The Satan and Ben Walker”, the imagery creates a dark and disturbing feelings which shows the theme of how avarice will make some people do anything to acquire what they desire. The language or perhaps words used to describe things like settings, a character, or a conference can help […]

Displays and occasions In the enjoy The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, Abigail Williams is definitely a manipulative, provocative, and fraudulent person. She is constantly swept up in a rest or is in the presence of trying to shape a person or a group of people. This vicious antagonist will stop at nothing to attain […]

Books and literature Write a great essay that you evaluate the poem ‘Nutting’ by simply William Wordsworth Throughout ‘Nutting’ Wordsworth uses many different techniques to help with the introduction of its which means and effects. Written in the first standpoint, it is meaningful with its target being over a young son going out to collect […]

Boogie Often times when contemplating dance the initial thing comes to mind can be described as concert or dancing in a bar. Never did I think moving was a thing of beauty. Dancing can be used for many items, one particular is communication. We have chosen two styles of boogie that’s dear to me which […]

Party The Big cat Dance is one of the most well-known dances in China. Referred to as king of animals, the lion can be described as traditional image of good good fortune in China. The move has a lengthy history extending back 2150 years. Documents show that during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), the Big cat […]

Visible art and design In the modern, contemporary universe we are residing in, printmaking are visible almost every fine detail of advertisement and visible aids. Papers are the one of the most prevalent of, showing the wonders of printmaking in creating replicate patterns and texts over and over again. Political statements, books, cards and several […]

Comics and cartoon Graphical novels have to be defined as novels in comic-strip format. They normally are shown to us either in series and possess a continuous plan or it might be presented in shorter testimonies. One popular form of a “comic book is called a manga (漫画). The Oriental character that is used to […]

Videos and television set Since the advent of the tv by Ruben Lagie Baire in 1920, television has been one of the most widely used equipments in households all over the world. People have recently been amazed by the wide getting capabilities of television. Yet , it has been asserted that the advent of the […]

Reveals and incidents Abstract Seeing that 1984 Man Laliberte continues to be building Cirque du Soleil, an artsy circus which has amazed many individuals in hundreds of towns. Cirque has worked very keeping all their strengths hard to beat and weak points miniscule. Along the way of making all their weaknesses turn into strengths they […]

Movies Alfred Hitchcock, born in 1899 in the uk, remains a prominent estimate the world of theatre. Hitchcock’s love for film began in his childhood along with his first work as article writer of the name cards pertaining to silent videos and, afterwards, becoming a representative. Influenced by his Catholic upbringing, Hitchcock developed a feeling […]

Reveals and events Stop all of the clocks, stop the telephone Avoid the dog by barking which has a juicy bone fragments Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Reveal the coffin, let the mourners come. Permit aeroplanes ring moaning cost to do business Scribbling within the sky the message He could be Dead Place […]

Shows and occasions “Sredni Vashtar” can be described as short history written by Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) between 1900 and 1911 and initially released in his publication The Stories of Clovis. It has been tailored for safari, film, the airwaves and television. The story worries a ten-year-old boy known as Conradin, whom lives along with […]

Catalogs and books The poem “Sonnet – To Science” written by Edgar Allen Poe was released by Hatch out & Dunning in the poems collection “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Slight Poems” 1829. Edgar Allan Poe, a renowned poet during the American romanticism, select science since the central topic and just how it is affecting poetry. […]

Ebooks and books Precisely what is the relationship among drama and plays? Episode is the plan of a play. Crisis only arises in a composition. Theatre and plays have no romance. Episode is the genre of books to which plays belong. Drama is the genre of literature where plays are supposed to be What is […]

Visual art and design Impressionism or the Impressionist school of painting was one of the popular styles of artwork practiced back in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The name comes from the incomplete look, which in turn these paintings seem to task, are somewhat the creation of the impression, which they keep on the […]

Catalogs and literary works Shakespeare’s Othello, as being a tragedy, offers a plot and theme which are and so closely connected that one can just be interpreted in regards to the other. For example , Othello’s pride is explored through the use of irony when, during the course of the play, Iago manipulates Othello (along […]

Displays and events Summary In this newspaper I am going to talk about the 1997 movie Selena as it contains a strong focus on the vocal career of your developing Philippine American performer in the early on 1990’s. The girl experienced various hardships via fans that did not appreciate the fact your woman primarily chatted […]

Reveals and incidents The book Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway can be one like most Hemingway literature. It contains, like most of his works, concealed meanings inside the texts. Not just that, but the main character can be one of a daring, glamorous life-style, much like Hemingway him self. Santiago, the primary […]

Shows and events What if everything gets one particular nothing? Imagine if it was authentic that person has the power to complete whatever this individual pleases, however in the end everything will mean – for deficiency of a better term – absolutely nothing? This way of thinking is called existentialism, which is vital in Jeff […]

Ebooks and literary works Bruce Dawe is one of the the majority of inspirational and truthful poets of our time. Born in 1930, in Geelong, almost all of Dawe’s beautifully constructed wording concerns the normal person. His poems really are a recollection within the world and issues about him. The statement ‘The poet’s function is […]

Shows and events One strong, one small , and this is the basic of the biblical story David and Goliath. The story, in which a not so good hero takes down a very good and effective leader, is much like McMurphy and Nurse Ratched in One Travelled Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The match up among […]

Shows and situations Beam Bradbury, recognized American creator, playwright, and poet, developed his success on a maximum of his senior high school diploma. He did, yet , learn various valuable lessons in life which usually he includes in his functions. Ray Bradbury uses figurative language including irony, personification, and symbolism to artistically present his vision […]

Shows and situations One day, with an accidental event, a stranger is happy to bet along on one of you skills which is not thus critical, and you are likely to earn. If you do do well, according to the significant bet, you can get a quite new limousine from the man which can be […]

Shows and situations The last period I saw my own Grandfather he was walking over the beach together with his metal detector. Basically it was not really the last time I physically saw him, but it was your last time that I would discover him and be able to talk to him person to person, […]

Catalogs and literary works Many literature students are expected to be familiar with the basic terms listed below (and mentioned in more interesting depth in your text). Keep this study information with your text. At the beginning of each reading project, write the aspects of literature pertaining to the particular form of literature at the […]

Books and literature Blackberry-picking is actually a retrospective and recollecting poem by Seamus Heaney. In it this individual mentions among his years as a child incidents. The poem is usually sensuous and appeals to the five feelings. He uses various graceful devices to depict a memorable picture in our minds. Usage of the five feelings […]

Catalogs and materials Africa literature is extremely diversified, although it shows a few similarities. In fact , the common denominator of the ethnicities of the Africa continent is undoubtedly the oral tradition. Producing on dark Africa made its debut in the middle Age ranges with the intro of the Arabic language and later, in the […]

Reveals and situations What is this Novel regarding? The structure of the book is informed on two levels – one is todays when Allie and Noah have grown older and stay in a house; the various other is the history Noah states from the notebook in which this individual tells how he and Allie attained, […]

Displays and situations The play staying discussed in this critique will probably be Metamorphoses written and originally directed by simply Mary Zimmerman. The URI Theatre office produced its very own version aimed by Steven Raider-Ginsburg. It absolutely was performed between the dates of February 21-March 3, 2013. Costume style was simply by David Big t […]

Dance “I wandered lonesome as a cloud” William Wordsworth I wandered lonesome as a impair That floats upon high o’er vales and hills When at the same time I saw an audience A host, of fantastic daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees and shrubs, 5 Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Constant as the […]

Reveals and occasions Imagery is often accustomed to place a target audience into an experience with the usage of words, that allows the reader to create their own picture in their mind, allowing them to experience the five senses such as sight, smell, touch, hearing and preference that lead to aesthetic imagery, olfactory imagery, responsive […]

Music The comedian opera is actually a new operatic genre which usually denotes a dramatic performing of a light natural, and earthy funny, usually which has a happy ending. The form of comic opera first produced in the early of 17th century. That began to known from other operatic form seeing that in the early […]

Shows and events Show just how Steinbeck shows two personas making tough decisions in Of mice and Guys A decision can either have a fantastic or bad outcome. In ‘Of Mice and Men’ characters are made to take difficult decisions that could change their particular lives. Through this essay, I will be analyzing ways in […]

Reveals and incidents In “Not My Best Side” U A Fanthorpe challenges the standard, stereotypical heroes in the legend Of Saint George and the dragon only to replace associated with another evenly stereotypical arranged In the composition “Not my own best side” U A Fanthorpe provides challenged the orthodox images of the heroes in Uccello’s […]

Literature and materials The poem ‘Nettles’ by simply Vernon Scannell revolves around a father’s perspective on an incident involving his son, through which the poet person explores a father-son relationship, wherein the father tries to guard his kid from the several difficulties in every area of your life. However , despite his work to safeguard […]

Catalogs and materials Story Poems will be poems that tell testimonies. There is a commencing, which introduces the background to the story, a middle, which in turn tells the action of the event, and an end, which in turn concludes and summarizes the story. What are the origins of Narrative Poetry? Narratives are definitely the […]

Videos Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), poet, playwright, novelist, thinker, composer, painter, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was your towering physique of the Bengali Renaissance. Among his lasting achievements was your founding in 1921 of his “world university, ” Visva-Bharati, in Santiniketan, several 120 kilometers north of Kolkata. In 1940, the nineteen-year-old Satyajit Ray […]

Music ” While i hear music, I fear no threat. I i am invulnerable. I realize no foe. I was related to the earliest times, and also to the latest ” said Holly David Thoreau. Music was and still can be described as significant aspect in almost every traditions in the world. It is just […]

Books and literature Thesis Statement, Opening Paragraph, evidence & conclusion REVISED While the two poets Muir and Wordsworth wrote regarding the content feelings they may have towards mother nature the beautiful outdoors or what some people may say Mother earth, some of which the energy are the same and several that are different as they […]

Reveals and events In an ever-increasing scientific world, we could presented with many different concepts of what it is as a ‘man’. Television, film and also other forms of new media especially are no strangers to the depiction of a various masculine stereotypes. However , because the popularisation of film in the late 1930’s, there […]

Reveals and situations In the poem “Miniver Cheevy” the author stresses the problems of the main character. The composition shows Miniver’s desire to have been born in medieval times. His yearning is changed to joy if he thinks about this period in history “The vision of the warrior strong / Will set him dancing. ” […]

Books and literary works The spiritual poets is known as a term termed by the poet person and critic John Dryden to describe a loose group of British lyric poets in the 17th century, whose operate was characterized by the inventive use of conceits, and by supposition about matters such as love or religion. These […]

Reveals and occasions In _Heart of Darkness_, simply by Joseph Conrad, the character Marlow, through his actions and experiences, displays himself to get morally ambiguous in that this individual goes on the European’s malicious expedition to Africa yet he appears to despise the events he sees there and that he performs both equally noble and […]

Dance Discuss the impact Martha Graham had within the development of Modern day Dance. Produce detailed mention of the her approach, choreography, and performing. Contemporary Dance is a style of move that originated from the early twenties as a being rejected of Time-honored Ballet; it can be used to show organic emotion, political/social issues, and […]

Shows and incidents Everyone wants to understand their worth. They want to end up being known and want another individual to check the one thing the lady should have found that. You happen to be gorgeous. You are gorgeous. The first impressions are based on presence and create. Some people find enjoyment in competing upon […]

Shows and occasions “Look like the faithful flower although be the serpent below it” “let not mild see my profound and dark desires” “to alter favor ever should be to fear” “The service and the loyalty My spouse and i owe” “Point against stage, rebellious provide ‘gainst arm” 1 . How are they dangerous by […]

Shows and events Lord of the Lures. ‘The end of chasteness and the darkness of mans heart. ‘ Do you consent that these would be the central problems of Golding’s novel? You should justify your answer making close mention of the the text. In his novel, Head of the family of the Flies, Golding boosts […]

Books and materials There are generally considered to be several standards a bit of literature will need to abide to to be considered ‘literary’. If a piece of writing is considered ‘literary’ this usually shows that it is a academic article or perhaps classical writing that is extremely well written and it is very useful. […]

Reveals and occasions This quotation was taken from Maggie Atwood’s account, “Homelanding. ” This tale recounts aspects worth considering of human being existence via an outside perspective, as if it had been being told to a alien race. This history tells about human presence, sex (both difference plus the act of), sunbathing, sleeping, death, and […]

Music The analysis of the attitude “Lascia ch’io pianga simply by Haendel based on the thorough bass method, shows us how a composer refer in this part to the common compositional types of procedures of extraordinaire music. The aria starts with a pedal (frame, in respect to Joel Lester’s terminology) followed by a cadence harmonized […]

Reveals and incidents In Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Athlete, the changing depiction of the pomegranate tree symbolizes the changes in Amir and Hassan’s relationship, which is woven in to the novel’s central theme of desprovisto and redemption. Throughout the book Hosseini describes Amir’s struggle to redeem himself ever since he witnessed the rape of […]

Movies and tv set Technology is definitely one of our most dearest pieces of ongoing history, yet does it trigger more damage than it can help? In the film Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg portrays the idea technology as an wicked force being reckoned with. Spielberg shows this throughout the plot, heroes, and conversation. Technology is […]

Music Known as a minimalist and fresh composer, Richard Gavin Bryars unleashed a great emotionally close constructed part out coming from a solitary old vagrant singing, Jesus’ blood never failed me personally yet, this thing I know, for this individual loves me so¦ At first recorded via footage of a documentary by his friend Alan […]

Books and literature Jack Davis’s poems present a separate voice intended for the local people; that explores this kind of issues while the identity problems, the wider feeling of damage in Primitive cultures and the clash of Aboriginal and White rules. This can be noticed in the poetry “Desolation” and “The 1st Born”. Both of […]

Shows and events Shelly produces a wonderful bit of irony in Ozymandias. When looking at Ozymandias we have to look at the Traditional breakdown from the name. “Ozy comes from the Greek ‘ozium, ‘ which means to breathing, or atmosphere. Mandias originates from the Ancient greek language ‘mandate, ‘ which means to rule,  notes […]

Boogie Compliment and appreciation I interceded to Luminous God intended for the execution of situations on this working day well. My spouse and i also says thank you for your time and chance that has been in invite Through this speech I would like to convey about the importance of creativity in preserving the culture […]

Movies and tv There are many types of visual entertainment readily attainable to us; it has become the principal source of entertainment. Visual entertainment only has not helped form American culture but likewise its beliefs. Visual entertainment comes in many forms; whether it be reading a newspaper, publications, or just watching tv. Visual multimedia has […]

Books and literature Emily Dickinson is one of the most famed poetry of all time. Through her life span she had written about toll free poems even though only hardly any of them were published. Following her fatality her good friend staggered on to her poetry diaries and then later on he published 3 volumes […]

Reveals and situations Film production company ‘The Craving for food Games’ aimed by Whilst gary Ross is definitely an extraordinary imaginary tale. A tale set in a futuristic dystopia society referred to as ‘Panem’. This kind of nation is usually divided into doze districts and a capitol. Every year every district need to offer two […]

Music In the late eighties music was under-going a big change. Persons wanted something new, something thrilling, especially the young generation. No more soft songs and pop music just like Duran Duran and Vergine. In these changing times a really special band called Élysée came around the music field. Three young man from Seatlle, Washington […]

Boogie Composers often reveal distinct perspectives of belonging which can be represented in different ways. Through their calcado forms and techniques, they show that belonging can emerge through various improving and challenging experiences. These kinds of experiences shape the characters as individuals, defining their particular personal identities as folks who exhibit confidence and fulfilment, or […]

Reveals and events William Shakespeare creates atmosphere in this landscape by using a range of effective methods, in this dissertation I will be discussing just how these techniques create such a anxious and suspenseful atmosphere that truly records and activates the Elizabethan audience. First of all, Shakespeare uses dramatic irony in this scene by the […]

Shows and events Through life, we all make options, choices define who we are as individuals. One choice that has genuinely influenced living was the choice to join FFA. I feel, since an FFA member, that FFA delivers students while using opportunity to really do something with their life. FFA gives you to be able […]

Films and tv set Gladiator is an excellent story and won Finest Picture in 2000. However the movie is indeed well done it does not mean that the storyline is traditionally accurate. Film production company includes many historically appropriate facts ranging from some of the characters to the culture of Rome. However , Gladiator is […]

Displays and incidents Hemingway’s tale “Hills Like White Elephants” appears, within the surface, to become a simple short-story, composed mainly of dialogue, with very little overt action or final resolution, the storyplot, far from being moderate on topic or strategy actually signifies many levels of meaning. Hemingway’s natural-sounding terminology his naturalistic descriptive approach helps to […]

Shows and events Beautiful Creatures is based on a true history about two teenage girls who murder among their mothers in Christchurch, New Zealand. The film, directed by Sir Peter Jackson, uses many techniques in the opening scene to efficiently demonstrate how essential this picture is to the film. These techniques add a documentary clip, […]

Literature and literary works William Hathaway is a overcome war experienced who has drafted many novels regarding battle and men (Rommel). He usually takes adult and personal subjects and topics. However , one of his poems eligible “Oh, Oh catches none of them of these ideas. This is what makes the poem several. Instead of […]

Shows and situations Which is a target summary of the “forgiveness triumphs” theme that may be developed in Act Versus of Hamlet? The scene where Laertes asks forgiveness helps demonstrate that forgiveness can be stronger than vengeance. Precisely what is the first step in identifying the topic in a enjoy? Identify a significant topic in […]

Movies and tv Considering that the yearly Fifties science hype movies include depicted automated programs as very sophisticated equipment built by humans to accomplish complex procedures, to work with human beings in secure critical quests, in hostile environments, or maybe more often to pilot and control spaceships in galactic travels. At the same time, nevertheless […]

Ebooks and materials The Great Gatsby by simply F. Scott Fitzgerald created in the Punk age of 1920s America, and Sonnet from your Portuguese written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning made up in the wake of Romanticism, although the two texts had been composed in two distinctive time period both equally texts are influenced by their […]

Shows and events Throughout Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses different reoccurring photos. Motifs including the moon, eye, and fire are seen often times throughout and add a more powerful sense of understanding for the novel. Even though windows will not appear practically as many times mainly because these other images, their consistent placement in important moments […]

Reveals and situations George and Lennie, two extraordinary characters in Of Rats and Males, Similar yet very different. The two Lennie and George count on their a friendly relationship to survive. Lennie depends on his friendship with George to help make the correct desisions. George relies on the a friendly relationship he provides with Lennie […]

Reveals and occasions In chapter five Frankenstein abandons the monster he made and his activities have a huge impact on the remaining portion of the story. The monster is definitely left on his own to deal with dread and solitude. He has to deal with the humanity, who have judge him on his physical appearance […]

Films Forrest Gump is definitely one of my personal favorite movie all times. It celebrities Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump, very innocent oriented man dealing with many tough situations and overcoming all of them. The story basically about a main character, a ticking clock or possibly a villain. This is a remarkable account of a […]

Image art and design Of the 3 diagrams, what type best demonstrates the idea of compositional unity? B In his painting The Flagellation, German artist Piero della Francesca created unity by concentrating on groups of characters in two different ares, _____ and ___. Foreground¦background ____ balance can be achieved when ever both sides of the […]

Literature and literature Even before the foreign invaders came to the Philippines, the Filipinos currently had their own cultural practices, folklore, mythologies and epics. There were considerable writings simply by early natives that Jesuit historian Fr. Pedro Chirino noted: “All of the islanders are much given to reading and writing. And there is hardly a […]

Shows and events Numerous scholars who look at and examine the humor of A Midsummer Night’s Wish by Shakespeare point to Puck as the most significant character in the play. Though Shakespeare masks Puck’s natural part in the funny by hiding him between the more powerful heroes, it becomes evident that Puck’s mischievous attitude and […]

Displays and incidents Fahrenheit 451 is a publication that was published by Ray Bradbury in 1953. This book tells the story through which intellectual thought and literature are against the law. According to the publication, the futuristic firemen have the responsibility of setting open fire to the ebooks and any place that they reside. Numerous […]

Music Many of us are familiar with the Essence Girls, who have held various hit lonely people throughout the nineties. They were a rock sensation and had an incredible number of fans assisting them through their music, their movies, and their performances. Out of the five Spice Young ladies, only one remains to be famous […]

Catalogs and literary works Elizabeth Barrett Browning had written Sonnet 43 during the excellent of the Victorian Period, which lasted the duration of Princess or queen Victoria’s tub between 1832 and 1901. Like a number of the works throughout the Victorian period, Sonnet 43 was a reflecting piece about the love of her lifestyle, Robert […]

Displays and events In the brief story “Everyday Use” by simply Alice Walker, she introduces a non-urban black relatives who have trouble with the meaning of heritage. To Mama, the narrator, and Maggie, the youngest daughter, heritage can be whom they may be, where offered from, and the everyday utilization of the things around them. […]

Reveals and incidents The essay “In Too Deep” written by Jeff Ruprecht was structured similarly as most autobiography essays, plus the author’s story has conformed to the “Dramatic Arc”. My spouse and i am evaluating the dissertation in “Dramatic Arc” order and …标题 place people。The writer transformed his head and attained a lot through this […]

Books and literature Langston Hughes wrote the poem, “I, Too” in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance, a period of Black American history which will brought to mild unique views of the world throughout the eyes of your people who had been often subjugated and downtrodden. Issues of racial prejudice were widespread during the Harlem […]

Reveals and occasions In The Handmaid’s Tale Maggie Atwood places across the perception of unknown, things that had been once there but are no more. The girl talks about ‘the pungent smell of sweating, shot through with the fairly sweet smell of chewing gum and perfume’ which will came from the girls who when watched […]

Displays and incidents Uncertainty is what makes a story popular because it is interesting to study. Suspense is employed in most reports to make the plan interesting. There are lots of factors that generate suspense in the account The Most Harmful Game produced by Richard Connell. The use of breaks by punctuations, recurring vibrant imagery, […]

Films and television set Radio started to be highly popular in the 1930s in Canada. A heated argument in the legislative house helped Excellent Minister Mackenzie King to create a commission to create Canadian broadcasting system. Canada’s initial network transmitted was in 1927. King addressed the nation coming from Parliament Mountain. His presentation gave sign […]

Music To the majority of people out there who do not speak Korean, ” Gangnam Style…Yay, sexy lady…oh. oh. also. ” is simply the only phrases out of all lines that they may understand in the song Gangnam Style by simply Psy. However , this Korean language song in some way has ended up being […]

Catalogs and literary works The passing of time in a individual’s life is filled with many different levels. The poem “Piano” simply by D. L. Lawrence can be described as complicated sort of how a poet person might think. The presenter in “Piano” is pleased to be a adult man, yet he really loves remembering […]

Literature and literary works In “Dover Beach front, ” Matt Arnold makes a monologue that shows just how perceptions may be misleading. The theme of illusion versus reality in “Dover Beach” reflects the speaker’s awareness of the incompatibility among what is perceived and what truly is definitely real. Arnold conveys the theme of “Dover Beach” […]

Movies and television If I was alive on this time period together the chance to get a bounty hunter We would take it because of the amount of money you would generate and how as you get proficient at killing you’d be better with pretty much immortals as you would know how to support yourself. […]

Catalogs and literary works Sylvia Plath was created in 1932 to Otto Plath, a German zuzügler and Aurelia Plath, a north american of Austrian descent. She had a extremely troubled life, suffering intense depression and emotional injury before the girl committed suicide in 1963 by placing her go to a gas oven. The majority of […]

Visible art and design Leonardo DaVinci’s Mona Lisa is one of the most well-known paintings in the world. Show anyone from a 60 yr old man to a 10 year old girl a photo of the art work and, almost certainly, they will be in a position to name the painting and also the painter. […]

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Article Contents

1. undermining the postmodern equation of art and entertainment, 2. undermining the modernist opposition of art and entertainment, 3. undermining the modernist assimilation of entertainment with popular art, 4. the kristeller thesis of the modern system of the arts, 5. a kristeller thesis for entertainment: art and entertainment as an interconnected system.

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Against Modernism and Postmodernism on Art and Entertainment: A Kristeller Thesis of Entertainment

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Andy Hamilton, Against Modernism and Postmodernism on Art and Entertainment: A Kristeller Thesis of Entertainment, The British Journal of Aesthetics , Volume 63, Issue 1, January 2023, Pages 41–56, https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayac014

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This article develops a Wittgensteinian treatment of the relationship between art and entertainment, combining universal and historically conditioned features. The article is in two parts. The first is less historical, although it aims to characterize the modern concepts of art and entertainment. In this part, the article steers a middle way between the modernist view that art and entertainment are mutually exclusive, and the postmodernist view that they are indistinguishable. It also rejects the modernist assimilation of entertainment and popular art. More specifically, Section 1, Against postmodernism, argues that entertainment aims to give pleasure or delight by amusing, exciting or otherwise diverting the audience, requiring from them little or no concentrated effort; art, in contrast, has a conscious aesthetic end and richly rewards aesthetic attention. Entertainment is consistently audience-centred, while art has a more complex relation to an audience. Section 2, Against modernism, argues that art and entertainment are not polar opposites but complementary and interpenetrating concepts and practices. Pure entertainment is art only in the sense of skill, but the highest art can entertain—there are artist-entertainers. Section 3 discusses how it is common misconception that entertainment is popular art; not all ‘popular art’ is pure entertainment—the category of artist-entertainers is essential—and not all entertainment is popular.

The second part of the article is more directly historical; it holds that the categories of art and entertainment are not eternal, and one must consider their historical contexts and development. Sections 4 and 5 considers how the modern system of the arts, crafts, entertainment and sports form a loosely connected conceptual system. Like art, entertainment existed before the modern era, but not as an overarching, self-conscious concept. The article thus rests on, while developing, Kristeller’s thesis of the modern system of the arts through four further claims:

The modern system of the arts persists informally.

The thesis must distinguish two senses of ‘art’, self-conscious and unself-conscious; likewise ‘entertainment’.

An inter-related system of entertainment developed along with a system of art.

Entertainment contrasts with any serious activity: artistic, scientific, political, religious. The system of art, entertainment and sport is connected with the systems of sciences, politics and religion.

Some words on methodology. Analytic philosophy rests on a post- Tractatus demarcation of empirical and conceptual. But it would be wrong to assume that philosophy alone considers conceptual questions. All disciplines exhibit a continuum between the empirical and the conceptual. Philosophy is the most self-consciously conceptual discipline, but philosophers need knowledge of the relevant first-order subject-matter. Thus writers in aesthetics should bring to bear as much critical awareness and practical knowledge of artistic and cultural practices as possible—hence my espousal of what I call Real Aesthetics , which rejects a highly abstract Analytic treatment. What follows is a synthesis of conceptual analysis, reflection on presuppositions underlying ordinary language, and argument based on social, cultural and historical evidence. The attempt to disambiguate such processes reflects a persisting debate in Wittgenstein studies on the relation between language-games as normative and descriptive ( Hamilton, 2014 , pp. 27–30). But it is impossible in an article of this length to address it further while at the same time advancing a philosophical treatment of art and entertainment. So I leave it to readers to decide whether the considerations offered here must be disambiguated in this way, in order to carry conviction. One thing I would stress, however: our language-game of art and entertainment is deeply unsatisfactory, and one struggles to express required distinctions by means of its vocabulary. That is because it raises contested issues concerning fundamental aspects of our social and political lives, reflected, for instance, in the debate between elitism and populism that underlies talk of high and popular art.

Most of my examples come from Western art and entertainment; jazz, with its roots in African musical expression, may be an exception. The focus is not deliberate, although the Kristeller thesis (1990) to which I appeal was originally formulated in terms of Western art. I do not think that this focus affects my philosophical claims, as the distinction between broad and narrow senses of art and of entertainment will manifest itself in many cultures in the course of time. But my future work will extend to non-Western systems of art such as the Japanese system of The Four Accomplishments—such work is of vital importance.

Film academic Richard Dyer comments that ‘because entertainment is a common-sense, “obvious” idea, what is really meant and implied by it never gets discussed’ ( Dyer, 2002 ; see also Bates and Ferri, 2010 ). In philosophical aesthetics, entertainment is mostly treated in negative contrast to art, as ‘non-artistic performance’. However, Kant, Nietzsche, Arendt and Shusterman analyzed it positively, while Schiller and Gadamer linked art and play. I show that the question ‘What is entertainment?’ has the philosophical depth of ‘What is art?’—indeed, the questions must be answered together.

The article has two principal targets: the modernist assumption that art and entertainment are mutually exclusive—although modernists sometimes equate entertainment with popular art—and the postmodernist view that they are indistinguishable. It steers a middle way between these positions, rejecting the common equation of entertainment with popular art. Modernist thinkers such as Adorno entrenched the art-entertainment distinction; some might say that his culture industry thesis says that all art is entertainment, but that would be a simplification of his view. One should reject the modernist view that art and entertainment are mutually exclusive without endorsing the postmodernist view that they are indistinguishable.

The article is directed against positions that I have labelled ‘modernist’ and ‘postmodernist’, but these are not coherent theoretical positions advanced by particular individuals. Rather I refer to beliefs that I take to be broadly held, pervasive both during and after modernism. Modernism is a problematic and highly contested concept—a sharpening and intensifying of modernity, or a response to it (see Gildea, 2003 , p. 395). The consensus is that artistic modernism arose in the later nineteenth century, flourished in the first three decades of the twentieth, and persists in the era of postmodernism from the 1970s onwards. Thus high modernists such as Lachenmann, Harvey and Ferneyhough in music, or Noland and Caro in visual art, continued to define themselves in opposition to postmodern fragmentation and eclecticism (see Metzer, 2009 , ‘Introduction’). But while I do not offer worked out modernist and postmodernist theory, I take certain writers as representative: Adorno in modernism, Jencks and Eco in postmodernism, for instance.

First, against postmodernism, I will argue that art and entertainment have distinct aims concerning the audience, although these often overlap. Entertainment aims to give pleasure or delight by amusing, exciting or otherwise diverting the audience, in a way that calls on them to make little concentrated effort. Art , in contrast, has a conscious aesthetic end, that richly rewards aesthetic attention. Entertainment is consistently audience-centred , while art has a more complex relation to an audience, explored fully in Section 2 below. Pure entertainment lacks depth or seriousness, and takes one’s mind off serious concerns; its value lies partly in escapism ( Shusterman, 2003 , pp. 292–293; Heilman, 1975 ). Art, in contrast, while perhaps involving escape from immediate reality, is not escap ism . Art may console, where consolation means helping through bad times, while recognizing that times are bad. Escapism means forgetting; consolation does not—a vital contrast between art and entertainment.

The concept of escapism is surprisingly new. Only in 1972 does OED record the ‘figurative’ sense of ‘distraction’ from, ‘avoidance’ of, or ‘retreat’ from ‘the realities of life’. ‘Escape’ used to refer only to very specific and concrete situations; we now think of it as a mode of dealing with imperfect existence. As Heilman comments, by the mid-twentieth century, escapism became a cliché of denigration. Escapism must be contrasted with consolation. In 1952 Norman Demuth defended ‘finding solace’ and insisted, ‘This is not the same thing as escapism’ (quoted in Heilman, 1975 , p. 453). As Heilman argues:

There is some element of escape in reading all kinds of literature, that one may escape into a simpler and more orderly world or into a richer and deeper one … the ultimate issue is whether, and in what frame of mind, one returns from the adventure of escape. The issue must be explored by contrasting the varieties of escapism: analgesic, rest-and-recreation, tranquilizing, narcotic, reinforcement and so on. ( Heilman, 1975 , p. 457–458)

Modernist theory correctly stresses that artworks are particularly worthy of aesthetic attention, while pure entertainment is not—that follows simply from calling the former ‘art’. ‘Art is more aesthetically valuable than entertainment’ is a tautology, not an expression of elitism. Nonetheless, as we will see, high art can be entertaining as well as challenging. An analysis of the aesthetic would occupy an entire article, but salient features should be presented. The aesthetic:

Involves beauty and cognate concepts.

Involves making a judgement rather than expressing a mere liking, and so involves some notion of disinterestedness.

Involves useless work.

Is interdependent with the concept of art.

As design theorist David Pye argued, craft has always involved unnecessary and easily avoidable work on an artefact that contributes nothing to its usefulness. This crafting goes beyond the strictly functional, to create ornament, excellent finish, and so on ( Pye, 1978 ). Art began as useless work on useful things, and in the modern era became useless work on useless things. (The claim that art and the aesthetic are interdependent concepts is defended in the companion to the present article.)

Some entertainment is so evacuated of an aesthetic aim that it can be called pure entertainment. But pure entertainment with no artistic aim or content is rare; a song or routine must have a form. But likewise, ‘This is pure art with no entertainment aim’ is a limiting and comparatively unusual case, as we see in Section 2.

Stephen Davies argues insightfully that procedural definitions of art , which say that artworks have in common only the process by which they are recognized as such, have supplanted functional or what I call substantive definitions ( Davies, 2005 , Ch. 2). This is a regrettable development as purely procedural definitions are misguided. The characterization of art as a practice or performance involving skill, with a conscious aesthetic end, that richly rewards aesthetic attention is a qualified substantive characterization, opposed by currently popular procedural definitions. Proponents of procedural definitions draw unwarranted conclusions from the postmodern truth that anything can be art, I believe. It is an argument against procedural definitions—which may evacuate the art-entertainment contrast of meaning—that postmodern art gains its meaning from traditionally crafted art; there could not be an artworld consisting entirely of ready-mades, or conceptual art.

Pure entertainment lacks the aesthetic end, and reward, of art, therefore. Entertainers aim simply to elicit an emotional response: being amused (comedy); being in suspense (thrillers, horror films); being delighted, or amazed at the performer’s virtuosity (music) ( Carroll, 1998 , Ch. 4). Pure entertainment encourages stereotypical responses—for instance, to horrifying images in horror films. The entertainer aims to satisfy existing dispositions of the audience to find certain things pleasurable; pure entertainment belongs to affirmative as opposed to critical culture. It can attack stereotypes, and thus become critical— Brookside in the 1980s became the first British TV soap to present gay relationships, but in a propagandizing rather than artistic way. (Propaganda can be great art—for instance, Humphrey Jennings’ (1942) ‘Listen To Britain’—but this is soap propaganda.)

Most entertainment does not involve effort by the audience. ‘I had to work hard to enjoy the entertainment’ is an unusual comment—perhaps it was in an unfamiliar language, or I was depressed. But if, like Shusterman, one includes artist-entertainers under the heading of entertainers, then entertainment can require effort from an audience—this is true of art that entertains, but not of pure entertainment ( Shusterman, 2003 , p. 295). There is audience effort also in sophisticated video games or sport, where the player is at least part-performer. Following a chess match, or the plot of a complicated detective story such as The Big Sleep (1946), involves effort. When director Howard Hawks asked author Raymond Chandler, ‘Who killed the chauffeur?’, Chandler did not know. But The Big Sleep is art that entertains—‘ an entertainment’ in Graham Greene’s sense, not pure entertainment. One can be a connoisseur of pure entertainment, and this obviously involves effort. One can be a connoisseur of pure entertainment, and this obviously involves effort. Thus comedian Roy Hudd is a connoisseur who, for instance, analyses how Tommy Cooper achieved extravagant comic effects from limited resources. But entertainment, unlike art, neither claims appreciation, nor aims at truth (see Hamilton, 2012 ). Art merits attention, while entertainment, if successful, merely generates it—although perhaps it merits laughter, or delight.

We now examine the modernist denial that art should entertain.

For modernists including Adorno, art and entertainment are mutually exclusive categories. Adorno held that gratification excludes appreciation of art:

Whoever concretely enjoys artworks is a philistine … convicted by expressions like ‘a feast for the ears’ … [It is] their truth, which … in works of Kafka’s type outweighs every other element. They were not a higher order of amusement. ( Adorno, 1997 , pp. 9–13)

For Adorno, as for Hegel, art becomes fine only when free of subservience to entertainment. Heidegger—not a modernist, and following Hegel rather than Adorno—commented that ‘art’s defining essence is not pleasure or entertainment but “the becoming and happening of truth”’ ( Heidegger, 1975 , pp. 68, 71, discussed in Shusterman, 2003 , p. 299). These writers might agree that art with a small ‘a’, which diverts or entertains, is distinguished from pure entertainment in its aesthetic skill, in having essentially aesthetic ends, and by particularly rewarding aesthetic attention. But they seemingly reject the standpoint of humane art proposed here, which says that the highest art can be entertaining.

Aim and result—intent and use—both enter into the characterization of something as art or entertainment. Someone who intended to do no more than entertain can produce work that richly rewards aesthetic attention; when Duke Ellington came to Europe in the 1930s, he was surprised to be treated as a real composer by authorities such as Constant Lambert ( Lambert, 1934 , p. 214). Even if the creator does not profess aesthetic ends, these may be evident in the product. Likewise, someone who professes a high artistic aim can end up producing kitsch. But particularly important in undermining the modernist dichotomy is the category of artist-entertainer, one who aims to create art while entertaining in the process. Here Jencks and Eco’s concept of double-coding is important. Thus Don Quixote (1605/1615) by Miguel de Cervantes — by some measures the second most widely read book after the Bible—entertains those who do, and those who do not, appreciate its artistic depth.

‘Double-coding’ is better-termed multiple coding —artworks speak in different ways and at different levels to people of different backgrounds and experience. 1 Thus, the finest work of Nat ‘King’ Cole, jazz pianist and pop singer, speaks as both art and entertainment—although much of his output is pure entertainment. The most valuable art is multiply interpretable; multiple coding is implied by the test of time and place. Richness of interpretation helps to make something art rather than entertainment, but there is an intrinsic dimension too. Pure entertainment cannot be treated as art; while as we see, hermetic high art cannot be used—although it can perhaps be mis-used—as entertainment. Thus entertainment is, in part, an intrinsic category, but on that also depends on use or reception. There could not be a James Joyce of entertainers—a hermetic entertainer—and Bob Monkhouse’s joke is funny partly for this reason: ‘They all laughed when I said I’d become a comedian. Well, they’re not laughing now’ ( Monkhouse, 1993 , p. 76).

Dickens and Shakespeare did not create high art that happens to entertain; they set out to entertain, while or by fulfilling deeper artistic purposes. Entertainment can potentiate artistic value. The Fool’s choric commentary on Lear’s folly kept the groundlings happy, but enriched the larger artistic scheme. Satire presents political or social pieties in a mocking fashion, achieving its moral purpose through entertainment. Thus the opening of Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1817) sees the heroine’s father, Sir Walter Elliot, re-reading his entry in the Baronetage —a nineteenth-century equivalent of googling his own name. Sir Walter is a caricature, a vain snob. But Austen’s satire advances a central theme of the novel: the heroine’s family over-value social class, persuading her against marrying the relatively lowly Captain Wentworth—a disastrous decision that ‘persuasion’ eventually reverses.

Humane art , of which Shakespeare and Dickens are paradigms, communicates and interacts with the audience. Dickens advised fellow-writers to take seriously the need to amuse their audience. His high artistic status is compatible with being the most popular English writer since Shakespeare. Although it gives pleasure, some high art cannot entertain. Bach’s St Matthew Passion (1727) or Ravel’s (1917) Le Tombeau de Couperin entertain only if the performance is amusingly poor, in some way that compensates for its inadequacy.

Esoteric or hermetic art , in contrast, result from the modernist bifurcation of art and entertainment. Hermetic artists see their work as the product of inner necessity; they seem indifferent to the audience’s desires and expectations, even perhaps its existence. Examples include Lennie Tristano, Proust, Prynne, Boulez, and the Joyce of Finnegan’s Wake (1939). Modernist Harrison Birtwistle, denying that his music is inaccessible, remarked, ‘I can’t be responsible for the audience: I’m not running a restaurant’ (cited in Blanning, 2008 , p. 60). His thought is: ‘This is art—the audience can like it or not’. He misunderstands the complex artist-audience relation, probably confusing ‘addressing the audience’ with ‘simply pleasing them’. Ambitious art aims to transform its audience. In the film The Invisible Woman (2013), Mrs Dickens and Ellen Ternan discuss Charles Dickens' (1852–1953) Bleak House, which Ellen says has a spirit of unease, yet has much to make her smile. Mrs Dickens responds: ‘’Tis a fiction designed to entertain’, to which Ellen replies: ‘Surely it’s more than that—it changes us’. It would have been preposterous for Bach and Mozart to deny an interest in the audience. Beethoven, however, was a proto-modernist—on one occasion describing his audience as ‘Cattle! Asses!’ But if no one turned up, the composer would care—unless they were as unworldly as Havergal Brian, whose huge symphonies were written with reckless disregard for performability.

‘Writing for future generations’ is one possible development in the complex relation between artist and audience; the audience becomes ideal. As biographer Jan Swafford comments, Charles Ives ‘became an anomaly in the history of his art: a composer without a milieu’. However, ‘Ives’s eventual distance from any musical establishment was unprecedented for a composer’ ( Swafford, 1998 , pp. 140–141). Hence Schoenberg’s famous description:

There is a great Man living in this Country—a composer. He has solved the problem how to preserve one’s self-esteem and to learn. He responds to negligence by contempt. He is not forced to accept praise or blame. His name is Ives. ( Soderberg, 2012 ).

However, the successful New York businessman and part-time composer had not ‘solved the problem’. He needed an audience for his works of genius. Plagued by uncertainty about their final form, his career ended prematurely.

We have seen that art, like entertainment, implies an audience, although the artist-audience relation is significantly weaker. An artist can profess indifference to its reaction, although there is a cost, as Ives’s career shows. Transaction with an audience is a positive part of artistic creation, which the hermetic artist neglects at their peril. Artistically negative effects follow from the psychological need of artist-entertainers such as Armstrong and Dickens for the audience’s love; but such effects also follow from the hermetic artist’s rejection of that audience.

We now turn to the entertainer–audience relation. Some pure entertainers treat the audience as passive consumers, having less genuine interest in them even than hermetic artists. Thus one can contrast authentic and cynical entertainers , or as Ken Dodd put it, doing a show ‘with the audience, or at the audience’—he preferred the former (quote from Arena: Ken Dodd’s Happiness, 2007 ). The authentic entertainer—one with integrity—does not cynically manipulate or even pander; like the true humane artist, they wish to communicate with their audience. 2 Authentic entertainers give the audience what they want—or at least seem to want—because they identify with them. So might cynical manipulators , but through calculation rather than identification. An example of the latter is balladeer Henry Russell, popular in America in the 1830s and 40s. In his sentimental ballad ‘Woodman, Spare That Tree’ (1837), the narrator asks that the woodcutter ‘let that old oak stand!’:

Woodman spare that tree! Touch not a single bough In youth it sheltered me And I’ll protect it now… My heart-strings round thee cling Close as thy bark, old friend! ( Crawford, (2001) , pp. 250–253).

Russell hammed it up. His autobiography told how after one performance, a man in the audience rose and ‘in a very excited voice, called “Was the tree spared, sir?” “It was”, I said. “Thank God for that”, he answered, with a sigh of relief’. 3

Fellow songwriter George Root reports that when Russell retired to his dressing room, he was much amused at the grief of his weeping constituents. For Root, such cynicism was unforgivable: ‘Good taste requires that the singer should treat respectfully the emotion he excites’. This is the contrast between the authentic and cynical entertainer. Both are concerned to excite emotions, but only the former treats the audience respectfully ( Root, 1891 , p. 18). Root himself served ‘the larger mass who enjoyed music that touched their hearts. He stood ready to embrace sentimentality … [and] felt an obligation to respect the taste of the audience that supported him’ ( Crawford, 2001 , p. 251). Sentimentality , the characteristic weakness of the humane artist-entertainer, is integral to entertainment—both Dickens and Armstrong have been accused of it. But it is no criticism of a pure entertainer, provided they treat their audience respectfully.

Modernists like Adorno insist on the opposition of art and entertainment. But they may also subscribe to the common error of equating entertainment with popular art . I now turn to this mistaken equation. As popular culture is already exhaustively analyzed in the philosophical literature, it would render an aesthetics of entertainment redundant. Film, TV, pop music and pulp fiction—and Adorno’s overarching explanation of them through the culture industry—have received close academic scrutiny within Cultural Studies and Analytic philosophy, for instance Carroll’s Mass Art ( Carroll, 1998 ). But an aesthetics of entertainment is not redundant, because the equation of entertainment with popular art is mistaken. It is rightly rejected by Shusterman and James Hamilton, although the latter’s view that ‘the connection between what is entertaining and what is popular is purely contingent’ is too radical ( Hamilton, manuscript ). Shusterman’s treatment is more plausible, and two of his core claims are developed here: (i) entertainment is an allied and not just contrasting category to art, forming a non-exclusive polarity; (ii) the art/entertainment contrast is older and more basic than the popular/high art distinction, and cuts across it ( Shusterman, 2003 ). I now turn to the latter issue.

The equation of popular art and entertainment is simplistic for several reasons:

Not all ‘popular art’ is pure entertainment, as artist-entertainers such as Louis Armstrong and Howard Hawks show. Something can be entertain ing , or an entertainment, and also the highest art. Graham Greene described his less serious novels as ‘entertainments’—artworks that gratify and divert, showing the attention to structure and detail, and perhaps the unity, associated with high art. From its long opening tracking shot, Orson Welles’ (1958) A Touch Of Evil is a ‘potboiler [that] still feels fresh and exciting’, a masterpiece of cinematic art and ‘pure gritty entertainment’. 4 It is an entertainment, but—despite the preceding comment—not pure entertainment. This intermediate category of ‘entertainments’ covers many quality Hollywood films—from film noir such as The Big Sleep , to screwball comedy such as Bringing Up Baby (1938). And Claes Oldenberg’s Pop Art soft sculptures mimic popular culture, with results that are entertaining, but not—unless one derides them—pure entertain ment .

Not all entertainment is ‘popular’; there is elite entertainment, such as Inigo Jones’s courtly masques. 5 ‘Popular’ is ambiguous between ‘appeals to the masses’ and ‘has a certain kind of appeal to the target audience, whoever they are’. By ‘popular art’, it is normally meant ‘that with a mass audience’; entertainment aims to appeal to a specific but not always a mass audience. Record producers know their market; British comedian Ken Dodd crafted jokes for specific regional audiences, based on his experience. Art, in contrast, aims to pass the test of time and place, appealing broadly.

The most commodified popular or mass art is pure entertainment, and not art in any aesthetic sense.

High art is not always the highest art, just as not all paintings of the High Renaissance are paintings of the highest quality. Sèvres porcelain, Adams interiors and paintings by Fragonard or Munnings are high art but not the highest art.

The preceding discussion has addressed what may be termed the modern conception of art and entertainment. The categories of art and entertainment are not eternal and, to understand them, one must consider their historical contexts and development. In the second half of the article, I elucidate that claim more directly by addressing and developing Kristeller’s (1990) thesis of the modern system of the arts. This helps us to discern a continuum between two senses or forms of art, and an analogous one between two senses or forms of entertainment.

Art and entertainment existed before the modern era, but neither was then an overarching concept whose practitioners saw themselves self-consciously as artists or entertainers. The art–entertainment opposition developed in later modernity, sharpened by modernism. Kant contrasts the ‘agreeable arts’ with fine art that has a higher purpose ( Critique of Judgment , Section 44). However, before the eighteenth century, ‘art’ had the non-aesthetic sense of ‘practical skill or knowledge’.

Any skill can be evaluated aesthetically, but the primary evaluation of ‘the art of medicine’ is practical. ‘Medicine and engineering are arts’ states that these are not mechanical processes, but practical skills involving judgement. Before the modern era, therefore, ‘art’ included skills or disciplines whose ends are not essentially aesthetic, such as the art of medicine, or astrology. The performing arts, and entertainment, involve performance before the public, which implies an aesthetic dimension.

In the West, since the advent of art for art’s sake in the earlier nineteenth century, the meaning of ‘art’ has become more aestheticized. As late as the mid-nineteenth century, the non-aesthetic sense of art was equal in importance. Mayhew (1851, p.17) comments that The Great Exhibition aimed ‘to wed mechanical skill with high art’, ‘by collecting the several products of scientific and aesthetic art from every quarter of the globe into one focus’. ‘Scientific art’ is now almost an oxymoron ( Mayhew, 1851 , p. 17).

The aestheticization of ‘art’ implied the development of the Western system of five major arts —painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry. According to art historian Oscar Kristeller, the system did not assume definite shape till the eighteenth century, although ingredients were found in classical, medieval and Renaissance periods: ‘classical antiquity left no systems of elaborate concepts of an aesthetic nature … merely a number of scattered notions’ ( Kristeller, 1990 , p. 172). 6 In Ancient Greece, he argued, what we now separate into art, craft and science were conflated. Kristeller’s claim is not just that the Greeks lacked separate terms for art, craft and—by implication—entertainment. Rather, they did not so much as conceive of a distinction between art and craft, or art and entertainment; they lacked overarching, self-conscious concepts of either.

On my broadly Wittgensteinian view, terms derive their meaning from a practice or language-game; human linguistic practice is broader than ‘saying the right words on the right occasion’. ‘Grammar’ in Wittgenstein’s sense refers to the habitual routines of linguistic practice. Thus one can grasp a concept without having a word for it. There are concepts without a word— that which became art, entertainment, conservatism, liberalism. The appearance of such concepts generally precedes the appearance of a word for them.

As the modern system evolved, autonomous art demanded an audience’s undivided attention—in museums and concert halls. The system was formally articulated by eighteenth-century Beaux-Arts theory. Batteux distinguished mechanical arts such as engineering—that satisfy basic human needs—from fine arts of music, dance, poetry, painting, and sculpture, with architecture as intermediate (see Gracyk, 2011 ). The notion of mechanical arts persisted at least until the mid-nineteenth century—in the non-aesthetic sense of ‘art’ assumed by Mayhew—but has now largely disappeared. Beaux-Arts theory upheld traditional hierarchies within particular artforms, such as history, portrait, landscape and still-life artforms within painting.

Kristeller’s thesis commands wide — although not universal—support; for most writers, Greek techne (Latin ars ) embraced all activities now discriminated as arts, crafts or academic disciplines. Some writers insist that the Greeks had an overarching concept of fine arts—that Plato and Aristotle regarded painting, epic and tragedy as arts of imitation. 7 For Schaper, the Ion ’s distinction between skill ( techne ) and inspiration ( poiesis ) justifies talking of ‘art’ in something like a modern sense ( Schaper, 1968 , p. 23). But Plato clearly maintains that mimetic arts are no more worthy of serious attention than someone waving a mirror, doing magic tricks or imitating animal voices. Even Aristotle, who did not echo Plato’s hostility to the poets, held that painting and tragedy are not essentially separate in their procedures from shoemaking or medicine ( Shiner, 2001 , p. 21). One might contest Kristeller’s thesis by arguing that individual arts could exist without constituting a system; but then ‘art’ would not have its present-day sense.

I develop the Kristeller thesis through four further claims:

The system of the arts persists informally.

The thesis must distinguish self-conscious and unself-conscious art.

An inter-related system of entertainment developed along with a system of art; ‘entertainment’, like ‘art’, has two senses.

Entertainment contrasts with any serious activity: artistic, scientific, political, religious.

(1) The system of the arts persists informally

The vogue for internal hierarchies within each art declined during the nineteenth century; for Kuhn, ‘the endless rivalry of the systems finally discredited the enterprise of systematization’ ( Kuhn, 1941 , pp. 67–68). Modernism rendered classical theory defunct. But the system of the arts persisted informally during the twentieth century, otherwise there could be no Arts Councils, or Arts pages in newspapers—although the latter are sometimes more like entertainment pages, covering TV, film, fashion and photography. Thus art photography is a high art practice, although not as universally valued as painting.

(2) The thesis must distinguish self-conscious and unself-conscious art

Kristeller does not hold that art began only in the modern era. To avoid this improbable consequence, one must distinguish two senses of ‘art’ —as self-conscious (‘Art’ with a capital ‘A’), or as unself-conscious (‘art’ with a small ‘a’) practice. ‘They did not conceive of them as X’ does not imply ‘They were not X’. The modern, overarching concept of art appeared in the West in the eighteenth century, but the less self-conscious practice is ancient. For instance, we recognize Anglo-Saxon clasps from Sutton Hoo as art of high quality, a conception only imperfectly grasped by their makers ( Nees, 2002 , p. 111). Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey , Plato’s dialogues and Dante’s (1308) Divine Comedy showed a depth and complexity later appropriated to high art; in the 1790s, it is said, Mozart’s (1791) The Magic Flute was regarded as entertainment, but is high art now. The Marriage of Figaro (1786) is an entertainment, in my sense; at best, so is The Merry Widow (1861) or West Side Story. Both Mozart and Lehar were craftsmen who wanted to entertain the customers, but Mozart’s opera turned out to be high art—it comments seriously on the human condition, and aims at truth—while Lehar’s operetta sometimes approaches seriousness, and counts as an entertainment in Graham Greene’s sense.

It is the conceptualization of these works as art—as works, that is, artworks—that developed only in the modern era. I referred to ‘Art’ with a capital ‘A’, or self-conscious art, as ‘high art’; alternatives are autonomous, ambitious, serious, or demanding art. ‘High art’ is unsatisfactory, but so are the alternatives. It is art originally patronized by church and aristocracy, with elevated themes and subjects, that appears from the Renaissance onwards at different times in different arts. Although it originated in social distinction, it is now publicly available in art galleries and concert halls (see Hamilton, 2009 ). According to a persuasive modernist narrative, high art is autonomous art; it transcends the practical utility of mechanical arts such as furniture or ceramics, and the direct social functions—religious, courtly, aristocratic, and military—which art and music once served, and which persist (see Hamilton, 2007 ; Wolterstorff, 2015 , criticizes this picture). Autonomous art is art for art’s sake. The original function of church music was to enhance the liturgy; the function of military music was to make the military occasion more impressive, and so on. From the eighteenth century, much contemporary art became an end in itself—not subservient to a social function, whether religious, military or social. These developments underlie the modern conception of art.

(3) An inter-related system of entertainment developed along with a system of art; ‘entertainment’, like ‘art’, has two senses

I call this philosophically neglected development a Kristeller thesis for entertainment . However, it must also be acknowledged that:

(4) Entertainment contrasts with any serious activity: artistic, scientific, political, religious

Shusterman rightly treats the meaning of entertainment as contextual: ‘[In] modern times, the contrast term has become serious art. But in earlier times, entertainment and amusement was contrasted with philosophy and the serious business of life, while the fine arts … [had] the lower status of entertainment’—whether higher or lower ( Shusterman, 2003 , p. 292). I develop Shusterman’s position by arguing that ‘fine arts’ is a modern concept, and that entertainment contrasts with any serious activity—science, politics, religion. The system of art, entertainment and sport is connected with the systems of sciences, politics and religion.

We now look at point (3), then (4).

Kristeller overlooked entertainment, which is generally under-theorized—though before the nineteenth century, the art-entertainment distinction was weaker. So a complementary or supplementary thesis to Kristeller’s is required: that a Western system of entertainment —initially involving music hall, circuses, professional sport—did not assume definite shape till the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, although ingredients were found in earlier periods. Entertainment always existed, but like art, only in the modern era did it evolve into a system involving an overarching, self-conscious concept. Artisans became elevated in social status when regarded as artists; however, jugglers, singers and comedians generally did not become elevated when recognized as (professional) entertainers. ‘Professional’ means self-conscious, aspiring to making a living from the activity.

Entertainment, like art, therefore has two senses. Broad sense entertainment existed in pre-modern societies as part of the rhythm of life and culture—not an independent category. There were clowns in Ancient Greece, circuses in Imperial Rome ( Potter, 2010 ). Medieval entertainment (broad sense) included feasts, banquets, jousts, tournaments and fairs; holidays featured entertainment by jesters, mummers, minstrels, acrobats, jugglers and conjurers. Narrow-sense entertainment , in contrast, is a modern development. As Dyer argues, it differs in audience, performers and intention to entertainment in traditional, feudal, or socialist societies:

[it is] performance produced for profit … before a generalized audience (the ‘public’), by a trained, paid group [whose performances] have the sole (conscious) aim of providing pleasure … [Medieval] pageants and amusements [were] governed by the Church and tied to seasonal—hence, economic—festivals … Our entertainment … is not in any coherent way associated with serious metaphysical or ceremonial practice. ( Dyer, 2002 , p. 19)

As private recreation or leisure activities acquired a public audience, they became entertainment. Conversely, activities once considered entertaining—public executions, bear-baiting, cock-fighting—disappeared from the public arena, no longer functioning as entertainment. (Perhaps dog-fights are now illegal entertainment.) Skills such as sword-fighting and archery became sports. These were later professionalized and also became entertainment.

Crucially, the modern system is an interconnected one of art and entertainment—professionalization occurs in both. Historians debate this gradual process. For Gray, late medieval records suggest travelling troupes of players, London-based professional companies emerged in the sixteenth century ( Gray, 2008 , p. 568). In 1576, James Burbage—father of Shakespearean actor, Richard Burbage—built probably the first permanent theatre in Europe since Roman times. Previously:

the concept of theatre had included no sense of place . A theatre was … a group of actors and an audience; the theatre was any place in which they chose to perform … [But now] theatre was an institution, a property, a corporation. ( Orgel, 1975 , p. 2)

Unlike a private or court theatre, a public playhouse such as Burbage’s was built by entrepreneurs; to be successful, ‘individual citizens, potential spectators, [must] compose themselves into that audience the producers have imagined’ ( Orgel, 1975 , p. 2, p. 6). Private theatres, in contrast, were creations of their courtly audiences.

Analogous developments occurred rather later in music. To reiterate, by 1800 the concert was the principal medium of musical performance—it ‘clearly distinguishes between performers and audience and … admits an anonymous public upon payment of an entrance fee’ ( Blanning, 2008 , p. 85). In early nineteenth-century Paris, as audiences began to listen silently, concerts became art rather than entertainment. But well into the nineteenth century, the boundary between performances that are art—and indeed science—and those that are entertainment was vague. Promenade Concerts at London’s Strand included selections from the latest Meyerbeer opera, accompanied by:

real Scottish Quadrilles … followed by the performances of the Infant Thalia, experiments with the Colossal Burning Lens and the New Oxyhydrogen Microscope, Popular Lectures, and the Laughing Gas every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evenings. (Blanning, 2009, p. 102)

On special occasions, leading conductor Louis Jullien had himself shot out of a trap-door, baton in hand. During the nineteenth century, the modern system separated into one of art and entertainment, while remaining interconnected.

Narrow-sense art and entertainment—self-conscious, overarching but non-exclusive categories—arise in prosperous societies that possess leisure, and in that sense are modern Western phenomena. They rest on the commercialization of leisure , encouraged by shorter factory hours ( Borsay, 2006 , Ch. 2). The Victorian era saw a shift from gregarious, participatory activities to large-scale spectator entertainments of music halls, circuses and professional sport. Dickens observed this change over his lifetime—his late career as a public reader of his work was a manifestation of it. In his readings, however, he wanted ‘the magic conversion of a public into a domestic space’, and remained attached to older communal traditions which were:

a locus for … spontaneity, selflessness and fellow-feeling. [The] enjoyment by family and friends of shared amusements had meaning for him far above the aesthetic accomplishment of the professional entertainer impersonally exhibiting his skills before an anonymous audience. ( Andrews, 2006 , p. 72; Schlicke, 1988 , p. 8)

Results of the commercialization of leisure included professional football, and music hall.

A Kristeller thesis for entertainment acknowledges the growing nineteenth century bifurcation between art and entertainment, while viewing art and entertainment as a single loose and informal unified system . Art with a capital ‘A’ (high or fine art) is defined principally against craft—the artist against the artisan—and, in the modernist era, against entertainment and the pure entertainer. Interlinking of genres is significant. Every performing art has a contrasting entertainment-genre; every non-performing art has a contrasting craft, including decoration. Theatre contrasts with variety or soap opera, the novel with pulp fiction, poetry with doggerel, painting with kitsch, art music with popular music. (Architecture seemingly lacks an entertainment equivalent.) Genres such as comedy, thriller, horror film or crime novel constitute or lend themselves to entertainment; tragedy, epic, history painting and monumental architecture do not. These are definitional, almost tautological claims. Comedy is a multiple phenomenon, or involves multiply related phenomena; as dramatic genre, it has both artistic and entertainment functions. To reiterate, entertainment primarily belongs to the performing arts, but extends across non-performing arts too.

The modern system of arts and entertainment includes crafts, and sport, whose aesthetic dimension is not limited to the graceful gymnast, or stroke-playing cricketer. Winning and its rewards are regarded as sport’s non-aesthetic aim, but that applies only to the participants—who benefit financially, career-wise and in terms of fame. It matters to the spectator whether Leicester beat Tottenham only because they have chosen, for their own pleasure, to feel that it does—an aesthetic dimension. But the aesthetics of sport cannot be pursued further here.

Reservations and uncertainties remain. To reiterate, our vocabulary of art and entertainment is deeply unsatisfactory, and one struggles to express the required distinctions by means of it. One unresolved issue is whether the art-entertainment relationship is fundamental. Every serious activity has its entertainment correlate. Entertainment also contrasts with science, maybe with (true) sport, even with punishment, which until the nineteenth century was a public spectacle. It might be concluded that there is no special dependency relation between art and entertainment. A further unresolved question is whether there is a test of time for entertainment. Is there ‘classic entertainment’—Laurel and Hardy’s short films, or Eddie Heywood’s easy listening classic ‘Canadian Sunset’? But that remains material for a future occasion.

For Jencks, postmodern architecture can be appreciated by the public, yet command critical approval.

Marie Lloyd is a good example ( Major, 2012 ).

Quoted in Jackson (1976), p. 287.

Welles, (1958) .

Although Orgel writes: ‘Dramas at [the early Stuart] court were not entertainments in the [usual] dismissive sense … [but] expressions of the age’s most profound assumptions about monarchy’ ( Orgel, 1975 , p. 8).

By ‘aesthetic’, he presumably means ‘artistic’. See Shiner (2001) , pp. 10–11.

The thesis is defended by Kivy, 2012 , and rejected by Young (2015) , Porter (2009) , Buchenau (2013) .

Adorno , T . ( 1997 ). Aesthetic theory . Hullot-Kentor, R. (trans.). London : Athlone .

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Home / Essay Samples / Entertainment

Essays on Entertainment

An entertainment essay focuses on a great range of topics that are related to fun leisure activities, whichever form they take: outdoor activities, team sports, amusement parks, cinematography, animation, theater, reading, playing table games or video games, painting, dancing. Entertainment is important for enjoying our lives, for stress management, social bonding. For children, it is even more vital since playing with other kids helps develop social interaction and communication skills and contributes to the development of healthy psychological traits. Given all these, it is obvious that entertainment deserves to be explored in greater detail. Check out the essays listed below for an overview of relevant topics, for example of proper content structuring, referencing, language use.

The Negative Effects of Video Games: Exploring the Impact

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"Do the Right Thing": Exploring Themes of Race and Social Injustice

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The Benefits of Playing Video Games for Children

In recent years, video games have become a ubiquitous part of children's lives. While concerns about their potential negative effects persist, this essay will focus on the numerous benefits of playing video games for children. Beyond mere entertainment, video games offer a range of cognitive,...

What Makes a Hero: Beyond Capes and Costumes

Heroes have been a part of human culture and mythology for centuries, embodying virtues, courage, and selflessness. In today's complex and interconnected world, the definition of a hero has evolved beyond the traditional image of a caped crusader or a legendary figure. Modern heroes come...

Video Games and Violence: Debunking the Myth

For decades, the debate over whether video games cause violence has raged on, fueled by sensationalized media stories and political rhetoric. However, a substantial body of research and expert opinion has consistently refuted this notion. In this essay, we will examine the evidence and arguments...

"The Hunger Games": Katniss and Peeta Relationship

The Hunger Games, authored by Suzanne Collins, is a dystopian novel that has captivated readers worldwide. One of its central themes is the evolving relationship between the main characters, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark. This essay delves into the intricacies of their relationship, exploring its...

Modern Hero: Examples of the Heroic Archetype in the Media

Heroes have been a central archetype in storytelling throughout human history. In modern media, this archetype takes on new forms and dimensions, reflecting the values and challenges of our time. This essay explores the concept of the hero in contemporary media by examining three distinct...

What is a Hero: Exploring the Depths of Heroism

The concept of heroism has captivated the human imagination for centuries. From ancient myths and legends to modern-day superheroes, heroes are central figures in our stories and culture. But what truly defines a hero? In this essay, we will embark on a journey to explore...

Video Games and the Objectification of Women

Video games have become a pervasive and influential form of entertainment, shaping the cultural landscape and impacting millions of players worldwide. While the gaming industry has made significant strides in terms of graphics, storytelling, and gameplay, it also faces criticism for perpetuating harmful stereotypes and...

"The Social Dilemma": Unpacking the Impact of Social Media

The Social Dilemma is a thought-provoking documentary-drama hybrid film that delves into the hidden mechanisms and consequences of social media platforms. Released in 2020, this film provides a sobering analysis of how social media algorithms, user data, and digital addiction are reshaping our societies. In...

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