Entertainment Research Paper

Late in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Sir John Harington wrote a Treatise On Playe (Harington 1968), where he defines play as ‘a spending of the tyme eyther in speeche or action, whose only end ys a delyght of the mynd or the speryt.’ In Elizabethan culture play developed into commercial entertainments, and Harington’s definition corresponds with most modern definitions of play and entertainment. His distinction between entertaining words and entertaining actions also seems to correspond with the ancient Roman distinction between jocus (cf. joke) and ludus, but anachronism and ethnocentrism may lead to a distorted understanding if the modern concept of entertainment is projected onto cultures distant in time or space. Thus, during the Empire the Roman plays assumed explicit political functions. An operative definition of entertainment must therefore include a discussion of the interaction between history, structure, and functions in the emergence and the enjoyment of entertainment.

1. Play And Entertainment

‘Only when playing is man fully man,’ Friedrich Schiller declared in his manifesto Uber Asthetische Erziehung, and his words are echoed in Johan Huizinga’s (1937) influential book Homo Ludens, where it is claimed that all cultural institutions are derived from play. Huizinga’s sketch of the history of the concept of play, however, shows that the meaning varies from culture to culture. Thus, in ancient Greek the verb indicating ‘play’ literally meant ‘doing what children do’ (which raises a parallel problem of historical and cultural differences in the definition of childhood). In spite of the risk of anachronism and ethnocentrism, Huizinga presents the following general definition of play: it is an activity that is freely chosen, taking place in a space and time separated from the ordinary world, operating by fixed rules or by a general ‘rule’ of fictiveness, and leading to results, which are uncertain and unproductive. If freedom is fundamental to play, this would exclude the medieval carnivals since they were linked to a social and religious calendar, and it is indeed very likely that Huizinga’s definition of play itself is tied to modern, liberal society. If this is so, the process of secularization is what makes possible the transfer of forms of religious ritual to forms of play and entertainment, and this again implies that what appears to be the same activity actually is perceived very differently according to cultural norms.

One of Huizinga’s critics, Jean Henriot (1989), has suggested that a theory of play should consider the development of the idea of play rather than the practices of play. At the individual level the child learns to consider certain activities or certain attitudes towards these activities as play, and at the social level people learn to distinguish between for instance education, work, politics, war, and play.

Ideas such as play, work, etc. govern our perception of society, and play may even be interpreted as one of those ideas in which society reflects on itself. Henriot advocates a historical definition of play, but he also notes that it is always characterized by detachment and mental lightness, and here he comes close to Georg Simmel’s sociological perspective. Simmel suggests that all social processes may be considered as content and as form, and in play the forms are articulated for their own sake, while the content is suspended: in an entertaining conversation the aim is not to convince the other, the pleasure of verbal exchange is the only aim; and in a quiz-show the aim is not to get an answer to a problem, the playful reproduction of social forms known from the church (catechization) or the school (examination) is the only aim. The word ‘entertainment’ actually refers to play as a source of ‘sociability’ (Simmel). It is derived from Latin: inter means ‘among’ or ‘in between’ and tenere means ‘to hold,’ and therefore the meaning of entertainment is ‘to hold something mutually’ or ‘to keep something up.’ Entertainment is a social relationship and is concerned with social relations. Play has its origins in the fact that people cannot be alone, as La Bruyere stated in his Caracteres [1688], and one of the pioneers of modern entertainment, the composer Jacques Offenbach emphasized the importance of mutual support by declaring that his dream was ‘to found a share holding company of mutual insurance for the prevention of boredom’ (Kracauer 1976, p. 101).

Undoubtedly there are great differences between cultures as to the degree to which a culture can or may distinguish between the contents and the forms of its everyday practices, but Simmel’s perspective offers the possibility of a mediation between a historical and a formal understanding of play and entertainment; it indicates in what sense Huizinga was right when he saw a connection between play and the other cultural institutions; and it explains why play or play-like activities have been so influential in the description and interpretation of cultures distant in time as well as space from Mikhail Bakhtin and Emmanuell Le Roy Ladurie on the Renaissance carnival to Clifford Geertz on Balinese cock-fighting.

2. Bread And Circuses

In Western culture spectacles, circuses, mimes, etc. go back to antiquity. The idea of the ludic, i.e., the playful, is derived from the Roman concept of ludus (chariot races); and the idea of the aleatory, i.e., the hazardous, is derived from the Roman word for dice. In the course of Roman history it is possible to follow a restructuring of religious rituals—such as gladiatorial fights in connection with funeral rites—into cultural forms much closer to the modern idea of entertainment. Even though the giant spectacles of the Roman Empire functioned as part of a system that should solidify and glorify the status of those in power, they have become immensely powerful models for modern entertainment and modern critique of entertainment. Juvenal’s verdict on a social policy that replaced the active political commitment of its citizens by the passive reception of ‘bread and circuses’ has inspired a ‘mythology of negative classicism’, i.e., comparisons of the development of modern society with the social decay of classical Rome (see Brantlinger 1983, p. 18). Just as the Romans staged enormous sea battles, mythological or historical, so English imperialism was supported by show business in gigantic reproductions of the imperial wars in the colonies, for instance the wars in South Africa staged as Savage South Africa. Colosseum has become a popular name for modern establishments within show business, and Las Vegas of course boasts a Caesar’s Palace.

3. Carnival

In the Middle Ages, Roman festivals such as the Saturnalia and Lupercalia metamorphosed into the still-existing tradition of carnival. Entertainment is often characterized as recreation, and re-creation is what characterizes the carnival. The rural and pagan carnival would recreate the natural world, the Christian carnival would recreate the religious community, and the urban carnival would recreate the power and splendour of the city—or different groups and corporations within the city. During the carnival the world is turned upside down, and in this period of creative chaos the sense of community is reanimated.

In contrast to commercial entertainment however, the participants in the carnival were not free to choose their leisure, and therefore their performances cannot be called pure entertainment. From the perspective of the church or the city council who presided over the event, the aim of the carnival was to make the different groups of society accept hierarchy. The function of the blasphemous words and gestures was to frighten people away from changing society or at least to restrict their demands for social and spiritual change to the carnival season.

That the authorities could use the carnival is the only plausible explanation of their pivotal role in staging the processions and plays of the carnival. But as long as the carnival lasted the situation was potentially open, the functions and the future of society were put at stake, and the safety valve might turn into an explosive political risk. Mikhail Bakhtin (1968) emphasizes the emancipatory aspects of the carnival in his influential book Rabelais and his World, while Emmanuelle Le Roy Ladurie in his Le Carna al De Romans shows the confrontation between disciplining forces and rebellious forces within the carnival.

4. Courtly Diversions

In Europe in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries the ways of popular culture and elite culture separated. Politically, as power became centralized the powerful made a spectacle of themselves through fireworks, pageants, and allegorical plays, while reducing their subjects to spectators. Economically, the Reformation and the rise of the middle classes, who knew that time was money, was accompanied by a war against idle leisure.

To the aristocracy as well as the middle classes, the experience of time, the abstract and empty time of the clock, became a new social experience, but while the aristocracy actively cultivated a culture of pastimes and diversions, the puritan middle classes rejected all pastimes that would divert their attention from work. While the aristocracy in an oblique way became the pioneers of modern entertainment, the puritans just as obliquely shaped the pattern of modern cultural critique.

The culture of di ertissements at the French court developed as the process of centralization and the politics of absolutism changed the ‘nobility of the sword’ into courtiers. Leisure time at court became a psychological as well as a political problem. To aristocrats used to fighting, hunting, etc., life at court was inactive and boring, and they had to do something to pass away their time. Diversions would compensate for the lack of activity and power and at the same time the entertaining discussions, dances, etc. would create a social bond between them. The intricate equestrian displays known as carrousels epitomized this domestication of a warrior class through entertainment. A trace of this historical development may still be seen in the predilection for a lavish, baroque style in merry-go-rounds and other fairground architecture.

5. Commerce And Buying Fun

In the eighteenth century the word entertainment (or in Germany: Unterhaltung) had a breakthrough, but this was in reference to private or domestic entertainment. The expansion of the book market contributed to changing the private home into a sphere of entertainment, and in so far as stories of love or adventure were written for the market, the principle of publicity entered the private sphere. The court was replaced by the market as the provider of entertainment, and these entertainments were open to everyone with sufficient money. In 1725 Daniel Defoe noted that writing had become ‘a very considerable Branch of the English Commerce’ (Watt 1957, p. 55), and an increasingly popular genre such as ‘the penny dreadful’ indicates the importance of the market. In the Scandinavian languages the word commerce became synonymous with having fun.

However, at the beginning of the nineteenth century Joseph Strutt wrote The Sports And Pastimes of the People of England (1801) in which it is obvious that the idea of public entertainment for a general public was only beginning to get a foothold. In his table of contents the pastimes are divided according to time, place, and social group: ‘Rural exercises practised by persons of rank,’ ‘Rural exercises generally practised,’ ‘Pastimes usually exercised in towns and cities, or places adjoining to them,’ ‘Domestic amusements of various kinds; and pastimes appropriated to particular seasons.’

In contrast to premodern entertainments the break with hierarchy was a general feature of the modern culture of entertainment. When Philip Astley (Speaight 1980) founded the first circus at Westminster Bridge in 1770—gathering itinerant showmen, jugglers, clowns, and acrobats under the same roof, with riding masters as a tribute to aristocratic culture—he addressed his public as ‘the Nobility, Gentry and others.’ But he, as well as other entrepreneurs within show business, soon learned that it would pay off to put the ‘others’ in the foreground. If the new entertainment industry used amusements of the old aristocratic culture, they would inevitably democratize the diversions of the past. Søren Kierkegaard made ‘leveling’ a key concept in his analysis of modern, urban culture; Georg Simmel wrote of ‘leveling’ in his analysis of ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ from 1903; and in 1913 Georges d’Avenel published a book on the leveling of amusements in modern times: Le nivellement des jouissances.

6. The Mass Entertainment Industry Of The Nineteenth Century

According to Asa Briggs (1960) five conditions stand out for the development of a mass entertainment industry in the nineteenth century. First, a large and concentrated urban population. Second, sufficient money to buy regular, cheap entertainment. Third, sufficient leisure time to make a commercial exploitation possible. Fourth, urban transportation systems to take the public to the places and palaces of entertainment. Fifth, the application of technology to entertainment. The money, the leisure time, the transportation, and the technology making mass reproduction possible are self-evident preconditions for the rise of a mass entertainment industry. The process of urbanization, however, needs some further comment.

In the nineteenth century the concentration of the urban population was preceded by an uprooting of people—from the countryside, from tradition, etc.— and the isolation of the individual in the middle of the urban crowd called forth a need for the mental support of entertainment. Just as the popular culture of fairytales, carnival, etc. had given form and meaning to the culture of the preindustrial society, the mass entertainment industry shaped a sense of community between urban dwellers, who could no longer rely on time-honored traditions or pre-established social relations. Boredom may be termed the cultural disease of the nineteenth century. Similar to the boredom experienced at the courts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this was the psychological reflection of a loss of cultural meaning, a loss of a common cause. A recurrent theme in nineteenth century literature was the characterization of boredom (ennui, Langeweile) as a modern invention, a modern monster, the constitutional evil of the century (see Sagnes 1969). In the same year that the cosmopolitan Georg Carstensen opened the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Søren Kierkegaard published his EitherOr with an ironical chapter on boredom as the source of all creation including the Creation, and as a remedy to this boredom he suggested public entertainments on a grand scale.

The grandest scale was represented by the city itself and the crowd, and urban life became a leading motive in all kinds of modern entertainment: panoramas such as the London Colosseum showing a panorama of London as seen from the cupola of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, crime and detective stories, melodramas, music (from Offenbach’s ‘La vie parisienne’ to the role songs of the music halls). Many of the new establishments of entertainment were even constructed as small cities, for instance panoramas with their spectacular 360 degree representations of cityscapes; world exhibitions; amusement parks such as the Tivoli Gardens; and zoological gardens with gates, walls, streets, squares, and animals living in cages shaped like buildings from their native countries.

City life was entertaining in itself, as witnessed by cafes, promenades, show windows, etc., and the appeal to visual pleasures was noticed by most observers. Charles Lamb wrote of the spectacle as the essence of the city; Theophile Gautier declared that the era of purely visual spectacles had arrived; and in the 1880s a new and abundant use of the terms ‘show’ and ‘show business’ (see Nasaw 1993) marked that visual turn of entertainment which has continued with film, television, and even music videos in the twentieth century.

7. A Map Of Modern Entertainment

A map of modern entertainment may take as its starting point the minimizing expression: ‘only entertainment.’ This expression indicates two things: (a) that entertainment has become a specific sphere in society, and (b) that entertainment has no importance. As a specific sphere, as ‘show business,’ entertainment differs from play although it is based on forms of play. And as a sphere of activities allegedly of no importance, entertainment differs from art although the absence of intentions may be seen as an extreme version of the esthetic attitude defined by Kant as ‘disinterested pleasure.’ However, the reduction of entertainment to ‘only entertainment’ may be interpreted as an effort to deny or exorcise the real importance of entertainment in modern society: as a substitute for religion, as a purveyor of a new mythology, as a part of politics, and as a key sector in the economy.

As mentioned above, boredom seems to have been the mental reflection of the processes of modernization, which changed the status of religion, politics, economy, and private life. Uprooted from traditional social ties, modern man was thrown back on himself. Entertainment, however would offer a reconstruction of social ties based on the elementary experiences of the body and the gaze. Circus, melodrama, waxworks, the whole show-business, literally show that the body and the gaze are the stuff entertainment is made of. On one hand the concept of diversions indicates that entertainment literally should divert attention from this boredom. On the other hand entertainment became an institution or a cultural practice which should shape the relationship between the individual and modern life, the mass and modernity.

Play is the basis of entertainment and similarly to play, the forms of entertainment may be divided into four categories, each articulating a specific relation between the individual and society—or the mass and power. Following Roger Caillois (1967) the main forms of entertainment may be interpreted as four different ways of handling the oppositions between identification and alienation and activity and passivity (or action and passion).

(a) Activity and identification are leading principles in chariot races, chivalrous tournaments, and sports as well as in the shooting parlors of the amusement parks, and in the narratives of action and adventure whether told in novels, films, or TV shows. Just as the hero does, the audience identifying with the hero seeks the recognition of their identity in the hero’s victory. The characteristic emotional experience of action, adventure, and competition is suspense, which gives the reader or spectator a vicarious feeling of taking part in the action.

(b) Passivity and identification are leading principles in all games of chance, in horror stories, etc. The heroes are more often than not victims, and if they end up as winners it is not by their own merit. Identification therefore does not consist in recognition of their name but in identification of the number which makes them winners. The characteristic emotional experience of this type of entertainment is the thrill, which gives the reader or spectator a vicarious feeling of being victimized or saved by alien forces.

(c) Activity and alienation are leading principles in all kinds of theater, masquerades, variety shows, literary parodies, etc. The heroes here take on the heroic or villainous or just different persona of another person, and if they gain a name, it is through their talent for making themselves another person. The whole gamut of feelings is of course invited by this type of entertainment.

(d) Passivity and alienation are leading principles in slapstick comedy, in many kinds of music and dance, in swings, merry-go-rounds, roller-coasters, etc. The heroes here hand over themselves and their destiny to impersonal forces, and in contrast to the gambler do not look for any profit but the pleasure of vertigo. Even though emotional distance from the capers and clowns of all sorts is one of the enjoyments of comedy, the readers or spectators who give themselves over to laughter are also looking for the pleasure of losing control.

Even though play often involves a gathering of onlookers, it is not, as in public entertainment, based on a division between actors and spectators. This division of course complicates any mapping of emotional investments and gains. In action and adventure the investments of reader or spectator parallel the hero, whereas in comedy the investments of the reader or the spectator are characterized by their contrast to the troubles of the ‘hero’ (i.e., the fool or the clown). And even though a horse race confronts parties in a competition where they can only rely on their own skill in their endeavor to be named winners, the spectators may very well make it an occasion for gambling. The map thus needs further elaboration, but already this provisional map shows the possibility of describing and comparing forms of entertainment across the different media. What they have in common are typical, and sometimes stereotypical, ways of staging self-experience and social bonds.

8. Entertainment Now

After 1900 show business has developed exponentially with the new media, but now the system of genres and types seems well established. Sampling, parody, and similar kinds of recycling indicate a growing familiarity with the world of entertainment. Also a new entertainment form such as computer games is characterized by using the formulaic worlds of adventure, crime, gothic tales etc. In spite of computer cafes, this medium also confirms the trend toward privatization and even individualization of entertainment: the radio made it possible to enjoy a symphony on the sofa, the television set made the sitting room into a cinema, the transistor radio and the home video made it possible for individuals to chose when they would enjoy a specific program, the Walkman made the individual into a closed electronic circuit. In contrast to this process of extreme individualization a number of new entertainment forms offer the pleasure of being a member of a crowd: rock festivals, sport events, cult movies. Entertainment no longer forms a distinctive sphere, or it is at least often discussed as an aspect of education, politics, work, or even war (wargames). If entertainment is a dramatization and an interpretation of modern life, this invasion of the other spheres of social life may reveal a growing need for understanding how society—in Simmel’s words—is possible.

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