By Ken Marks[Opening from the original on The Scratching Post, February 25, 2023, published here by permission of the author.]
It seems likely that entertainment and religion were once inextricably linked. Furthermore, the priest, the poet, and the chanter were likely one and the same person. Chanters would in time become what we recognize as singers. They added a musical accompaniment, at first only percussion. Then ritual dance joined in. These enhancements made the bond between entertainment and religion even stronger.
At some point, we realized that worship must engage eyes as well as ears. The visual arts were needed to give shape and color to shrines and representations of the divine. This was yet another form of entertainment. It had the mark of all that we call entertaining: the power to command our notice, evoke emotion, and give us an inexplicable sense of enrichment.
It was comedy that first made us think of entertainment as an independent phenomenon. There is nothing funny about religion. To laugh, someone’s dignity has to be punctured. It’s a minimum requirement. We can’t have gods tripping on banana peels, but if a proud hunter catches a spear in his ass, that might be hilarious. We noticed as well the artistic similarity between a heroic narrative and a comedic narrative. The droll story became an art form unto itself.
Entertainment evolved further when we realized how much in love we were with ourselves. Our flaws had given birth to tragedy and comedy. Might our opposite qualities, excellence of the mind and body, also be entertaining? Yes, in fact. Watching a savant compute the cube root of 53,582,633 or recall the box score of a baseball game on a given date makes us gasp at the magic of the mind. Watching jugglers and acrobats at work or a running back breaking tackle after tackle has a similar awe-inspiring effect. We love being amazed by ourselves….
[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]
| Copyright © 2023 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr. |
Ken, you must be a superhero yourself, to have “[sampled ‘entertainment’ exhaustively to compile this report],” for I am exhausted from merely reading it – a superhero I am not! I hope no producer gets the bright idea of developing a show depicting your odyssey.
ReplyDeleteI may have failed in my goal for this piece. Did you take away anything other than exhaustion?
DeleteKen, whether you achieved your goal or not depends on what it was. What goal were you trying for or did you think you had achieved?
DeleteOther than weariness, I came away with a need to review what “entertainment” means, and what I myself find entertaining. What immediately struck me in reading your opening paragraphs is that our respective conceptions of entertainment, and what we find entertaining, seem to be quite different. I think my exhaustion stemmed from finding the things you surveyed highly unentertaining – SO unentertaining that just reading about them, even in your scintillating way, depleted my energy. (In fact, I was in a funk most of the day yesterday.)
Right off the bat, with your opening, unsupported statement that “It seems likely that entertainment and religion were once inextricably linked,” you had me reeling. Huh? Why does that “seem likely”?
And then, in the same, opening paragraph: “It had the mark of all that we call entertaining: the power to command our notice, evoke emotion, and give us an inexplicable sense of enrichment.”
But maybe my understanding of “entertainment” and “to entertain” had been wrong all along? I went to Merriam-Webster:
entertainment
1 a: amusement or diversion provided especially by performers
“hired a band to provide entertainment”
b: something diverting or engaging: such as
(1): a public performance
(2): a usually light comic or adventure novel
to entertain
1: to show hospitality to
“entertain guests”
2: to provide entertainment (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/entertainment) for
3 a: to keep, hold, or maintain in the mind
“I entertain grave doubts about her sincerity.”
b: to receive and take into consideration
“refused to entertain our plea”
It seemed I was right: you were using the terms in much different senses. “Power to command our notice” is a far cry from amusement or diversion. “Sense of enrichment”?! In your Footnote 1 you seem to contradict yourself: “You won’t see Reading in this sampling because I rarely find it entertaining. I read mainly to gather information. I prefer to say that reading, at best, is ‘gratifying’.” You don’t get a “sense of enrichment” from reading? Mere gratification?
My post is a critique of contemporary entertainment. My goal is for readers to find the criticism insightful and provocative. I’m hoping to get comments like “I realize now why …”, “What you don’t understand about fantasy is …”, “Today’s music is wonderful because it …”, or “I never watch ‘manly men’ movies for another reason …”.
DeleteI can’t understand why you don’t see the link between religion and entertainment. It seems self-evident to me. Nor do I understand why you needed to look in a dictionary or why you feel vindicated by what you found. But I do see that you took away much more than the need for a nap, and I thank you for that.
Ken, I appreciate the care you take in all your writing, even (or especially) in your comments. The majority of commenters seem to dash their comments off with little attempt to make them clear (or even grammatical).
ReplyDeleteI use your reply to me as my template in replying to your reply:
This reader did find your latest critical scratching both insightful and provocative.
I realize now that I should have drunk an energy beverage and studied the post with sympathy toward the sorts of “entertaining” films and programs you invested so much time in examining and critiquing.
What you don’t understand about entertainment I tried to elucidate by quoting from a revered word authority and critiquing a couple of examples of your uses of the word. I of course understand (and sympathize with) your rejection of my critique as my own attempt at self-vindication. You are a much more highly skilled self-vindicator than I could ever hope to be. (I believe I acknowledged your being a superhero in my very first comment.)
Today’s music contributes to a general numbing of people’s ability to detach themselves from the buzz of confusion coating human life with thicker and thicker layers of unselfconsciousness (or maybe just unconsciousness, period).
I sometimes watch programs I don’t like because my wife wants to watch them, and she repays me the same communal courtesy. You’re familiar with the wedding-vow line, “for better, for worse.”
I understand that by saying you don’t understand my not seeing the link between religion and entertainment you mean to try to get me to say why I don’t think there’s a link, but you are the one in the witness box, and one of your readers has asked you to please explain why you think it’s “highly likely” that religion and entertainment are linked.
I appreciate your graciously ending your comment by complimenting me on taking more than exhaustion away from your post. I hope that this comment of mine gives you something of value as well and has not left you tired and regretting I wrote it.
I accept your invitation to dance, and I will follow your lead.
ReplyDeleteWe use dictionaries when we don’t know the meaning of a word — not your reason — or when we’re looking for a nuance that may have eluded us. You found a correspondence to my meaning in entry 1a and 1b (although the “especially” is outright wrong and the “such as” examples are pitiful). But you didn’t credit the possibility that my probing of the word went beyond 1a and 1b. I wrote that entertainment had “the power to command our notice, evoke emotion, AND give us an inexplicable sense of enrichment.” I call that an amplification. You can accept it or not, but it’s not a different meaning.
(I capitalized the “and” to show that entertainment must have all three characteristics. I grant that reading for information is enriching, but I choose to do it. It doesn’t command my notice and may or may not evoke emotion.)
Why is it “highly likely” that religion and entertainment were linked? In primitive tribes, religion had a primacy above all other communal activities. The world was fraught with danger, and appeals to supernatural forces were essential. To make these appeals emphatic, “decorations” were called for. So the appeals — or better, prayers — were sung. And they were rhythmic. Hence poetry, and perhaps drumbeats. Think of a rain dance or a plea for heavenly protection on the eve of battle or a funeral prayer for the afterlife of a loved one. Think of me as a child reciting the Four Questions in a singsong voice at a Passover celebration. Convinced yet?
Ken, I’m a bit dizzy from being twirled about.
DeleteNo, I am not convinced that religion and entertainment are linked, and I think that your opening paragraphs resting on that assumption add little or nothing to your critique of the entertainments you examined.
Your triumviral conception of entertainment as requiring all three of the attributes you specify (“the power to command our notice, evoke emotion, AND give us an inexplicable sense of enrichment”) seems unsupportable, given the reality of entertainment as commonly understood. But you are an uncommon person, and I concede that you must be granted the license to amplify as your brilliant insights direct you. Have at it! Keep scratching! Readers competent to understand you may be enriched.
Ken, as I was climbing the stairs to my computer for no reason related to blogging, it dawned on me that I may have missed the key to your beginning your post with entertainment’s roots in religion. That beginning brought you to the end of your introduction armed to ask an essential question prior to launching your examination and critique: “Had entertainment kept its ancient promise to bring us a mirthful demeanor, a rich sense of the beautiful, a deep comprehension of our humanity, and the wisdom to know what is within our grasp and what is beyond it?”
DeleteWith the light of that dawning I at last understood why you amplified "entertainment": to render it worthy of the gods (known in secular terms as discerning members of the audience – people like you and me). The amplification provided you a yardstick by which to judge the “genres” you examined. Of course, they fell below the bar. Brilliant!
I apologize for having taken so long to see this, and then only with the help of my muse.
I hope that you can at least derive some satisfaction from knowing that I hung in there and finally saw the light.
At any rate, I HOPE I have seen some light. I await your reply telling me whether I have or not.
Yes! I rejoice!
ReplyDeleteYou’ve seen the light, or at least my intention. Entertainment has made an odyssey from an accompaniment to religion to a commercial behemoth to … my fearful speculation … a replacement for reality.
Thank you for the dialogue.
Yes, I think we really did have a DIALOGUE, and I value it.
DeleteAn interesting question, for me, is whether it would have been a better read if your intentions had been clearly stated. Probably so, at least in my case, because your opening threw rather than gathered me, and it was downhill from there. I hope you have feedback from other readers to provide additional information to answer the question. (Or maybe you have already reached some conclusions on that score?)