A Wide Reckoning of Narrowed Entertainment
Why do humans need entertainment? Any guesses...? Well, frankly no one can say why we need it. Perhaps we can answer the question why we get bored? Any guesses...? No? So it is a vicious pair huh! Perhaps some viewers can guess why I am asking this question! Meanwhile, I tried to google about Animal kingdom sans Humans and found that Animals (Terrestrial, Aerial, Amphibious & Aquatic) don’t get bored. They do relax, obviously after they had their meals but don’t get bored and do not hence seek for entertainment. The young ones till they are young do play and have fun but there is no boring time to do time pass or seek entertainment per se.
Entertainment, recreation, time-pass or whatever, we all want some during the day. Forms of entertainments could be different for different people. Well, this posting is no lecture on forms of entertainment and people’s choice. This posting is about entertainment’s one form – cinema/tv where actually we can choose from what is offered and not mend it according to your wish (like book reading or driving et al). Reason to talk about this form is because of its power. It is not just an entertainment but actually A Very Powerful Medium. A medium that can transform thought process which I must admit A Book or all Best Seller Writers put together cannot. The screen is mightier than the pen.
The medium’s main advantage is 1 to n correspondence, simultaneously(oops! Sorry for a tiny mathematical expression). It is also debatable that whether entertainment should be something that gives you relaxed thought process or organize your thoughts or just make you thoughtless. Hence it is debatable just because cinema/tv is a medium that is far reaching & hence should it be used only as message or just recreation that produces void space in our mind.
By separating the notion of engagement and enrichment from that of entertainment, we seem to be acknowledging that the idea of entertainment today is one that excludes all forms of thoughtfulness. The word entertainment seems to be contained entirely in the idea of amusement, diversion and distraction, and needs to be supplemented with other descriptions when we want to connote any use of the mind.
While diversion is without question a critical ingredient of entertainment, it is by no means an exhaustive definition. To be entertained is for ones mind to be agreeably occupied as one dictionary puts it. Thus just as watching a Govinda movie is entertaining (although one could argue that here the mind is kept agreeably vacant), so is solving a crossword puzzle, listening to an inspired comic, reading a good book, going to the opera or listening to classical music. But implicit definition for the today’s times is such that any activity that calls for application of mind defines work of some kind and hence definition of entertainment has been redefined as an idea of amusement, diversion and distraction.
Add to this technology coming to rescue. Sometimes I feel most of the technology (I would argue that up to 60% at least) is just meant for the world of entertainment which actually makes entertainment quickly accessible, provide a high degree of sensory stimulation, and keep us from actively doing something else. Like iPod, Walkman, Discman, FM Radio, et al. That means the best minds who work for Apple, Xbox, Playstation, Sony, Samsung etc are working on such problems that do not exist or for people who really have no problems. I mean who is actually worrying for not having iPod before it was created? Ironically this culture present in any society means it is ‘Advanced’, i.e. it has an advanced form of entertainment. The other day there was an article about Google's new phone 'Nexus' not coming to India any soon. Hoosh! What a concern? Present day engagement of twitter, blogging and networking sites where people would like to expose everything about themselves but would like privacy when they get a seat in the train or bus(ironic once again) is another form of entertainment.
To be entertained today, one must be passive, and surrender entirely to the experience. It sounds yogic! The mind must be idle in neutral and yet be able to enjoy what is thrown at it, & any effort on its part means that entertainment is gone. The argument is market (read acceptability) for sense and sensibility exists in a small percentage but otherwise it is mindlessness all the way. I have often observed that most of them enjoy that form of entertainment where the thought process is arrested, jailed, paused, paralyzed or completely made non-existing after the so called hard day of work but not punished; as they think so, by making it work again. No thought and sensory stimulation equals entertainment. No wonder this thoughtlessness has put creativity on the back stage. Once my closest pal said that, “just like not everyone can be 1st ranker in a class so there can’t be many best creations of entertainment”. That is another thoughtless behavior.
Life today substantially is “live today because tomorrow may not come”! Boloney! Optimism is all about waiting for that tomorrow. But revelers are neither Optimistic nor Pessimistic. They are stateless and voluntarily mindless. It is strange that all animals are born with organs or adapting capability to survive except humans. What we can do is a little of everything that many animals do, we can swim, climb, hop, run, see et al and although we are not the best in everything where we lack the ability to become the best we mastered it with our intelligence, that is by using our mind. And now whether we all use it or not, the state when actually we are not using it is the state we all seek most of the times now a days. Even many forms of meditations from Martial Art to Yoga to any act of discipline as such insist on bringing the mind to that state. Does it mean we are becoming animals of other form by not making mind to work for a while? Hmm… Should I think about it? :P
Entertainment, recreation, time-pass or whatever, we all want some during the day. Forms of entertainments could be different for different people. Well, this posting is no lecture on forms of entertainment and people’s choice. This posting is about entertainment’s one form – cinema/tv where actually we can choose from what is offered and not mend it according to your wish (like book reading or driving et al). Reason to talk about this form is because of its power. It is not just an entertainment but actually A Very Powerful Medium. A medium that can transform thought process which I must admit A Book or all Best Seller Writers put together cannot. The screen is mightier than the pen.
The medium’s main advantage is 1 to n correspondence, simultaneously(oops! Sorry for a tiny mathematical expression). It is also debatable that whether entertainment should be something that gives you relaxed thought process or organize your thoughts or just make you thoughtless. Hence it is debatable just because cinema/tv is a medium that is far reaching & hence should it be used only as message or just recreation that produces void space in our mind.
By separating the notion of engagement and enrichment from that of entertainment, we seem to be acknowledging that the idea of entertainment today is one that excludes all forms of thoughtfulness. The word entertainment seems to be contained entirely in the idea of amusement, diversion and distraction, and needs to be supplemented with other descriptions when we want to connote any use of the mind.
While diversion is without question a critical ingredient of entertainment, it is by no means an exhaustive definition. To be entertained is for ones mind to be agreeably occupied as one dictionary puts it. Thus just as watching a Govinda movie is entertaining (although one could argue that here the mind is kept agreeably vacant), so is solving a crossword puzzle, listening to an inspired comic, reading a good book, going to the opera or listening to classical music. But implicit definition for the today’s times is such that any activity that calls for application of mind defines work of some kind and hence definition of entertainment has been redefined as an idea of amusement, diversion and distraction.
Add to this technology coming to rescue. Sometimes I feel most of the technology (I would argue that up to 60% at least) is just meant for the world of entertainment which actually makes entertainment quickly accessible, provide a high degree of sensory stimulation, and keep us from actively doing something else. Like iPod, Walkman, Discman, FM Radio, et al. That means the best minds who work for Apple, Xbox, Playstation, Sony, Samsung etc are working on such problems that do not exist or for people who really have no problems. I mean who is actually worrying for not having iPod before it was created? Ironically this culture present in any society means it is ‘Advanced’, i.e. it has an advanced form of entertainment. The other day there was an article about Google's new phone 'Nexus' not coming to India any soon. Hoosh! What a concern? Present day engagement of twitter, blogging and networking sites where people would like to expose everything about themselves but would like privacy when they get a seat in the train or bus(ironic once again) is another form of entertainment.
To be entertained today, one must be passive, and surrender entirely to the experience. It sounds yogic! The mind must be idle in neutral and yet be able to enjoy what is thrown at it, & any effort on its part means that entertainment is gone. The argument is market (read acceptability) for sense and sensibility exists in a small percentage but otherwise it is mindlessness all the way. I have often observed that most of them enjoy that form of entertainment where the thought process is arrested, jailed, paused, paralyzed or completely made non-existing after the so called hard day of work but not punished; as they think so, by making it work again. No thought and sensory stimulation equals entertainment. No wonder this thoughtlessness has put creativity on the back stage. Once my closest pal said that, “just like not everyone can be 1st ranker in a class so there can’t be many best creations of entertainment”. That is another thoughtless behavior.
Life today substantially is “live today because tomorrow may not come”! Boloney! Optimism is all about waiting for that tomorrow. But revelers are neither Optimistic nor Pessimistic. They are stateless and voluntarily mindless. It is strange that all animals are born with organs or adapting capability to survive except humans. What we can do is a little of everything that many animals do, we can swim, climb, hop, run, see et al and although we are not the best in everything where we lack the ability to become the best we mastered it with our intelligence, that is by using our mind. And now whether we all use it or not, the state when actually we are not using it is the state we all seek most of the times now a days. Even many forms of meditations from Martial Art to Yoga to any act of discipline as such insist on bringing the mind to that state. Does it mean we are becoming animals of other form by not making mind to work for a while? Hmm… Should I think about it? :P
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