The Entertainment Age

Entertainment is a valuable commodity. You invest your time into it, to make sure you get back to the routine and the mundane, with a renewal. It adds a spark to our lives and keeps us mentally fresh, despite the absorption of our usual bread-earning schedule. I believe that we all have a good idea about what we want from this investment of ours.

I can only wonder if we are getting the kind of entertainment we are after. More so, when I see means to entertainment cropping up/dying down over time. Even more so, if the frequency increases. By the way, who decides whether the time has come for something to be born or die? Who decides what kinda things people should be subject to?

There is so much crap over there, that we are subject to it even without our knowledge. Business and money play spoilsport too. Consider this : Earlier, film prints were a costly affair and the number of theatres were less. So, whatever a producer invests, he must be able to get back amidst these constraints. What then is the way out for a healthy business? Make good movies, so that people can watch them, feel good, and tell others about it, and make the movie run for a considerable time. By this, producers can get good business, and we can get good entertainment.

Consider present day. Theatres are in abundance and mass-production of prints is cheaper. So, a big number of prints in a big number of theatres means that, the time taken by the producer to get back the money is reduced. So, the probability of producing not-so-good, average, and bad movies goes up. What is the point of high budget movies, spending money to travel across the world for shoots, if what we get to see is our precious time going down the gutter. The implications of this might not be substantial for one time. But, over a period of time I’m afraid it creates a movie-viewer’s-lethargy.

Coming one level down, the television is also being infected little by little. Every other channel you can find a ‘super-duper’ dance shows, ‘bumper-hit’ song-a-thons, etc. One reason to have so many clones is, may be, to bring out and expose the vast talent pool. But, it can sustain only till it hits the saturation point. Who is thinking about all that?

If the rate of creativity involved in entertaining people becomes less than the rate of its saturation, we have to deal with a lot of “Boredom Under Lost Love for Special, Highly Interesting Talent” (BULLSHIT).