Are You Not Entertained!?

This must rank among the best movie quotes of all time; that moment in the film Gladiator when Russell Crowe throws down his weapons and turns to the silenced spectators to ask them "Are you not entertained!? Is this not why you are here!?"

_{source: YouTube}

We all like to be entertained and entertainment, together with other art in all it's diverse forms, is an essential part of what makes us human in the first place; we're the only living sentient creatures that have been able to to achieve these cultural feats that were born out of the generational transference of knowledge through the powerful tool of storytelling. So entertainment in itself is not the deadly sin Russel Crowe makes it out to be in this magnificent scene from Gladiator. The problem is that entertainment has become an addiction, and that modern stories generally carry no worthwhile message or information to pass on to a next generation. This is the story about how consumerism births nihilism.

You know I like my entertainment a lot; there's almost no post from my hand in which I don't mention a film or book, even in passing, just because these stories are so convenient to illustrate a real world problem or topic. Good entertainment can be really valuable as it offers lessons to be learned for the real world. However, the nature of entertainment has changed drastically over the past few decades, due to rapid changes in technology, as well as rampant consumerism. Most of us, myself included, are consumers of entertainment; we watch TV, we go to the cinema, rent of buy a blue-ray or DVD, or occasionally even read a book. Or that's how it was before the internet; access to entertainment was rather limited before YouTube, Netflix and the countless other streaming services or subscription TV services.

We, the consumers of entertainment, don't go to the movies or turn on the television to be educated, but to be entertained. A good story gives us an opportunity to temporarily escape our daily grind; escapism is our main motivator. And this is a good thing when two conditions are satisfied: 1) we use this escape-door with moderation and 2) the creators of said entertainment take care to include some worthwhile message therein. You've guessed it already I presume, but technology and consumerism have annihilated both these conditions.

_{Gladiator (2000) | Are You Not Entertained}

It's no coincidence that millennials and Gen Z have inspired public thinkers like Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Zizek to frequently talk about modern society's nihilistic tendencies; these are the generations that grew up with the internet. We are now always online, carry our private entertainment device in our pocket and can punch up any type of entertainment whenever we feel like it. We've even come up with new expressions to celebrate this newfound ability, like "binge-watching." Using drugs is another way to escape the pressures of real life, but we all know that doing so without moderation we eventually lose touch with real life; we become addicted to the escape-door. This goes for every form of escapism, and entertainment has become an easy, yet dangerous choice of drugs, as it is made to be addictive, to make you hang on for more; the cliffhanger is a brilliant invention... and a rather mediocre movie starring Sylvester Stallone.

Things wouldn't be so bad if our entertainment at least contained within some valuable lessons; this is what separates great entertainment, like Gladiator, from cheap escapism, like anything on TV right now, and that's including "the news" and "documentaries" and even films. The valuable lessons have been replaced by lessons that sell. Everything in capitalism has one purpose only; to make a profit. And so entertainment is made solely for that purpose; if it sells it has served it's purpose. For TV income is dependent on viewer numbers; the bigger the audience, the more money will be payed for ads around that program. Asking difficult questions or trying to explain a difficult subject, carries in it the risk that viewers will zap away to another channel. This is why even the news is all flashy with not one but two photo-model anchors who can play off each other, CGI reconstructions of war-efforts and the occasional joke, usually one right before we go to the equally flashy weather forecasts or the much anticipated sports section. The mere fact that sports is part of "the news" should make you think back to Gladiator and make you realize that the news has become part of the entertainment that's to be consumed for a profit. To sell, everything has to be easily accessible to reach as wide public as possible, and fun to keep them watching.

This is not to point any fingers, certainly not at millennials of Gen Z, as I see them as victims in this story; they will have to deal with this precarious situation, and it's my generation that was instrumental in letting consumerism take over our world. The internet and technology in general can't be blamed either; these are just tools and society decides how we use them, or so it should be if we lived in anything resembling a real democracy. But we don't; in our world profits decide how we use the tools progress gives us. So we get what we want, lots of it, instead of what we need. The story told by modern entertainment, as well as in the advertisements that pay for them, is that you are the center of the universe around which all else revolves. "You just be you." "You deserve it." "This product is made with you in mind..." And so on... Satisfying yourself is not only allowed, it's your duty, it's you paying your debt to society by contributing to the economy as a good consumer. It's a downward spiral from which I can't see an easy escape, and I reckon many of the younger generations are as stuck as I am, which gives them yet another reason to go for the easily available escape-doors...

Are you not entertained? I hope not ;-) For now it's up to ourselves to resist the allure of cheap entertainment. In closing, I'll leave you with this student talking about binge watching and how TV evolves from a pastime to an addiction:

_{Addiction to Television TED Talk}

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