Audience and the Myth of Entertainment

Part one : The Audience and the Myth of Entertainment discusses the human condition in which we exist and the commercial verse artist media we experience. The author views our culture and the human condition as ones molded by our environment. Our text says, “It is estimated that as much as seventy-five percent of information entering the brain is from the eyes.” Therefore I can infer that we intake most of our knowledge and catalysis for ideas through what we see. Our culture is no longer about the nature and real world around us. We are a culture of immediate gratification and most things given to us at our fingertips. We have access to Google and the world wide web, leaving most a lack of hunger to be inquisitive. Any question one has can be answered instantly. Where is the need to work for something? How do new ideas generate? Art exists to create knowledge, questions, hunger, and instill purpose Art provokes something inside us. With commercial media we are creating reality in which we are just handed gratification, but not caused to think. Art invites the audience member along on the journey. They are not force fed like the everyday romantic comedy plot line. But asked questions and challenged.

Firstly we examine the reality we are living in during this palocybernetic age. Nature itself is now the solar system and our “ reality “ is the invisible environment of messages. In fact most of our population lives virtually in another world. It got me thinking if our reality is a construction of commercial media how much do we actually think for ourselves. The book went into more detail on this concept of loosing our ability to evolve. We instead are trained to crave plot lines we already know the ending to. We relate to the protagonist character and feel their emotions. The commercial media understands how to hit our triggers. Art makes us think. Thoughts are like the energy of our time. “Useful information accelerates change. Redundant information restricts change. If sustained long enough redundant information finally becomes misinformation, which results in negative change.”

The Noosphere or the film of organized intelligence that encircles the planet is filled with the information and energy that effects change. The text talked of revolution, a revolution toward freedom. It got me thinking that maybe the redundant information of commercialism is creating negative change in the noosphere. This negative change can cause us to unintentionally enslave ourselves. We as artist need to see this as a call and need for action. Art must be held to a high standard and effect the world around us.

Personal thoughts provoked by the reading regarding the thoughts of human nature and our environment.  “Science has proven that there's no such thing as "human nature." I am not sure I was convinced of this I truly do see how commercialism altars the beings we are. We are learned creatures, so there for if we are given the basic movie plot line for years and years since birth, we don’t expect or look for something else. If we are not exposed to art we may not even realize something is missing, but I have seen art change one’s perspectives. Art is like a fine meal in this case to me. A child who eats McDonalds every day will look on steak with scorn, yet as they mature a fine steak is their true desire. A first glance at true art might seem overwhelming. So many thoughts and questions leave the audience member still on the journey long after the piece is over. I have seen audiences that thrive on this aspect and keep coming back for more and some who play into the media and hate the thought of “thinking” during entertainment. “As with all else, however, there's an art and a craft to thinking, and the popular entertainments remain at the craft level by the very nature of their purpose.” In this way I can see that what we take as natural is actually a learned process. So therefor we are not actually controlling our environment it still controls us. During the Agricultural age the environment controlled us, as industry was invented we were able to control our environment, but has our industry become so controlling that yet again we have lost power? In a way has science stolen our humanity? Is it possible to regain control of our environment?

The point I wish to make here is obvious yet vital to an

understanding of the function of art in the environment, even though

it is consistently ignored by the majority of film critics. It's the idea

that man is conditioned by his environment and that "environment"

for contemporary man is the intermedia network. We are conditioned

more by cinema and television than by nature.’