What do we understand with the term entertainment?

People can get very stressful in their day to day lives, and to relax and get them out of their mental state, entertainment very comes handy. By being entertained by others it helps people to relax, reduce stress and be distracted for a while. Reducing stress with a good distraction helps to drain out negative emotions and allows the person to see life with a clearer mind and solve problems better. Entertainment’s main aim is to hold an audience’s attention, although individuals find different media and genres as entertaining and worthy of their attention, most forms of entertainment are recognizable and accepted by the mass.

Story telling

Is the most ancient forms of entertainment. It predates writing. The earliest form of storytelling mostly combined orals with gestures and expressions. Every culture has its own narrations and genres of storytelling, but one common reason stories needed to be shared is for entertainment purpose, education, cultural preservation and instilling moral values. Storytelling has its genres too, mainly, fairy tales, folktales, mythology, legends, fables etc. Fairy tales is a form of short story which typically features magically creatures, fairies, angels, witch craft, dwarfs, mermaids, various talking sea creatures etc. Usually having happy endings and perfect stories.

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Folklore is a genre of story which holds cultural values among a particular group of people, it encompasses the traditions common to that culture. Folklore is not obtained by public school or a subject in fine arts, its informally passed on from person to person. Myths, it is a genre of folklore, but here the characters are mainly gods and goddesses, demi gods and supernatural humans holding essential moral values for a civilised lifestyle and plays a fundamental role in a society. Legends, this is also a genre of folklore, that fathoms narratives featuring human actions, believed to have taken place in human history, eg – Buddha’s Jataka. Fables, a succinct fictional story in a prose or verse that includes, animals, plants, weather, inanimated objects etc.

Music

A human speech vocalized with addition of instrument, sounds pleasing to humans, it tricks the mind into thinking it’s a speech. Music transcends languages, it’s a universal language of gaining human attention in the shortest span of time. Listening to music, singing along to a song or just humming a tune is the most distractive form of entertainment known to humans. Music is a personal thing and can be as many genres as the world’s population. Cooperation and companies make millions an hour by producing music, some of the most popular genres are- Electronic dance music, pop, rock, jazz, dubsteps, trance, classical music, alternative rock, soft pop, love songs etc. There’s a genre for every emotion known to humans.

Books, newspaper, magazines

These are great short- or long-term forms of entertainment. The first dated printed book is “Diamond sutra” printed in China in 868 AD. Johannes Gutenberg printed the first book on a printing press with moveable type in 1453. This invention changed the world completely and how the reading materials were printed and received throughout the world. Newspapers were born in the 17th century, although it became a mass media only in 19th century.

Upgrading technologies

Before the invention of still photography, Peter Mark Roget discovered the principle of persistence of vision in 1822 in UK. According to this principle, a human eye’s retention of visual perception of an object stays 1/16th second, after the rays of light proceeding from it stopped entering the eye, thus creating moving image. In the year 1895, Lumiere Brothers were successful in demonstrating the Lumiere Programme, this was the first-time audience got to see good quality projection cinema.

Over a century, cinema grew country to country, the films gradually started having stories and plots in them, it was edited, directed and produced in good quality. The films developed into feature length films i.e., upto 90-120 minutes. Some genres of cinema are- horror, sci-fi, comedy, action. Rom-com, documentary, adventure, thriller, crime films, romance, drama, musical, noir etc. again just like music, cinema differs person to person and with a creative mind we can have as many genres as we desire.

Radio, forms of wireless audio transmission

In November 1894, Dr. Jagadish Chandra Bose, demonstrated publicly the use of radio waves in Calcutta, but he wasn’t interested to disclose his research work of be disclose. This ignite a spark far away across oceans an inspired Marconi’s wireless signalling experiment. In 1920s the first radio station was created in USA to broadcast election news, sporting events and opera performances. With the power of capitalism, by 1923 there were over 450 radio stations run by amateurs but in Europe things were different, the government decided, this form of media is too powerful to be left in public hands. Thus, they set up radio stations with tax payer’s money. BBC was set up during the same time. Radio genres include, pop/adult contemporary, non-commercial speciality shows, commercial morning/ late night shows, radio-dramas, interviews, news, sport events etc.

Television, wireless, audio-visual, electronic transmission

In 1926, John Logie Baird in UK produced the electronic image leading to television. Television was made possible after 5 years of steady hard labour. It went from black and white to colour. It grew from country to country, to the regional transmission to national and global transmission. Television has always been an instant medium of entertainment, serving distraction of millions of people globally every minute. Television is considered personal and more interactive than cinema, thus it became a household necessity quickly. Some genres of television are – sports, sitcom, documentary, soap, cartoon, travel or holiday, kids/ educational, drama, etc.

Internet, a system of interconnected computer networks

Inked by copper wires, fibres-optic cables, wireless connection etc. Contradictory to popular beliefs Internet and worldwide web are synonymous; the web is the contents, or the interconnected data, documents, linked by hyperlinks and URLS. The internet quickly became the centre of entertainment, as everything is extremely accessible via the Internet. We can do so many things on the web, from reading newspaper, e-books, watching videos, listening to radio shows to playing games, everything can be achieved from the comforts of our home. Some of the popular ways of entertainment are – Blogs, podcast, watching series, movies, online videos, posting memes, playing video games, interacting over social media etc. Internet is an open ocean with infinite possibilities.

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