What is Entertainment?

Entertainment includes any activity that grabs and maintains an audience's attention, whether it's a concept, a job, or more likely, an activity or event developed over thousands of years specifically to keep an audience interested.

Although various aspects of entertainment appeal to different people due to personal preferences, most forms are recognizable and familiar. Storytelling, music, theatre, dance, and various performance styles have existed in all civilizations, received support from royal courts, and grown into complex forms over time. This process has been accelerated in modern times by an entertainment industry that records and sells entertainment products.

Entertainment adapts and transforms to fit any scale, from a person choosing private entertainment from a now-vast array of pre-recorded products, to a dinner party designed for two, to gatherings of any size or type with appropriate music and dance, to performances designed for thousands or even global audiences.

Historical Evolution of Entertainment

  • Ancient craft of storytelling has evolved and developed "toward variety."
  • Most entertainment, including theater, music, and drama, remains familiar but has developed into various forms to meet a wide range of personal preferences and cultural expressions.
  • Many types are blended or supported by other forms. For example, drama, stories, and banqueting (or dining) are commonly enhanced by music; sport and games are incorporated into other activities to increase appeal.
  • Some may have evolved from serious or necessary activities (such as running and jumping) into competition and then become entertainment.
  • Public executions became a popular form of entertainment during Roman times.
  • Activities such as fencing or archery, once used in hunting or war, have become spectator sports. Cooking has evolved into professional performances.
  • Religious activities, such as cooking, have evolved into secular entertainment.
  • Entertainment can go beyond gratification and produce insight in its audience.
  • Entertainment may artfully consider universal philosophical questions such as: "What does it mean to be human?"; "What is the right thing to do?"; or "How do I know what I know?".
  • The "meaning of life," for example, is the subject in a wide range of entertainment forms, including films, music, and literature.

Forms of Entertainment

Banquets have been a venue for amusement, entertainment, or pleasure since ancient times, continuing into the modern era until the 21st century. They are still used for many of their original purposes – to impress visitors, especially important ones; to show hospitality; as an occasion to showcase supporting entertainments such as music or dancing, or both.

Music supports various forms of entertainment and most kinds of performance. For example, it enhances storytelling, is indispensable in dance and opera, and is usually incorporated into dramatic film or theatre productions. Music is also a universal and popular type of entertainment on its own, constituting an entire performance, such as when concerts are given.

Games are played for entertainment – sometimes purely for recreation, sometimes for achievement or reward as well. They can be played alone, in teams, or online; by amateurs or by professionals. Equipment varies with the game. Board games, such as Go, Monopoly, or backgammon need a board and markers. One of the oldest known board games is Senet, a game played in Ancient Egypt, enjoyed by the pharaoh Tutankhamun.

Literature has long been a source of entertainment, particularly when other forms, such as performance entertainments, were (or are) either unavailable or too costly. Even when the primary purpose of the writing is to inform or instruct, reading is well known for its capacity to distract from everyday worries. Both stories and information have been passed on through the tradition of orality and oral traditions survive in the form of performance poetry, for example. However, they have drastically declined.

Comedy is both a genre of entertainment and a component of it, providing laughter and amusement, whether the comedy is the sole purpose or used as a form of contrast in an otherwise serious piece. It is a valued contributor to many forms of entertainment, including in literature, theatre, opera, film, and games.

Performance involves live performances before an audience and constitute a major form of entertainment, especially before the invention of audio and video recording. Performance takes a wide range of forms, including theatre, music, and drama.

Storytelling is an ancient form of entertainment that has influenced almost all other forms. It is "not only entertainment, it is also thinking through human conflicts and contradictions". Hence, although stories may be delivered directly to a small listening audience, they are also presented as entertainment and used as a component of any piece that relies on a narrative, such as film, drama, ballet, and opera.

Theatre performance, which is typically dramatic or musical, is presented on a stage for an audience and has a history that goes back to Hellenistic times when "leading musicians and actors" performed widely at "poetical competitions", for example, at "Delphi, Delos, Ephesus".

Cinema and film are a major form of entertainment, although not all films have entertainment as their primary purpose: documentary film, for example, aims to create a record or inform, although the two purposes often work together.

Dance provides entertainment for all age groups and cultures. Dance can be serious in tone, such as when it is used to express a culture's history or important stories; it may be provocative; or it may put in the service of comedy. Since it combines many forms of entertainment – music, movement, storytelling, theatre – it provides a good example of the various ways that these forms can be combined to create entertainment for different purposes and audiences.

Animals have been used for the purposes of entertainment for millennia. They have been hunted for entertainment (as opposed to hunted for food); displayed while they hunt for prey; watched when they compete with each other; and watched while they perform a trained routine for human amusement.

Circus is described as "one of the most brazen of entertainment forms", and is a special type of theatrical performance, involving a variety of physical skills such as acrobatics and juggling and sometimes performing animals.

Magic involves stage traditions and texts of magical rites and dogmas that have been a part of most cultural traditions since ancient times.

Street performance has been meeting the public's need for entertainment for centuries. It was "an integral aspect of London's life", for example, when the city in the early 19th century was "filled with spectacle and diversion".

Parades are held for a range of purposes, often more than one. Whether their mood is sombre or festive, being public events that are designed to attract attention and activities that necessarily divert normal traffic, parades have a clear entertainment value to their audiences.

Fireworks are a part of many public entertainments and have retained an enduring popularity since they became a "crowning feature of elaborate celebrations" in the 17th century.

Sport has always provided entertainment for crowds. To distinguish the players from the audience, the latter are often known as spectators. Developments in stadium and auditorium design, as well as in recording and broadcast technology, have allowed off-site spectators to watch sport, with the result that the size of the audience has grown ever larger and spectator sport has become increasingly popular.

Fairs, expositions, shopping have existed since ancient and medieval times, displaying wealth, innovations, and objects for trade and offering specific entertainments as well as being places of entertainment in themselves.