Jeremy -

I somehow managed to fail to your reply.  My apologies.

I was talking not at some general level of the "social" use of words, but
instead at a common academic white anglo-saxon protestant use of the word
"entertainment," or rather, the one sort of connotation I hear in that
specific relationship.  there may of course be other uses and connotations,
as you so correctly indicate, though your examples stick more often than not
to that precise negative connotation I was attempting to point out.  that
association of "entertainment" with a certain amount of crass indecency or
cheapness, that association that is not necessary yet culturally specific.

I am put in the mind of US history, where for so long white anglo saxon
protestants controlled the dough and the jobs, and so folks like
African-Americans and Jews could only find jobs in: entertainment.  I
imagine things were not so easy for Jews or Africans in England either for
quite some time.  It might not be so good now, either, for that matter.
Regardless, I believe the negative connotation is connected to a traditional
sort of elitist prejudice that is culturally specific.

Boy did I pick the wrong audience to talk about this.  Talk about starting
on the wrong foot!

If you reread Aristotle's _Poetics_, you will find quite a bit about "plot"
in the work.  A discussion of plot starts in the opening paragraph.
Consider that plot requires conflict.  Also consider that Aristotle's aims
with plot are for a work to relate to an audience in certain ways.  Consider
that the Greeks may not have had one word for this concept at the time
("entertain" derives from Latin), one could rationally argue that every
chapter of Aristotle's _Poetics_ was about entertainment.  To an extent it
is.

Another irony to be found in your dismissive reference to Aristotle is that
in _Poetics_ you may read that Aristotle differentiates social classes by
what forms of entertainment they prefer.  There's that distinction again.
The lower sorts like gesticulation in their work, and those more elite,
intellectual, prefer, gesture-less epics.  More logos, less hand-waving.
Since that time, that very distinction has received the additional
distinctions of money and color and religion and have all embedded
themselves into the words our families brought us.  For some reason, in
certain cultures, class-implicit distinctions of entertainment have rendered
at least one group to not consider their own preferred modes of
entertainment as "entertainment."  How even a tasteful erudite poem lacking
anything crass could not be considered a form of entertainment is beyond me.
If it maintains an audience, even an audience of one, it meets the minimum
requirements for being entertainment.

To this I will add that theorists do not an artform make.  So in a certain
sense it doesn't matter what Aristotle advocated or did not advocate.  What
matters more is what was DONE with Greek drama and poetry.  One of the
things it did was entertain.

So conflict is a similar starting point as entertainment, and both parallel
Aristotle's starting point.  Importantly, regardless of historical
authenticity or precedent, entertainment and conflict arm-in-arm remain
essential.

Best,
Patrick

-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Jeremy Green
Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2002 2:17 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: British / Irish lists?


Patrick,

Since the bit of your message I questioned left something of an
aftertaste (without apparently provoking further discussion), I hope
you won't mind if I take a second flick at the eohippus.  In my view,
your  finger-pointing at mandarin Redcoats and Puritans obscures two
things: the question of the social use of words (which is surely not
reducible to singular connotations that might be mapped directly onto
cultural or ethnic identities) and the issue of pleasure's relation
to hierarchies of cultural value.  Can the word entertainment
usefully be reclaimed in discussion of the latter?  Your own
qualifications (fight, orgasm, catharsis, conflict) suggest not - or
not right now (and while I see what you mean about Greek drama, of
course, the category of entertainment seems misplaced....whatever
happened to the section on entertainment in Aristotle's Poetics?).

For diversion (or entertainment?), consider the following:

1.  "O'Hara is an entertaining poet"; "Zukofsky is an entertaining
poet"; "Billy Collins is an entertaining poet"

2.  "News and Entertainment Division"

3.  A [lighting cigarette]: Wow!  That was sensational!  How was it for you?
     B: It was....entertaining.

4.  "The entertainment budget won't stretch that far..."

5.  Synonyms for "entertainment"?


On the other hand, what you say about obligation and conflict seems a
more productive starting point.

Best,
Jeremy


>
>I'm whining about this connotation because I've come across this derisive
>connotation of the word "entertainment" many times among poets, and I
>primarily hear that negative connotation of the word implied only by my
>American WASP friends and the occasional Royal subject.  (I think the
>negative connotation of "entertainment" is even more ethnically/culturally
>loaded than just being a part of Anglo or Anglophilic values, but I think
if
>I picked it apart any more people would absolutely freak out at me.  Not my
>cup of Pennyroyal Tea!)
>
>In my cranial attic, entertainment doesn't necessarily imply frivolousness,
>irrelevance, and I don't equate it in all cases with Vaudeville or
Hollywood
>"blockbusters."  Bunuel's _Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie_ neither
orgasm
>and very little in the way of fighting but it's surely an entertaining
>movie.  People repeatedly denied a dinner party.  The conflict is there,
and
>it's hilarious AND dark.
>
>Weren't ancient Greek poetry and drama once primarily forms of
>entertainment?  Are they not still, then, forms of entertainment?
>
>My most frequent criticism of most poems I read these days is that there's
>no conflict fueling the poems.  Most poems don't require that I read them.
>Yes, I'm saying that a good poem has a conflict, and the conflict has to
>suck the reader in, thus making the reader feel like s/he needs to finish
>reading the poem.  I cannot tell you how many first stanzas I've read in my
>life and how many times they've made me drop the poem altogether.
>

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