Theme of Zoom Meeting

Theme of Zoom Meeting: Entertainment

Questions:
For several questions, I have provided underlined links that will take you to related online information. Try coming up with your own thoughts first – then investigate the links or ignore them – whatever you wish.

If the links don’t work with just your mouse arrow, hold down your Ctrl key as you click. Any problems with a link, please let me know: rgordon118@tampabay.rr.com

In our discussion of Entertainment, let’s try to avoid areas that might make some of us uncomfortable

1. What to you is the meaning of the word entertainment?

2. What value if any does entertainment have to our mental health? How about music as therapy? Video games?

3. In our discussion today, try to make a special note of how often you saw smiles or heard laughter. Can one good measure of the success of our discussion be judged by the smiles we see?

4. What would be your response to someone who said, “Entertainment is a big waste of time!”?

5. Are there negative as well as positive forms of entertainment?

6. Are non-human animals capable of finding entertainment?

7. Do you think that humans are born with the need to find entertainment or was it a need that evolved over time? How might the world be better or worse off if entertainment didn’t exist?

8. Why might governments be interested in controlling entertainment?

9. Is it a plus or minus to have entertainment mixed in with the news on TV shows that promote themselves as News Shows?

10. Imagine an eighteen year old grandson telling you that he plans to go to college to major in Entertainment. What would be your reaction?

11. What significance, if any, do you find that the word entertainment begins with enter? What might be the meaning of exitainment?

12. What are some of your favorite forms of entertainment?

13. During the pandemic, have you discovered new kinds of entertainment?

14. Who do you view as the greatest entertainer in your lifetime? What made her/him a great entertainer?

15. During your lifetime, what changes have you witnessed in the forms of entertainment? Have these changes been positive or negative? How might this question relate to children?

16. Can entertainment be a form of propaganda?

17. Some people could spend hours each weekend looking at sports, especially during the World Series and the Super Bowl. Are they making good use of their time?

18. As a spectator, can you become addicted to sports? Would you view such addiction as a positive or negative aspect of a person’s life? Is there such a treatment as sports addiction therapy?

19. Has the Internet given us more positive opportunities for entertainment? Have you tried listening to podcasts or viewing YouTubes or TedTalks?

20. Can you consider our zoom group discussions a form of entertainment? Should we try to make our discussions more entertaining? If “Yes”, how?

21. Did you learn anything significant in our entertainment discussion? If “Yes”, what?

22. What final thoughts would you like to share as we approach the end of our discussion?

Additional Suggested websites for entertainment:

1. Marian Anderson – more than entertainment: An inspiration

2. Top 10 Decade Defining TV Shows: 1950s

3. The Best of the Three Stooges

4. Radio in the 1930s

5. How kids played in the 1950s

Quotations:

1. “No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.” -- Mary Wortley Montagu

2. “Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.” -- Marshall McLuhan

3. “New media and mobile entertainment are revolutionizing the way people learn about the world.” -- Stephen Kinzer

4. “Before machines the only form of entertainment people really had was relationships.” --Douglas Coupland

5. “Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.” --Walt Disney

6. “I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained”― Walt Disney

7. “Most of what passes for legitimate entertainment is inferior or foolish and only caters to or exploits people's weaknesses. Avoid being one of the mob who indulges in such pastimes. Your life is too short and you have important things to do. ―Epictetus

8. “What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.”
― W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand

9. “A funny person is funny only for so long, but a wit can sit down and go on being spellbinding forever. One is not meant to laugh. One stays quiet and marvels. Spontaneously witty talk is without question the most fascinating entertainment there is.”― Diana Vreeland

10. “Politics has become entertainment.” – Joe Eszterhas

The End