Entertaiment
Whether it’s a clown at a birthday party, a Broadway show, or stadium rock concert–or your friends fighting over the last potato chip–entertainment is what keeps us distracted and amused. From the Old French word entretenir, meaning “support” or “hold together,” entertainment began as a way of showing hospitality to guests by keeping them busy and happy.
Bates and Ferri (2010) define entertainment as any activity that is understood objectively, communicates between text and audience from an external stimulus, offers pleasure to the audience, requires a passive activity and occurs in an audience. Many forms of entertainment are familiar and have demonstrated a seemingly infinite capacity for creative remix.