Entertainment is an action that can be seen all throughout time, since it is important to provide enjoyment to keep up morale. During Medieval times, entertainment was provided by minstrels. Minstrels were general entertainers but mainly they played an instrument or sang. In modern times, entertainment is provided by a few different professions; however today’s popular musicians are quite similar to medieval minstrels.
In the Medieval era, minstrels were the main source of entertainment. “Wandering minstrels were rustic showmen, juggling, doing magic, tumbling, and moving door to door trying to scratch a living.” The better minstrels were “employed mainly to provide background music at feasts, ceremonies, and religious rituals” (Jones 41).
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Overall, minstrels had low status in the social order. They performed most everything in whichever language was common in their area. This caused them to “not look like the cutting edge of European civilization” since Latin was the literacy language at the time. Good minstrels could be easily identified by their livery. “Livery indicated that a minstrel had both status and a regular income, and made it easier for him to be accepted into the right castles and earn a decent reward” (Jones 42). Once a minstrel gained a good reputation, it was important for them to wear their livery. For reward or payment, minstrels could earn land as in the case of Roland Le Pettour. “The king rewarded him with 30 acres of land for his masterwork” (Jones 43). Roland Le Pettour’s masterwork was said to be the crude talent of being able to fart tunes. The musical minstrels over time morphed into troubadours. Troubadours were “an author or composer who discovered something new” (Jones 47). In other words, troubadours would write their own lyrics or poems. Troubadours “performed their own songs and employed jongleurs or minstrels as their accompanists” (Jones 49). In this case, minstrels simply played an instrument or would be similar to a background singer. Over time, minstrels started losing their jobs and many became unemployed. “The luckier minstrels were hired as civil servants by towns” and some “towns had given short-term contracts to minstrels in the service of aristocrats” (Jones 59). The better minstrels were able to continue to write poetry and perform their songs. By the end of the Medieval era, minstrels “had vanished as a class, but mutated into something far broader” (Jones 61). The music, poetry, and literature that minstrels had brought about, now had spread throughout England and was accepted. The importance of minstrels was to improve the culture of the area through their music and other works that they inspired. In modern day, musicians, similar to minstrels, provide entertainment. Musicians can tell stories through their lyrics and can make the audience feel a certain way with their words or the instrumental sections. With the beat of the music and the lyrics, musicians can motivate us to do something. Popular musicians perform concerts on tour, and more popular ones will occasionally be asked to perform at special large events such as award ceremonies. Besides concert performances, musicians dabble in acting, so they can be seen in commercials trying to convince society to purchase unnecessary objects. Not widely known musicians tend to only perform in their small area of the world while very popular musicians will tour across the country and even around the world. Almost all popular American musicians perform in English, even when touring in different language speaking countries. In today’s society, many people idolized musicians, so musicians have become celebrities.
However, in “The Illusion of Literacy” Chris Hedges states that as a culture, society is “chained to the flickering shadows of celebrity culture, the spectacle of the arena and the airwaves, the lies of advertising, the endless personal dramas, many of them completely fictional, that have become the staple of news, celebrity gossip” (Hedges 15). This shows that today’s society is obsessed with celebrities and very popular musicians are celebrities. Since most popular musicians are celebrities, they have a signature look where they can easily be identified. Those who manipulate how society views celebrities “that dominate our lives are the agents, publicists, marketing departments, promoters, script writers, television and movie producers, advertisers, video technicians, photographers, bodyguards, wardrobe consultants, fitness trainers, pollsters, public announcers, and television new personalities who create the vast stage for illusion” (Hedges 15). “Celebrities are portrayed as idealized forms of ourselves” (Hedges 20). This causes society to become obsessed with their images, so people know exactly how each popular musician looks. Since society has become obsessed with their image, this teaches society that “no one has any worth beyond his or her appearance, usefulness, or ability to ‘succeed’” (Hedges 32). When a musician changes their appearance, society notices and may criticize. Becoming more popular can be stressful since they need to keep up appearances, but in compensation, they tend to earn more money. Musicians can also do good through sponsoring charity works or fundraising for good causes, such as helping raise money for medical research. The importance of musicians, in today’s age, is their ability to promote humanity and treating other
well. When comparing the medieval time period to today, minstrels and popular musicians are quite similar. Minstrels were simply lower class with the sole purpose of entertainment. Comparatively, musicians are considered to be higher class with the main purpose of entertainment but they also have the opportunity to go into acting or sponsor charity work. This shows that over time lower classes can rise in social ranking.
Though The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz was written years ago, the idea of materialism, and measuring one's success by their possessions is also a prominent theme in pop culture in the West. Luxurious and excessive lifestyles are in, perpetuated by "blinged out" rap artists and rock stars who own multiple houses, and drive unnecessarily large and expensive sport utility vehicles and sports cars. Pop music has evolved throughout the 20th Century, and has now gotten to a point where it's not just music, but an industry. Singers are actors and vice versa. To make it big in the music industry you not only have to have talent, but a strong business sense, and your own clothing line, of course.
Elvis was like no other entertainer in the world. The talented man’s success and music will live on as some of the best in history. Elvis inspired a generation and overall transformed the way we see and listen to music today. John Lennon’s son, John Lennon Jr., even states, “Before Elvis, there was nothing” (Klein 291). However, without the help of The Ed Sullivan Show, Elvis’ influence would not have been able to spread across the nation. Television still has that impact in today’s society. One learns of new artists and up and coming celebrities through the world of social and mass media. Today’s generation relies on the power of mass and social media to express their opinions, thoughts and creativity. Without it, this world would be stuck in a non-innovated and non-expressive culture.
A celebrity is not a person known for his/her talent or achievement, but an individual recognized for his/her reputation created by the media. The phase of stardom is slippery, and media may choose to represent celebrities varying from exaggerated admiration to mockery. The three texts chosen, movie "Sunset Boulevard", feature article "Over the Hilton" and television show "Celebrity Uncensored Six" are texts presenting different perception of celebrities than their usual images - either corrupted by the encircling media, overloads oneself with self-indulgence, or just mocks celebrity in a broad spectrum. Such media items empower and impresses the audience by perceiving celebrities as people who pay the price of privacy to gain well knowness, signifying the vanity of stardom from the commonly accepted images.
Beowulf instructed his people to sing loudly in the king’s festivity to attract me. The noise that came from the golden halls of the Hereot irritated me and made me angry. I got annoyed because I could not join the Hereot and celebrate with them in the king’s feast. Everyone there was happy, and I could not stand it since I was not able to join in the celebration. Hrothger warned his men not to make merry because it provoked me, but they contin...
William Shakespeare, an illustrious and eminent playwright from the Elizabethan Age (16th Century) and part owner of the Globe theatre wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which he portrays the theme of love in many different ways. These include the paternal love seen in the troubled times for Egeus and his rebellious daughter Hermia, true Love displayed with the valiant acts of Lysander and Hermia and the destructive love present in the agonizing acts of Titania towards her desperate lover Oberon. Through the highs and lows of love, the first love we clasp is the paternal love from our family.
As celebrities stand distinctively among the masses and cast out their halos of personality charm and strong suits of skilled abilities, the controversies about them are unavoidable shadows created from their fame. With the popularization of celebrity culture, information synchronization, and communication technology, their lives are publicly exposed and various forms of media (depending on eras) record their flaws. Tough information transmitted to audiences are frequently biased, evidences of objective reality remains, even in the remote past.
Even the performance genres of burlesque and vaudeville had to get their origins from somewhere. One of the earliest acts with a musical element was minstrelsy. Blackface performers were around several decades before the first minstrel shows evolved. These acts were common features in circuses and traveling shows form the 1790s onward (Kenrick 52). A white entertainer named Thomas Rice in the 1820s caused a nationwide sensation with a blackface song and dance act that burlesqued negro slaves. Many white performers took part in minstrelsy, but black performers took advantage of the stereotypes they were labeled as and made their own minstrel acts as well. Minstrel shows developed a standard three-part format. In his book, Kenrick explains in detail t...
Putman, D. (1990). THE AESTHETIC RELATION OF MUSICAL PERFORMER AND AUDIENCE. British Journal of Aesthetics. 30 (4), 1-2.
“Posts.” Fame is a dangerous Drug: A Phenomenological Glimpse of Celebrity.” N.p. ,n.d. Web 15. Feb 2014
The star text of a celebrity can help to decipher their image and transitions they may undergo. In order to better understand these transitions, one must know the definition of a star text. A star text is the sum of everything we affiliate with celebrities, which includes their body of work, promotion, publicity, and audience participation (Jackson, 08/09/16). One must note that “celebrity doesn 't happen because someone has extraordinary qualities – it is discursively constructed by the way in which the person is publicised and meanings about them circulate” (O 'Shaughnessy and Stadler 424). Destiny Hope Cyrus, “an American singer and actress, became a sensation in the television series
January 6, 1973, famous anthropologist Margaret Mead published an essay in TV Guide in which she addressed her view of PBS’s series “An American Family.” This series was groundbreaking during that time because is followed the Loud’s, a California family who were neither actors nor public figures just average middle-class family, which was unheard of at the time. The Louds were filmed for seven months and the product was twelve one-hour episodes which showed everything from the monotony of their everyday life to the corrosion of Bill and Pat Loud’s marriage. Meade called this series “a new kind of art form” and marveled at the shows ability to show the drama and entertainment value of the average human condition. Forty years later, as Meade had predicted, reality based television and films have become more understood, respected and prevalent in our modern culture. Extreme success stories of documentaries such as Justin Bieber’s 2011 “Never Say Never” and countless reality shows indicates that a celebrity’s presence , musicians particularly, on reality media channels can change audience’s perceptions, promote new material and help them to stay relevant in the public eye. These “reality” documentaries and TV shows present the audience with carefully edited material that conveys only a fraction of that individual’s personality and character yet has profound effects audience perception and acceptance. The British boy band One Direction is a prime example of how using the model of framing in reality television shows and documentaries effectively promotes projects, molds the opinions of audiences, allows artist to appear more open and relatable and leads to extreme monetary success.
The deception of media consumers allows for the abuse of economic infrastructures of society. An obsession with celebrities’ lives passifies ordinary people in accepting the stratification of the elite businesses and the ordinary citizens. Though pseudo-events and celebrity worship may not be exactly complementary, the similarities of both leaves the public to be utterly vulnerable unless they begin to critically think for themselves.
Feste, the amusing clown, plays a most important part in the play. He is able to take on several roles, and is indeed "for all waters"; from serious to comic, learned to nonsensical, the wit or the practical joker; just as the occasion seems to suggest. Because he is a part of both the main and sub plot, Feste is the character, who links both parts of the play together, making Twelfth Night a whole.
This is exactly what the media does to celebrities. Most celebrities that we have become to know have all changed in a lot of way from before they started their career and when they actually became famous. There are many artists, actors, musicians that were once people you would not even believe. A story that really inspires me is the musical journey of Stefani Germanotta. A small recording artist, not very well know, that is why I choose to discuss her because she has been through this with the media. She went to a small all girls catholic school in New York City. Paris Hilton was in her school. Look where she got, where did she go. She was made fun of everyday for her appearance. She was musically inclined to no extent, she had the talent. She knew how to play the piano by herself by the age of four years old (4).By 13 she wrote her first ballad; by 19 she was writing songs for the Pussycat Dolls and Britney Spears. Obviously she had the talent so when she went to go get a record deal, she went to...
Movie stars. They are celebrated. They are perfect. They are larger than life. The ideas that we have formed in our minds centered on the stars that we idolize make these people seem inhuman. We know everything about them and we know nothing about them; it is this conflicting concept that leaves audiences thirsty for a drink of insight into the lifestyles of the icons that dominate movie theater screens across the nation. This fascination and desire for connection with celebrities whom we have never met stems from a concept elaborated on by Richard Dyer. He speculates about stardom in terms of appearances; those that are representations of reality, and those that are manufactured constructs. Stardom is a result of these appearances—we actually know nothing about them beyond what we see and hear from the information presented to us. The media’s construction of stars encourages us to question these appearances in terms of “really”—what is that actor really like (Dyer, 2)? This enduring query is what keeps audiences coming back for more, in an attempt to decipher which construction of a star is “real”. Is it the character he played in his most recent film? Is it the version of him that graced the latest tabloid cover? Is it a hidden self that we do not know about? Each of these varied and fluctuating presentations of stars that we are forced to analyze create different meanings and effects that frame audience’s opinions about a star and ignite cultural conversations.