What is entertainment? Please define the word, and give examples.
What is your favorite movie? How about your favorite TV show? Why? Which movie has had either the greatest impact on your life or has impressed you the most? Why do you think so? What genre of movies and TV shows do you tend to watch the most? How about the least? Please explain. Describe the plot and characters of your favorite movie or TV show. Could you live without ever seeing another movie again? Why/not? Could you live without a TV? Why/not? If you could act alongside your favorite actor or actress in a movie, would you want to? Why/not? If you could have had a role in your favorite movie, would you have wanted a small part or a big part? Why? You've been given the amazing opportunity to create a new TV show. What will it be about? Who will act in it? Please explain. If you were stranded on a desert island and could choose one video to watch again and again, what would you choose? Please explain your decision. Can you think of any TV shows or movies that are sheer torture to watch? Which ones? The TV has been called the "idiot box" and the "boob tube." Why do you think so? Is it a fair idiom? Should TV be primarily used for entertainment or for education? Why do you think so? What are the advantages and disadvantages of watching TV? Why do you think so? What will entertainment be like in the future? Do you wish that you watched TV less often? Why/not? Have TV shows and movies made people stupid? Why do you think so?
Do you think the TV and film industry has some responsibility to produce educational programs and movies? Why/not?
What do you usually do on the weekends? What did you do last weekend? Do you have plans for this weekend?
What kind of music do you like? Is there any kind of music that you can't stand?
What types of music do people listen to in your country? Is there any type of music that you can only hear in your country? How popular is live music in your country? When was the last time you went to a concert or live show?
How many different movie genres can you name? Which is your favorite? Least favorite? What's the last movie you saw? When did you see it? What was it about? Did you like it?
Which American movies have been popular in your country?
How often do you visit museums? When was the last time you went to a museum?
What do you do for entertainment when you're on vacation that you don't usually do? Do you like to gamble?
When was the last time you went to a play? What about an opera, a symphony, or a ballet?
How much do you like to dance? When was the last time you went dancing? Did you enjoy yourself?
How often do you eat in a restaurant? What's the best restaurant you've ever been to? What's the best cheap restaurant you've ever been to? Do you have a favorite bar or cafe? Why do you like it?
Reality TV
Have you ever watched a reality TV program? If yes, what was it? How was it? Would you want to be on reality TV? Why/not? Do you know anyone who has ever been on reality TV? If yes, who? How about someone who wanted to be on a program? If you could win $1,000,000, would you want to be on reality TV? Would your answer change if the program were dangerous? How about if the program were embarrassing? Are reality TV programs popular in your country? Why/not? What do you think of reality TV? Please explain. What is the best reality TV program you have ever watched? Why was it so good? What is the worst reality TV program you have ever watched? Why was it so bad? How often do you watch reality TV programs? Why do you think reality TV is so popular these days? Do you agree or disagree? Reality TV is just a passing fad. Why/not? Do you agree or disagree? Reality TV programs aren't real, but are actually carefully scripted and edited. Why/not? Do you agree or disagree? There should be fewer ridiculous programs and more serious programs on TV. In other words, there should be fewer reality TV programs and more documentaries! Would you ever watch re-runs of a reality TV program? Why/not? Do you have any ideas for a new reality TV program? If yes, what would the show be about? Do you think the news is a form of reality TV program? If yes, why? If no, then why are the two different? Please explain. What is your impression of the people who watch reality TV? What kind of people would want to be on a reality program? Why do you think so? What kind of reality program would you like to be on? Why? What would it take for you to go a reality TV program? Please explain.
Music, Movies, and More
Would you like to become a famous rock star, Hollywood actor/actress, or TV star? Why/not? Would you like to become a famous writer, poet, or classical musician? Why/not? Do you think the classics are better than modern books, movies, or music? Why/not? Do you prefer to go the cinema or to watch movies at home? Why? Have you ever been to the opera? If yes, how was it? If no, would you want to go? What kind of music do you like? Why? What kind of movies do you like? Why? What was the best/worst movie you saw this year? Why was it so good/bad? Which would you like to do? Rank the following, from best to worst: 1) see a movie 2) go to a rock concert 3) go to a concert for classical music 4) attend a poetry reading 5) see a play Let's continue with the previous question. How would your answers change for the following: 1) it's a first date 2) you're with friends 3) you're with family You're going to a desert island for one year, and you can bring five CDs with you. What CDs do you bring? Why? Do you like to read about celebrities? Do celebrities have better, more interesting lives than average people? Why/not? If you became a famous actor/actress, would you make commercials for more money? Would you star in a movie you didn't like? Why/not? Do celebrities make too much money? Please explain. Recommend one movie, one TV show, one CD, and one book to your classmates. Why did you choose these? Who is your favorite writer? Why do you like him/her so much? Who is your favorite actor/actress? Why do you like him/her so much? Who is your favorite musician or band? Why do you like him/her/them so much? You have the chance to ask your favorite celebrity two questions. What are they?
Harry Houdini lived the classic immigrant story. He moved to the US with his poor family, worked hard in manual labor when he was young, decided to get famous, changed his name, moved into showbusiness, got rich, and, ultimately, worked himself to death.
Harry Houdini could escape almost anything. He was born in Hungary with the name Ehrich Weisz. His father was a rabbi – he was the leader of the Jewish community in his neighborhood. The family immigrated to the US with his 4 brothers when he was 4 years old. In 1887, they moved to New York City.
He started working when he was just 10 years old. One of his first jobs was working on locks, but he also worked in a circus. He started doing magic tricks when he was 20. One of Ehrich’s favorite magicians was named “Houdin.” Ehrich Weisz was a Jewish name. He changed his name to Harry Houdini. Many people think he wanted to make his name more American.
In 1899, Houdini became famous for escaping from handcuffs. He asked the police in every big city in Europe to handcuff him. He escaped every time. Once, a police officer said Houdini paid the police to open his handcuffs. Houdini sued him, and won when he opened the judge’s safe. After a while, people got tired of watching Houdini escape from handcuffs. Houdini thought of a new idea. He would get handcuffed and jump into a river in the winter time, or drop into a glass box full of water. He had to escape before he drowned. All around the world, the name Houdini meant “escape.” Houdini exercised every day, and could hold his breath underwater for three minutes. Houdini died in 1926. He was relaxing on a couch before a show when a college student came into his room. The student asked if Houdini could take any punch in the stomach. Houdini said yes – his body was strong from exercising every day. The college student quickly punched him hard in the stomach. Houdini wasn’t ready, and his appendix broke open. He was in a lot of pain. But even with a 104˚ fever, he put on his show. He never went to a hospital. He died a week later. It was Halloween and he was only 52 years old. Houdini moved from Europe to the US, and went from being a poor boy to a rich man, but death was the one thing he could not escape.
Vocabulary 1. escape – verb – To get away from something bad. “She escaped her bad marriage at 21.” 2. drown – verb – To die from breathing water. “I almost drowned in the ocean last year.” 3. appendix – noun – An organ in your body. “Your appendix can break open if you get sick.”
Questions
1. What was Houdini’s family like? 2. When did Houdini start working? What were his first jobs? 3. Why do you think Houdini chose his job? Why did he like it? 4. Why do you think Weisz changed his name? Do you know anyone who changed their name? 5. Why did people watch Houdini drop into water? 6. What’s the American dream? Did Houdini get it?
Feltham once said, "Laughter should dimple the cheek, not furrow the brow." Charlie Chaplin was a man who definitely dimpled millions of cheeks in the early 1900's. He had a huge impact on the lives of Americans during the world wars and the hard times of the Depression and he made people laugh for the first time in a long time and changed the way they looked at the world despite his own troubles. And even though his films were in black and white, he put a lot of color into everyone's life.
Charlie Chaplin is a Cinderella of the twentieth century. He embodies the wish fulfillment of our times as the boy who traveled from the slums of London to the boulevards of Hollywood. Others have paralleled this phenomenal success, but Charlie is unique because he created a universal image on the screen with which everyone who responded to his films could in some measure identify: the little man, poor but resourceful, who found refuge in dreams; the poet of love, though of a love which usually was unfulfilled. He aspired, like every man, to possess his own little home, but more often than not he had to abandon his hopes and wander off toward the horizon with a jaunty swing of his cane. Long-suffering and oppressed by the overbearing authority of storekeepers, waiters, landlords and cops, he was always capable of delivering a subtly timed back kick at his tormentors. A man of courage, he nevertheless knew when it was wise to run away.
Of all the great figures of the cinema, Chaplin is the most certain of immortality. He had the luck, as all great artists must have, to be in the heroic age of a new art. Would all Shakespeare's plays be snapped up, unrevised, by a modern producer? Would any publisher today accept uncut the novels of Dostoevsky? To be at the beginning of a new art, or to be present in a sudden new direction of an old art, is an inestimable advantage for a gifted man.
Chaplin, doubtless, would have made both a name and a fortune in the theatre. He had technical gifts -- timing, mime and physical control, all near perfection -- and an emotional range which could infuse comedy with a tragic sense, and tragedy with a touch of farce. But film increased the physical dimensions in which he could operate, giving the possibilities of elaborate, perfectly rehearsed gags, and spectacular effects. It also gave him an audience of a magnitude never before dreamed of by an actor. In the theatre an actor may, on occasion, act to tens of thousands over a long run, but none could ever hope to reach tens of millions. This Chaplin did. Such a triumph is epic -- and epic in its true sense. Epics last because they touch the deep chords of human hope and fear, stir the mysteries of life: the capacity to suffer, to endure, to accept. Chaplin, the tragi-comic victim of men and circumstance, the perpetual outsider, was both deeply original and the heir to a long tradition of theatrical clowns, in theatre, circus and music hall. His great originality lay in his capacity to focus his art on the social stresses of his day, so that millions could identify with, laugh at and sometimes weep over their own plight which the symbolized.
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed an astonishing migration of people. From the south and east of Europe, families moved west to the developing industrial regions. America was flooded with immigrants; England absorbed in the cast end of London and in northern manufacturing towns large contingents of Polish and Russian Jews; the French and Belgian mining areas took in many workers. Rarely have so many families uprooted themselves to settle in a new environment that both beckoned and menaced. At the best these immigrants possessed only a scrappy knowledge of the language of their adopted countries; they were often ignorant of the forces of authority with which they had to contend, or even their own legal rights. They were all potentially silent victims, unable to communicate articulately when others bullied and oppressed them.
The plight of the alien immigrants was, however, only the extreme form of the plight in which the poor had always found themselves -- semi-literate, possessors of an impoverished vocabulary, intimidated by rules and regulations of authority. And immigrants and poor alike had been thrust into new and alarming environments by rapid urbanization and industrialization. Thus Chaplin had a vast and natural audience who could identify with his acute helplessness, his rubber-like endurance and his poverty-driven cunning. Of course, it was completely right that his films should be silent. Language, to the classes that he touched, was often baffling and difficult and -- even more important -- his art could sail across national barriers. The world was his audience.
His early films coincided with the First World War and the prolonged period of depression with followed. It was a melancholy age, in dire need of cheap and heart-warming entertainment. But perhaps the most remarkable feature of his art is the way it grew in subtlety as his mass audience became gradually more educated and sophisticated. Chaplin was a case of an incredible talent coinciding with incredible luck and incredible timing. All this combined to make him the single most famous man in the history of twentieth-century entertainment.
Questions
1. How is Chaplin like Cinderella ?
2. Many of those who saw his films recognized something of their own experience in them. Describe four features of their experience which were reflected in Chaplin's films. Remember to use your own words as far as possible.
3. What does the writer imply was wrong with (a) the plays of Shakespeare and (b) the novels of Dostoevsky ?
4. (a) Explain the meanings of the following words as they are used in the passage. Write your answer in one word or a short phrase. unique; immortality; symbolized; intimidated; endurance
(b) Use each of the words as it is used in the passage in a sentence of your own, clearly showing this meaning. Your five sentences should not deal with the subject matter of the passage.
5. Chaplin "made both a name and a fortune". Use your own words as far as possible in answering the following. (a) What does this mean ? (b) What was there about Chaplin himself and his art which made him so successful ?
6. What were the factors that contributed to the worldwide and lasting success of Chaplin's films : Use material from paragraph 4 to the end. Write about 150 words. Use your own words as far as possible.
Answers
1. Cinderella is the star of the pantemime named after her. Forbidden to attend the ball by her ugly sisters, she is sent there in finery and state by her fairy godmother, meets the handsome prince, and eventually marries him. Chaplin's career was a similar story of rags to riches.
2. The average man of Chaplin's day had little money, but made the best of what he had by opportunism. The harsh realities of the real world drove him into fantasy. He had a dream-love, but his circumstances made the dream unattainable. He also wanted his own home, but his poverty usually prevented this, so he cheerfully moved on.
3. Both, he says, were too long. Shakespeare's plays would have to be cut and altered had he lived in the age of the cinema. Dostoevsky's novels would have to be abridged.
4. (a) unique - incomparable
immortality - never to be forgotten
symbolized - embodied in himself
intimidated - frightened
endurance - toughness, ability to rise above bad luck
(b) She is unique, in that she is the first ever prime minister.
The music of JS Bach has achieved immortality.
The Christian religion is symbolized by the Cross of Christ.
Faced by the robber's gun, the bank clerk was not intimidated.
To complete a marathon requires exceptional endurance
5. (a) He would become a star and very rich.
(b) People responded to Chaplin because in his day and age they could identify with him. He was the underdog; so was the average man. Yet he could always get back at authority, as his contemporaries would have liked to. Technically, his acting was superb; mime and action were all-important in the world of the silent film. He could express the whole range of emotion, thereby stirring the deepest of emotions in his audience. He expressed the sad side of comedy and the funny side of tragedy. He epitomized the essence of that traditional figure, the clown. Hi comedy underlined the social problems of his day.
6. Chaplin represented the underpriviledged immigrant; there were very many in the USA in the decades spanning the turn of this century. They were refugees from South and East Europe, and they were afraid of the future. Ill-educated, they could mostly speak only their own language, so they were at the mercy of bullying officials and of a strange legal system. Thus they joined the American poor, who faced many of their own problems. New factories and city housing developments made them feel alien, bemused and helpless.
The art of Chaplin reflected these feelings. So did his street-wisdom and ability to survive against the odds. His mastery of mime made language unnecessary, so the silent film was peculiarly relevant. His kind of cheap and cheerful entertainment was a godsend during the depression. His art therefore fitted both the situation and his audience. Later, people and films became more sophisticated.
Entertainment consists of any activity which provides a diversion or permits people to amuse themselves in their leisure time. Entertainment is generally passive, such as watching opera or a movie. Active forms of amusement, such as games or sports, are more often considered to be recreation. Activities such as personal reading or practicing a musical instruments are considered as hobbies.
The industry that provides entertainment is called the entertainment industry. There are many forms of entertainment for example: cinema, theatre, sports, games and social dance. Puppets, clowns, pantomimes and cartoons tend to appeal to children, though adults may also find them enjoyable.
Mime
Singer
Fire-eater
Clown
Acrobat
Escape artist
Puppeteer
Magician
Flamenco dancer
What is entertainment?
What do you do for entertainment?
How often do you do things for entertainment?
What home entertainment equipment do you have?
Do you like entertaining friends at home?
Who is the most entertaining person you know?
Do you spend a lot of money on entertainment?
What is your favourite form of entertainment?
Would you like to work in the entertainment industry?
What kind of person makes a good entertainer?
What kind of TV shows do you watch for entertainment? Do you think your English classes are entertaining? What is the best evening of entertainment you’ve had recently? Do you think your country needs an Entertainment Secretary/Minister? Do you ever stop and watch street entertainment? What do you know about corporate entertainment? What forms of entertainment have been with us for centuries? What new forms of entertainment have emerged in recent years? Do you follow entertainment news on the TV or Internet? Which country do you think has the world’s best entertainment?
