Robert Clements:

>There's no real point in me hiding the fact: when people use expressions
>such as "mere entertainment", i immediately know why i disagree with almost
>everything else they have to say.  Entertainment is anything but mere:
>it's a skill possessed by too few people in a culture which tends to
>worship ... the ideal of highart. ...  As that wellknown aesthetician -
>Bugs Bunny - would undoubtably put it: I hope you realise...  this means
>war....

The culture wars are an uneven contest at this stage, to put it
mildly. A very long time ago I wrote a paper attempting to uphold the
art/entertainment distinction and it fared badly with the referees even
then.  I agree that skill on the entertainer's part is a good thing--and
necessary to keep an audience's attention; I agree that entertainment is
a good thing, and that a good work of art can be entertaining.  But I
still think that the expression "mere entertainment" has a meaningful point
in some contexts, because it suggests that the substance--or even the
appeal--of the piece is ephemeral at best, and it tends to suggest complete
passivity on the part of the audience; I think that classical music
requires more than that on both counts.

Jim Tobin