It seems to be that the more dire world events become, the more we need our bread and circuses to give us some emotional and psychological relief. Back in the days of ye olde yore, unless an army marched into the village, the only dire events were an occasional fire, a sweep of the plague or an unexpected death. The village fool was all the “escapism” people needed.
Then, with the advent of newspapers and wirelesses, people gradually became aware of what was happening in the whole county, then the counties next to them and then, the nation as a whole. As a result, theatre attendances tripled, the ballet was invented and people started writing “romances” and printing them off to sell for a penny.
Then, we began to hear more about disasters and wars outside of our own nations. It was easy to discard a lot of them as: that’ll sort those ruddy foreigners out. But, occasionally one of our own citizens were involved, or it affected our economy, or we sent soldiers to “help sort those ruddy foreigners out” and then it impacted our lives. We stopped painting pictures of domestic animals and idyllic rural scenes and began to dabble in dark city street-scapes and battle scenes.
With the invention of film, then television and, eventually, computers – which morphed into “the internet” – suddenly we became aware of everyone else’s angst. We get blow by blow descriptions and photographic evidence of terrible things. When the Twin Towers came down, we all saw it happen, over and over again. We see earthquake victims staggering around in the dust and rubble. We see police shooting rioters. We get photos of missing children plastered everywhere. (This is both a good and a bad thing. It’s good because it may help to find the child. But it’s bad because it tells us that our children aren’t safe.) We see emaciated people staggering through the desert looking for food and water. We see the mistreatment of animals and mankind’s inhumanity to mankind. We don’t just hear that women are stoned to death for insignificant things, we now see (in colour) photographs or film of these things. We see the inhumane treatment of people seeking asylum (a safe haven) under the guise of “protecting our borders”. We not only see and hear, but we join in the global vilification of a young man who became famous too young and who is surrounded by sycophantic idiots.
No wonder films are mass produced. Cinema complexes even have “gold” sections with recliner chairs, drinky-poos and snacks. All the better to forget what’s really happening. The Olympics (both winter and summer) have changed from a nice little athletic meet to a multi-million dollar business with television stations fighting for the right to host them. Thousands flock to see a bunch of cars race around and around and around a track that leads nowhere. Most of the audience are hoping for a “good smash-up” because “that’s what it’s all about”.
We are constantly bombarded by information that tells us we’re all going to heck in a handbasket. How do we deal with it? We put our fingers in our ears and sing, “la la la laaaa.” Oh, some of us try to make a difference. Some of us are standing with our fingers in the dam wall, yelling, “The flood’s coming!” But, deep down we have a gnawing feeling that it’s not doing much good. So, if we didn’t have our bread and circuses we’d probably all go insane with the grinding hopelessness of the human condition.
THEREFORE let’s be a little more supportive of the creative community who help us escape. Especially, let’s be supportive of those artists/writers/musicians/designers who help us escape yet, at the same time, remind us that the real world is still out there and it badly needs a giant bandaid. That’s what I’ve tried to do in my little ebook: Beast-speaker. (Available on Amazon Kindle, Apple iTunes and Kobo. See the links on this blog.)
PS: A message to all the people who have registered with this site. None of you ever post a comment, apart from trying to sell something. Perhaps you could make a gesture of goodwill and purchase a copy. It’s only $3.99.
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