Ancient Greece and Rome were very familiar with the concepts of mass entertainment in the form of theaters, games and races, although these were quite different civilizations from the modern world in many ways, such as the absence of television, radio, computers and other forms of electronic mass communications. There was no concept of a 24-hour news cycle or a wide variety of information and entertainment programs offered by cable and satellite television and the Internet. Most people lived at or below the subsistence level, and no middle class or system of mass production, consumption and distribution existed. Almost always the public games and entertainments in the ancient world were sponsored by kings, emperors and aristocrats as part of their expected duties, rather than by large corporations advertising products to a mass audience. News travelled at the speed horses and humans could move, which often meant that many regions of the world were unaware of each other and that people might not learn of ‘recent’ events for weeks or months. Some aspects of the arena and the circus that Roman crowds found highly entertaining, such as the public execution of slaves and criminals or battles to the death between gladiators and prisoners of war, would not be permitted in the present-day mass media no matter how desperate for ratings their owners might be. Greeks and Romans also understood that the theater could be used for public instruction and enlightenment as well as entertainment, and one of the moral and religious lessons that Greek theater in particular found very valuable was that pride (hubris) goes before a fall. Many of the classical dramas like the Oedipus plays offered this lesson, and the rules of Greek drama concerning the need for a beginning, a middle and an end (three acts), including a climax followed by a morally acceptable resolution, are still standard in stage, film and television dramas today.
Ancient culture and society had relatively little in common with the modern Western world, not only in the absence of technology and mass media, but in culture, government and family life. For example, the Greek and Roman families were not nuclear household of parents and children, but extended families of various relatives, as well as servants and slaves, government by the male head of household or paterfamilias. It had very little in common with the 20th Century American family or household, being entertained by television, in that apart from the wealthy elites its consumption demands were quite basic, while death rates and childhood morality were very high by modern standards. Aristocrats, kings and emperors funded these public entertainments, especially in the Roman Republic and Empire, as part of their general responsibilities as the ruling class and as “vehicles for self-advancement” (Dodge 205). Indeed, the first Roman emperor Augustus believed the upper classes had become too soft and addicted to luxuries during the Roman Republic, and had also undermined the position of the free farmers and artisans by importing millions of slaves in Italy. He was determined to restore order and stability to the country after decades of civil war, and part of his policy was to offer bread, money, land and entertainment for the masses—not just bread and circuses’ as the common cliché runs. Most of his successors followed these policies, including the construction of baths, arenas and theaters as public works projects employing thousands of people (Adler and Pouwels 126).
Some of these public entertainment venues could seat tens or even hundreds of thousands of spectators, like the Circus Maximus and Colosseum in Rome and other big cities, while provincial theaters and arenas would be much smaller. Rome also continued the tradition of the Olympic Games, as well as chariot races, combats with animals, hunting displays, and reenactments of land and naval battles. Unlike the Greek events, though, which “involved freeborn male citizens of individual city-states competing in athletic contests for symbolic or monetary prizes”, Roman citizens were not allowed to participate in the theater or games (Dodge 207). These were always reserved for slaves and criminals in the Roman Empire, although sometimes they would be freed if they performed well. Augustus and his empire were products of a long period of civil war and social conflict that destroyed the Late Roman Republic and his main task was to restore order after decades of chaos. He kept the form of many of the old Roman institutions but in reality the emperors were dictators for life rather than consuls and first citizens. For Augustus, the old Republic was decadent, not least because slavery had caused corruption and love of luxury among the aristocracy while also displacing the peasant farmers in Italy and turning them into landless laborers and urban paupers and proletarians
Like the Olympic Games, all the Roman games and spectacles were held in honor of the gods, or to celebrate military victories and other important public occasions. By the time of the Roman Empire, there was a regular schedule of 74 public holidays for games, feasts and other public entertainments, which was a far more generous schedule for time off than in the present-day United States (Dodge 209). Originally, Greek theater had commemorated various religious occasions, and the orchestra was the main part of the outdoor theater rather than the stage, and the public display consisted only of singing and dancing in front of some scenery (Dodge 210). Later, the stage for actors was added when Greek drama developed, but the chorus, usually representing public opinion or the conventional wisdom, was always a vital part of ancient theater. Romans adopted theater buildings from the Greeks and often expanded them, and these could be found in every major city and town in the Empire. Among the most famous for its excellent sound was the great theater at Ephesus (Dodge 219). Unlike the Greeks, the Romans also conducted gladiatorial games in the outdoor theaters, as well as executions of various types such as crucifixion, burning at the stake and being thrown alive to the beasts. Originally, the gladiators fought in honor of the dead Roman citizens, with the idea that blood sacrifices propitiated the ancestors, but later they were simply staged as popular entertainment for the crowds (Dodge 235). At times, displays of Greek athletics like boxing, wrestling and footraces would also be held, which were closer to the contemporary concept of sports for public entertainment.
Greek drama contained many of the same moralistic elements that would be found in modern plays of stage and screen, such as the tendency to make the poor and lower classes the subject of comedy or to warn the rich and powerful about the dangers of becoming too proud and arrogant. When he speaks to the chorus and the audience, for example, Oedipus the king of Thebes often comes across as prideful, describing himself as brilliant, famous and great (Ford 85-89). He is also quick to use violence if he feels slighted or insulted, as he did with Laius on the road to Delphi, thus killing his father without realizing it (Ford 108). Only in later plays, when he is an old man who wanders the countryside after having blinded himself when he learned that he had unintentionally murdered his father and married his mother, does the audience and the chorus come to express more sympathy for him. In the play Oedipus at Colonus, the chorus actually intervenes in the action of the play to prevent him from being removed by Creon, which was a “unique instance of the chorus’ physical intrusion in the action” in any ancient play (Markantonatos 28). No one really wants him around, given his history, but he finally persuades the Athenians that he only did evil without knowing it and that he is “a man more sinned against than sinning” (Storr 16).
When democracy began in the U.S. in the 1830s and 1840s, no ele4ctronic mass media existed while large corporations and mass consumer culture hardly existed yet. At the time, information came in the form of newspapers controlled by political parties, while entertainment was far more localized and spontaneous than the organized system of the 20th Century. For the white men who voted, though, there were “widespread expectations that citizens’ capacity to follow the affairs of state would be dramatically improved” in a more democratic society (Bimber and Davis 4). Indeed, 80-90% of these men voted in most elections in the 19th Century compared to the more normal rate of 50-60% in the 20th Century (Engerman and Sokoloff 111-12). Radio and television only came into being in the 20th Century, and their effect has been to train their audiences in passive consumption rather than active participation as citizens (Neuman, Just, and Crigler 79). By 1960, the year of the first televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, 87% of American households had television, and it became their primary source of news and entertainment (Swint 7). More and more, politics became more about image than substance, and appearances instead of reality and the TV audience believed that Kennedy had won the debate because he looked younger and more vigorous than Nixon (Swint 9). Nixon did not repeat this mistake and in the 1968 election, he hired media experts like Roger Ailes, the future president of Fox “News”, to script every single detail of his language and appearance, always making sure that he wore makeup for the cameras (McGinniss 10). All politicians regardless of party have followed this example ever since, which is quite far removed from the world of ancient Greece and Rome, where most people would never likely even see their rulers at all except perhaps on coins.
Other events in the 1960s were heavily impacted by the new electronic mass media, including the civil rights movements and the war in Vietnam. This decade of protests, violence and assassinations obviously affected the news side of the business, and gradually began to affect entertainment as well. When it got its start in the 1940s and 1950s, television’s main purpose was to sell the products of its corporate sponsors, which was part of the Affluent Society that had emerged after the Second World War. Most popular programs like I Love Lucy, Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver showed contented white families in the suburbs or at least thinking about moving there. In addition, television offered the usual quiz programs, soap operas and sporting events that it thought would reach the most consumers. In the 20th Century, journalists, social scientists and public relations experts like Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays did not have a very high opinion of the masses, but then again neither had most of the ancient Greek and Roman rulers and philosophers. They often restated the age-old arguments of Plato about how the “intelligent few” could easily rule the uneducated herd with simple ideas and images (Ewen 9). Starting with the civil rights and antiwar movements, though, there was an explosion of popular enthusiasm, activism and involvement that stunned the ‘experts’ in the media, government and the corporate world. Martin Luther King’s March of Washington in 1963, where he gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, as well as the protests and Birmingham that led to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act were also unexpected developments. So were the environmental and feminist movements that developed later in the decade, and for a time at least, this led to radical new developments in popular culture and entertainment, including new TV programs like All in the Family that seemed more ‘relevant’ to the social and political issues of the day.
Since the 1980s and 1990s, it has become very hard to generalize about mass entertainment and popular culture in America, mainly because of the proliferation of new media like cable and satellite television, the Internet and Facebook, all of which offer individual consumers more options than ever before. Indeed, many of the old print media, including books, magazines and newspapers, now seem on the verge of becoming obsolete, which would be a major revolution in history. No single mood or style sums up this new proliferation of mass media, although cynicism, irony and reduced social and economic expectations in programs like Friends, South Park and many others all appear to be very common. Barack Obama was the first candidate to fully exploit the Internet and new social media, just as Franklin Roosevelt did with radio in the 1930s and John F. Kennedy with television in the 1960s, and in the future all politicians will be using his campaigns of 2008 and 2012 as a model. This does not necessarily mean a revival of democracy, however, since after all the new media are just as much under the control of large corporations as the rest of the economy and political system. This was a world far removed from that of ancient Greece and Rome, of course, given that the contemporary technologies would simply have been beyond their imaginations, as would the high levels of mass consumption and the sheer variety of information and entertainment options being offered the masses. If they could overcome their astonishment at all these changes, however, the ancients might very well have recognized these as very effective tools that an authoritarian or oligarchic society could use for social control.
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Engerman, Stanley L. and Kenneth L. Sokoloff. Economic Development in the Americas since 1500: Endowments and Institutions. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
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King, Martin Luther, “I Have a Dream” (1963) in Sylvan Barnet and Hugo Bedau (eds). Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument. Bedford/St. Martin’s 2010: 541-44.
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