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Part I - The Birth of Entertainment
---
author: Brinck
title: 'How Ads Wrecked Entertainment (And What You Can Do About It)'
date: '2018-11-17 14:00:00'
cover: 'muses.jpg'
---
The arts have always been a difficult business. In the 1600s, the arts were so competitive that poets and producers hired professional applauders called [claques](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claque). Shakespeare’s plays have literally [caused riots](https://culturacolectiva.com/books/history-of-riot-at-the-astor-place-shakespeare/). Managing fans and haters has always been a challenge, and our modern mass media culture has been forged in the birth and death of a thousand fandoms.
While fan culture seems to be an enduring part of the human experience, the production of art and entertainment has radically changed since we started scribbling on cave walls. It’s easy to assume that things have always been the way they are, but people in the past approached entertainment in a very different way than we do today.
# Art and Entertainment In Ye Olden Times Of Yore
![image alt text](image_0.png)
![Ye olde rockes and whatnot](https://spee.ch/2/NewgrangeIreland.jpeg)
I know "ye" is not a thing, and it’s actually a misrepresentation of Þe, or “the”, but it’s too fun not to use
@ -16,7 +20,7 @@ People have been making art for about 27,000 years, for the same reasons they do
The first public performances popped up in ancient Athens, and the cost of these productions led to the first known patronage relationships in the arts. Theater was important to the Athenians, and they had enough wealthy merchants committed to the theater that they could afford to put on serious shows. Every spring at a feast called the Dionysia, playwrights would compete for the favor of the city in what was basically an ancient Sundance.
![image alt text](image_1.png)
![His work is so transgressive](https://spee.ch/1/Aeschylusathens.jpeg)
Don’t forget I’m on a dialogue-writing panel at 3PM with Sophocles
@ -30,7 +34,7 @@ Time passed. In Europe, lots of art was created, mostly in royal courts or churc
In hindsight, it was a productive period for the arts; but at the time, entertainment options were few and far between for regular people. Traveling musicians and entertainers were the occasional break in a bleak, terrible period in history.
![image alt text](image_2.png)
![Birdwatching, especially swallow migrations, also provided entertainment](https://spee.ch/3/help-help-im-being-repressed.gif)
Gleeman (in England), Troubadours (in Western Europe) and their equivalents in almost every culture worldwide would sing, dance, play instruments, tell stories, and do tricks for a fee or lodging - a sort of medieval one-man variety show. Troubadours even had some [titillating psycho-sexual mysticism](https://books.google.com/books?id=Q14oDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT51&lpg=PT51&dq=troubadours+and+mysticism&source=bl&ots=Gi6yqmjP-1&sig=5VB8jtYzL4a1kR5hpooAbY8DCzM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjB8u7bzNDYAhUF4IMKHdjTDwsQ6AEIVTAH#v=onepage&q=troubadours%20and%20mysticism&f=false) thrown into their repertoire for good measure.
@ -40,7 +44,7 @@ Fast forward to the Renaissance - after years of trickling from the countryside
In 1599, Shakespeare’s theater company (the Lord Chamberlain’s Men) built the Globe Theater, an employee-owned enterprise that produced Shakespeare’s plays. Artists turned into businessmen, and they did a good job of it. The Globe made enough money to survive for decades, and was even rebuilt after it caught on fire when a stage cannon backfired.
![image alt text](image_3.png)
![Shamone!](https://spee.ch/a/globe-theatre.jpeg)
Foreshadowing that time Michael Jackson [caught on fire](http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/michael-jackson-burned-filming-commercial-1984-article-1.2511008)?
@ -52,5 +56,5 @@ As we know, this didn’t lead to a DIY opera industry or the disappearance of p
Artists had to find a hybrid system, and straddle the line between finding supporters that they’d have to please (governments, religious officials, wealthy businessmen, etc.) and supporters who just want to get more of the artist’s work but didn’t necessarily have deep pockets.
The creative world stayed in this limbo until the introduction of commercial radio and ad-supported content, which you can read more about in this post.
The creative world stayed in this limbo until the introduction of commercial radio and ad-supported content, which you can read more about in [this post](https://lbry.io/news/how-ads-wrecked-entertainment).