The experience of being entertained has come to be strongly associated with amusement, so that one common understanding of the idea is fun and laughter, although many entertainments have a serious purpose. This may be the case in the various forms of ceremony, celebration, religious festival, or satire for example. Hence, there is the possibility that what appears as entertainment may also be a means of achieving insight or intellectual growth.
jinri 2 experience pdf 52
The "ancient craft of communicating events and experiences, using words, images, sounds and gestures" by telling a story[16] is not only the means by which people passed on their cultural values and traditions and history from one generation to another, it has been an important part of most forms of entertainment ever since the earliest times. Stories are still told in the early forms, for example, around a fire while camping, or when listening to the stories of another culture as a tourist. "The earliest storytelling sequences we possess, now of course, committed to writing, were undoubtedly originally a speaking from mouth to ear and their force as entertainment derived from the very same elements we today enjoy in films and novels."[17] Storytelling is an activity that has evolved and developed "toward variety".[17] Many entertainments, including storytelling but especially music and drama, remain familiar but have developed into a wide variety of form to suit a very wide range of personal preferences and cultural expression. Many types are blended or supported by other forms. For example, drama, stories and banqueting (or dining) are commonly enhanced by music; sport and games are incorporated into other activities to increase appeal. Some may have evolved from serious or necessary activities (such as running and jumping) into competition and then become entertainment. It is said, for example, that pole vaulting "may have originated in the Netherlands, where people used long poles to vault over wide canals rather than wear out their clogs walking miles to the nearest bridge. Others maintain that pole vaulting was used in warfare to vault over fortress walls during battle."[18] The equipment for such sports has become increasingly sophisticated. Vaulting poles, for example, were originally made from woods such as ash, hickory or hazel; in the 19th century bamboo was used and in the 21st century poles can be made of carbon fibre.[18] Other activities, such as walking on stilts, are still seen in circus performances in the 21st century. Gladiatorial combats, also known as "gladiatorial games", popular during Roman times, provide a good example of an activity that is a combination of sport, punishment, and entertainment.[19][20]
The stage and the spaces set out in front of it for an audience create a theatre. All types of stage are used with all types of seating for the audience, including the impromptu or improvised; the temporary; the elaborate; or the traditional and permanent. They are erected indoors or outdoors. The skill of managing, organising and preparing the stage for a performance is known as stagecraft. The audience's experience of the entertainment is affected by their expectations, the stagecraft, the type of stage, and the type and standard of seating provided.
Films are a major form of entertainment, although not all films have entertainment as their primary purpose: documentary film, for example, aims to create a record or inform,[90] although the two purposes often work together. The medium was a global business from the beginning: "The Lumière brothers were the first to send cameramen throughout the world, instructing them to film everything which could be of interest for the public."[91] In 1908, Pathé launched and distributed newsreels[91] and by World War I, films were meeting an enormous need for mass entertainment. "In the first decade of the [20th] century cinematic programmes combined, at random, fictions and newsfilms."[91] The Americans first "contrived a way of producing an illusion of motion through successive images," but "the French were able to transform a scientific principle into a commercially lucrative spectacle".[92] Film therefore became a part of the entertainment industry from its early days. Increasingly sophisticated techniques have been used in the film medium to delight and entertain audiences. Animation, for example, which involves the display of rapid movement in an art work, is one of these techniques that particularly appeals to younger audiences.[93] The advent of computer-generated imagery (CGI) in the 21st century made it "possible to do spectacle" more cheaply and "on a scale never dreamed of" by Cecil B. DeMille.[94] From the 1930s to 1950s, movies and radio were the "only mass entertainment" but by the second decade of the 21st century, technological changes, economic decisions, risk aversion and globalisation reduced both the quality and range of films being produced.[95] Sophisticated visual effects and CGI techniques, for example, rather than humans, were used not only to create realistic images of people, landscapes and events (both real and fantastic) but also to animate non-living items such as Lego normally used as entertainment as a game in physical form.[96] Creators of The Lego Movie "wanted the audience to believe they were looking at actual Lego bricks on a tabletop that were shot with a real camera, not what we actually did, which was create vast environments with digital bricks inside the computer."[96] The convergence of computers and film has allowed entertainment to be presented in a new way and the technology has also allowed for those with the personal resources to screen films in a home theatre, recreating in a private venue the quality and experience of a public theatre. This is similar to the way that the nobility in earlier times could stage private musical performances or the use of domestic theatres in large homes to perform private plays in earlier centuries.
Since dance is often "associated with the female body and women's experiences",[101] female dancers, who dance to entertain, have in some cases been regarded as distinct from "decent" women because they "use their bodies to make a living instead of hiding them as much as possible".[109] Society's attitudes to female dancers depend on the culture, its history and the entertainment industry itself. For example, while some cultures regard any dancing by women as "the most shameful form of entertainment",[110] other cultures have established venues such as strip clubs where deliberately erotic or sexually provocative dances such as striptease are performed in public by professional women dancers for mostly male audiences.
In the 21st century, entertainment venues, especially stadia, are "likely to figure among the leading architectural genres".[159] However, they require "a whole new approach" to design, because they need to be "sophisticated entertainment centres, multi-experience venues, capable of being enjoyed in many diverse ways".[160] Hence, architects now have to design "with two distinct functions in mind, as sports and entertainment centres playing host to live audiences, and as sports and entertainment studios serving the viewing and listening requirements of the remote audience".[160]
On the other hand, sometimes architecture is entertainment, while pretending to be functional. The tourism industry, for example, creates or renovates buildings as "attractions" that have either never been used or can never be used for their ostensible purpose. They are instead re-purposed to entertain visitors often by simulating cultural experiences. Buildings, history and sacred spaces are thus made into commodities for purchase. Such intentional tourist attractions divorce buildings from the past so that "the difference between historical authenticity and contemporary entertainment venues/theme parks becomes hard to define".[162] Examples include "the preservation of the Alcázar of Toledo, with its grim Civil War History, the conversion of slave dungeons into tourist attractions in Ghana, [such as, for example, Cape Coast Castle] and the presentation of indigenous culture in Libya".[163] The specially constructed buildings in amusement parks represent the park's theme and are usually neither authentic nor completely functional.
Those who become ill on the jia day will not feel calm. They will experience cold and hot flashes; their skin will be flushed. The Ghosts of the Five Roads will come to the home to do mischief, trying to seduce the females and take away their souls. This is because the original request [for help?] has not yet been granted. Quickly face the east and worship the spirit soldiers.
While I was still a student studying in Taiwan in the 1960s, I collected information by asking people I met to tell me about their experiences with ghosts. I learned about the ghosts, goblins, and demons that the Daoist deities could control and banish with their spirit generals and spirit troops [shenbing 神兵]. In 1967, I had a conversation about ghosts with our amah 阿媽 (a maid and cook in our house; this is a polite form of address for an elderly woman, although our amah was in her thirties). She was a woman from Hunan with almost no formal education and had come to Taiwan with her husband in the late 1940s with the Nationalist forces. Here is what she told me (April 1967, in Taipei): 2ff7e9595c
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