Feb 5, 2007
Cultural Malthusianism
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By: Luke Gilman | Other Posts by Luke Gilman Go to Comments | Be the First to Comment |
In the New Yorker recently – The Human Sound
It is quite possible that when the century is over, live entertainment—real people singing, acting, dancing, playing, reciting, and clowning in front of real people—will have disappeared in this country or become an anachronism. (The very existence of the phrase “live entertainment†is ominous; the term would have struck the Victorians as a puzzling redundancy.) Concert halls and opera houses are no longer full. The theatre appears static beside the fluid drive of film. (At that, even movie houses, which have always seemed like arenas of live entertainment, are rarely sold out.) The circus and rodeo are obsolescent, night clubs are dwindling, and such diversions as band concerts and the straw-hat circuit are almost at an end.
Yeah, like remember before photography when people used to paint? Oh wait….they still do. I wish I had more time to address this annoying habit of eulogizing things that aren’t dead yet…. alas….
