Entertainment and profit

Theatres, cinemas and football clubs have all recently felt the draught as their support and so their receipts fell. Pubs, Restaurants and Dance Halls have gone through the same agony. Where, they must have wondered, have all our supporters, patrons, clients, gone? Surely not all of them are televiewing?

One football club got so worked up about this recently that they took a census to find out the reason for their falling gates. They discovered some of their missing supporters in the strangest of places; in the local shopping centres, fetching and carrying for the wife. The wife, apparently, is at work all week and so she has to buy as much of the week’s food as she can in one go on Saturday afternoon. Who can blame her for cutting up rough if the old man wants to enjoy himself watching football while she has to push and shove her heavy laden way through the crowds? So no football, no dozing, no telly even for him.

Of course, there are any number of reasons offered for this. Some say that football, or the theatre, or what-have-you, are not what they used to be. Others say that they are not up to the standard of other countries (how unpatriotic!). And there are those who simply shrug and blame it all onto the telly.

These are at best the superficial reasons for changes in public tastes. To find the basic reason we must look at the motive for the birth and presentation of various types of entertainment. Today, we live in a Capitalist world in which all social endeavour in terms of research, invention, culture, service and work is carried on with the object of returning to the Capitalist more from his business than he puts into it. This is assured by the simple method of allowing the working class, who produce all the wealth, to receive only a part of it in their wages. But, sometimes, as we know, there is no profit in certain lines of business. One industry may be undermined by the development of a cheap substitute for its product. Another will fail because it cannot stand the pace of competition. So they decline, sometimes washed down with crocodile tears in the City columns.

The entertainment industry is no exception to this rule. It, too, must have, its profits—and it is often not too particular how it gets them. Jazz clubs, dance halls and coffee bars are not worried whether the working class teenagers who keep them going are missing their homework, or skipping evening classes, to do so. Publicans would rather see us drinking in their bars than attending a Political or Trade Union meeting, or ;i lecture on archaeology if it comes to that. And entertainment, with its various branches vying with each other for our custom, must keep producing the novel and alleged improvements to keep us interested.

Yet however interested we become, we can never avoid the fact that the biggest and best part of our day is spent in being exploited in the factory or the office to make huge fortunes for the lucky shareholders. This does not leave much time to enjoy our entertainment, however good or bad it may be.
J. McG.