The Decline of Quality Entertainment Throughout History

Entertainment has been around as long as people have. Easily accessible, community-based entertainment started as a useful and informative tool, such as radio during World War I. In more recent years, however, corruptive and abusive things are often glorified in entertainment. Drugs and alcohol are highly romanticized in popular music and television. Violence is a common theme in video games and movies. These things are available and typically forced upon people, especially those of Generation Y and younger, on a daily basis. The absorption of negative entertainment has the capability of creating violent, unhealthy, and overall “bad” people through this brainwashing of sorts. Conversely, though, positive entertainment can stick with people just as well as negative entertainment can, and it can do a lot to counteract the negativity.

Drugs and alcohol are two of the largest themes in entertainment. Our knowledge of drugs and alcohol has increased immensely since entertainment’s birth, yet the exploitation of these harmful substances remains a gigantic allure. During the creation of easily accessible entertainment, such as television and music radio, many people smoked several cigarettes a day and drank liquor like water. People did not know the extent of the harm that such things could cause them. Puzzlingly enough, however, we as a society have made incredible leaps in the field of science since then. Yet in today’s mainstream music, drugs and alcohol are still incorporated into many lyrics. Current rap artists are especially known for this, such as Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj. In the same respect, anyhow, many commercials and shows have passed through my television which have informed me of the hurtful things drugs and alcohol can do. I have seen first-hand the way that alcoholism and drug use can destroy families and burn bridges, and if it were not for the idolization of these things in popular entertainment, many people would not find them to be so appealing.

We as a community have become incredibly desensitized to outrageous acts of violence. I notice it within myself often times, how I will not even bat an eye while watching the popular yet gory television series “American Horror Story”. In my school, one can hardly feel comfortable while walking through the hallway on account of the amount of fights between fellow students that break out each week. This theme of violence is not new by any means, yet our feelings toward it have changed quite drastically over time. War footage from the second World War was watched by many, many people internationally. The difference is that back then, these graphic and horrible images deeply affected citizens in a negative way. Currently, video games like “Call Of Duty” and “Halo”, in which the person playing is viewing the game through the scope of a gun the entire time, can be found in virtually every house of every teenager in every first world country. Violence has been around since long before entertainment, yet only in recent years has it been a way of having fun. Many studies have been done on whether violent video games are actually corrupting the youths minds, and they remain generally inconclusive. But it cannot be denied that we have become terrifyingly desensitized to graphic depictions of violence because of the casual way it is portrayed in entertainment.

Since the dawn of time, humans have found many different forms of entertainment. Some of these forms are either totally harmless or can even have a positive effect on society, However, enough forms of negative entertainment, like violence and drug abuse, are widespread enough that they do have the power to possibly corrupt our society.