Entertain The Circus Quotes

Panem et Circenses" translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

There's only two types of people in the world: the ones that entertain, and the ones that observe.

Panem et Circenses translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

The Romans always wanted bread and circuses-food and entertainement! As we destroy their city, I will offer them both. Behold, a sample!" Someething dropped from the ceiling and landed at Percy's feet: a loaf of sandwich bread in a white plastic wrapper with red and yellow dots. Percy picked it up. "Wonder bread?" "Magnificent, isn't it?" Ephialtes eyes danced with crazy excitement.

Wise men have regarded the earth as a tragedy, a farce, even an illusionist's trick; but all, if they are truly wise, and not merely intellectual rapists, recognize that it is certainly some kind of stage in which we all play roles, most of us being very poorly coached and totally unrehearsed before the curtain rises. Is it too much if I ask, tentatively, that we agree to look upon it as a circus, a touring carnival wandering about the sun for a record season of four billion years and producing new monsters and miracles, hoaxes and bloody mishaps, wonders and blunders, but never quite entertaining the customers well enough to prevent them from leaving, one by one, and returning to their homes for a long and bored winter's sleep under the dust?

In a world full of lions and tigers entertaining the masses, have you ever seen a wolf performing in a circus?

David is in the entertainment business, which is what people in his line of work call television news these days. A Roman circus of information and opinions.

It’s a saying from thousands of years ago, written in a language called Latin about a place called Rome,” he explains. “Panem et Circenses translates into ‘Bread and Circuses.’ The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

Thus I have come to think that the fourth commandment on sabbath is the most difficult and most urgent of the commandments in our society, because it summons us to intent and conduct that defies the most elemental requirements of a commodity-propelled society that specializes in control and entertainment, bread and circuses … along with anxiety and violence.

I turned to face him. “I just don’t want you to get bored while I go shopping.” “You’re enough entertainment for me alone. It’s like watching a circus.

But entertainment has the merit not only of being better suited to helping sell goods; it is an effective vehicle for hidden ideological messages.24 Furthermore, in a system of high and growing inequality, entertainment is the contemporary equivalent of the Roman “games of the circus” that diverts the public from politics and generates a political apathy that is helpful to preservation of the status quo.

I can hardly conceive of any educated man believing in God at all without believing that God contains in Himself every perfection including eternal joy; and does not require the solar system to entertain Him like a circus.

Josh: Yo, I’m bored. Guess I wasn’t the only person who couldn’t sleep tonight. Me: What do you want me to do about it? Josh: Entertain me. Me: Fuck you. I’m not your circus monkey.

Risking your own life in order to entertain others is the height of stupidity.

But the significant difference between Thirteen and the Capitol are the expectations of the populace. Thirteen was used to hardship, wheras in the Capitol, all they’ve known is Panem et Circenses. “(Plutrach) ” What’s that?” I recognize Panem, of course, but the rest is nonsense. “It’s a saying from thousands of years ago, written in a language called Latin about a place called Rome,” he explains. ”Panem et Circenses translates into ‘Bread and Circuses.’ The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

Here’s the simplest, most jargon-free, definition of marketing you’re ever likely to come across: If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying “Circus Coming to the Showground Saturday,” that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed and the local newspaper writes a story about it, that’s publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations. If the town’s citizens go to the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales. And if you planned the whole thing, that’s marketing.

Boredom doesn't come from lack of activities but rather from your own limitations and ideas of fun. Appropriate behavior, normalcy and perfection is what you make of it. But just in case you're bored with perfect, come over to the dark side. Us circus freaks know a thing or two about thorough entertainment.

No matter what people said they wanted (Real estate! Stocks! Bonds!), their actions always spoke louder. People wanted an escape. They wanted entertainment, a place where they could revel in wonder and forget about the drudgery of everyday life.

On solemn festivals, Julian, who felt and professed an unfashionable dislike to these frivolous amusements, condescended to appear in the Circus; and, after bestowing a careless glance on five or six of the races, he hastily withdrew with the impatience of a philosopher, who considered every moment as lost that was not devoted to the advantage of the public or the improvement of his own mind.

Juvenal is not the only one to write off the priorities of the Roman people as ‘bread and circuses’. Fronto, the tutor of Marcus Aurelius, makes exactly the same point when he writes of the emperor Trajan that ‘he understood that the Roman people are kept in line by two things beyond all else: the corn dole and entertainments’.

I have come to think that the fourth commandment on sabbath is the most difficult and most urgent of the commandments in our society, because it summons us to intent and conduct that defies the most elemental requirements of a commodity-propelled society that specializes in control and entertainment, bread and circuses … along with anxiety and violence.

Panem et Circenses translates into ‘Bread and Circuses.’ The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

Physical deprivation and hunger are one thing; the poverty of the mind and psyche is quite another. Crashing Costco to find bulk beans and rice is not the same as flash-mobbing for Air Jordans and iPhones. How odd that our cultural elite and our dependent poor are somewhat alike, in a symbiotic relationship in which the latter guilt-trip the former for entitlements, with the assurance that the top of the pyramid is safe and free to fritter about far from those they worry about. No wonder those in between who lack the romance of the poor and the privileges and power of the elite are shrinking. We are entering the age of the bread-and-circuses Coliseum: luxury box seats for the fleshy senatorial class, free food and tickets for the rest—and the shrinking middle out in the sand of the arena providing the entertainment.

It was also the content. Trump sold hate, violence, xenophobia, racism, and ignorance, which oddly enough had long been permissible zones of exploration for American television entertainment. And the news media was becoming more and more indistinguishable from entertainment media. Meanwhile,

Panem et Circenses translates into ‘Bread and Circuses.’ The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.” I think about the Capitol. The excess of food. And the ultimate entertainment. The Hunger Games.

commandment on sabbath is the most difficult and most urgent of the commandments in our society, because it summons us to intent and conduct that defies the most elemental requirements of a commodity-propelled society that specializes in control and entertainment, bread and circuses . . . along with anxiety and violence.

It's good to ‘waste’ money on such a moral and esthetic venture. These are our cathedrals. don't think it is fair to say they are our [Roman] circuses, for that is not the tone. We ought to see to it that people live well, but a part of living well is blowing money on big excitement, curiosity, entertainment, conversation.

It’s a saying from thousands of years ago, written in a language called Latin about a place called Rome,” he explains. “Panem et Circenses translates into ‘Bread and Circuses.’ The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.” I

With little to no choice, we are locked in a relationship of passive consumption, entertained in a circus not only while the world burns, but as we–with every push of a button–burn it ourselves. 'Humanity's self-alienation has reached to such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order,' Benjamin wrote. Videogames are extremely good at this.

I suddenly felt, well, terribly old as I watched a mudskipper hopping along with what now seemed to me like a wonderful sense of hopeless, boundless naïve optimism. I hoped that if its descendant was sitting here on this beach in 350 million years' time with a camera around its neck, it would feel that the journey had been worth it. I hoped that it might have a clearer understanding of itself in relation to the world it lived in. I hoped that it wouldn't be reduced to turning other creatures into horror circus shows in order to try and ensure them their survival. I hoped that if someone tried to feed the remote descendant of a goat to the remote descendant of a dragon for the sake of a little more than a shudder of entertainment, that it would feel it was wrong. I hoped it wouldn't be too chicken to say so.

The world is a more interesting place than I had ever imagined when I came to that first Midnight Dinner. Is that because Miss Bowen can animate a solid wooden creature on a carousel or because you could manipulate my memory, or because the circus itself pushed the boundaries of what I dreamed was possible, even before I entertained the thought of actual magic? I cannot say. But I would not trade it for anything.

What Is Marketing? Some people think marketing is advertising or branding or some other vague concept. While all these are associated with marketing, they are not one and the same. Here’s the simplest, most jargon-free definition of marketing you’re ever likely to come across: If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying “Circus Coming to the Showground Saturday,” that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed and the local newspaper writes a story about it, that’s publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations. If the town’s citizens go to the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and, ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales. And if you planned the whole thing, that’s marketing.

Social networking is the most brilliant manifestation yet of the elite’s bread and circuses paradigm. Whereas Caesar had to spend a fortune putting on shows for the plebs, the modern Caesar get the plebs to entertain themselves on Facebook, and it doesn’t cost him a cent. In fact, he can become a multi-billionaire out of it. What a result! The elite must always ensure that the masses are too preoccupied to ever think about the appalling world they live in; to confront the realisation that they are degraded second-class citizens in a two-tier society.

What Is Marketing? Some people think marketing is advertising or branding or some other vague concept. While all these are associated with marketing, they are not one and the same. Here’s the simplest, most jargon-free definition of marketing you’re ever likely to come across: If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying “Circus Coming to the Showground Saturday,” that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed and the local newspaper writes a story about it, that’s publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations. If the town’s citizens go to the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and, ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales. And if you planned the whole thing, that’s marketing. Yup, it’s as simple as that—marketing is the strategy you use for getting your ideal target market to know you, like you and trust you enough to become a customer. All the stuff you usually associate with marketing are tactics.

Academia is an odd place. Stately buildings and ivy, wrought iron fences, and libraries fragrant with the smell of old books. Young people scurry to and from class, fresh, energetic, and naive. But in the long halls and narrow offices, those who work there fester in the dark like overeducated viral agents. Wet-eyed professors with obscure, irrelevant specialties and inferiority complexes browbeat students. Administrators, buffeted by faculty contempt and general inefficiency, sink into venal scheming. Any college campus is a circus, complete with color, entertainment, and the occasional glimpse of something really amazing. At Dorian University, the circus had a large number of clowns and a truly impressive freak show.

Different form, same function. Many companies that create blue oceans attract customers from other industries who use a product or service that performs the same function or bears the same core utility as the new one but takes a very different physical form. In the case of Ford’s Model T, Ford looked to the horse-drawn carriage. The horse-drawn carriage had the same core utility as the car: transportation for individuals and families. But it had a very different form: a live animal versus a machine. Ford effectively converted the majority of noncustomers of the auto industry, namely customers of horse-drawn carriages, into customers of its own blue ocean by pricing its Model T against horse-drawn carriages and not the cars of other automakers. In the case of the school lunch catering industry, raising this question led to an interesting insight. Suddenly those parents who make their children’s lunches came into the equation. For many children, parents had the same function: making their child’s lunch. But they had a very different form: mom or dad versus a lunch line in the cafeteria. Different form and function, same objective. Some companies lure customers from even further away. Cirque du Soleil, for example, has diverted customers from a wide range of evening activities. Its growth came in part through drawing people away from other activities that differed in both form and function. For example, bars and restaurants have few physical features in common with a circus. They also serve a distinct function by providing conversational and gastronomical pleasure, a very different experience from the visual entertainment that a circus offers. Yet despite these differences in form and function, people have the same objective in undertaking these three activities: to enjoy a night out.

Panem et Circenses translates into bread and circuses. The writer was saying in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

The steady advance, and cultural power, of marketing and advertising has caused "the displacement of a political public sphere by a depoliticized consumer culture." And it has had the effect of creating a world of virtual communities built by advertisers and based on demographics and taste differences of consumers. These consumption- and style-based clusters are at odds with physical communities that share a social life and common concerns and which participate in a democratic order. These virtual communities are organized to buy and sell goods, not to create or service a public sphere. Advertisers don't like the public sphere, where audiences are relatively small, upsetting controversy takes place, and the settings are not ideal for selling goods. Their preference for entertainment underlies the gradual erosion of the public sphere under systems of commercial media, well exemplified in the history of broadcasting in the United States over the past seventy-five years. But entertainment has the merit not only of being better suited to helping sell goods; it is an effective vehicle for hidden ideological messages. Furthermore, in a system of high and growing inequality, entertainment is the contemporary equivalent of the Roman "games of the circus" that diverts the public from politics and generates a political apathy that is helpful to preservation of the status quo.

The emperor Tiberius, who followed Augustus in AD 14, abolished the Plebeian Assembly and transferred its powers to the Senate. Instead of a political voice, Roman citizens now had free handouts of wheat and, subsequently, olive oil, wine, and pork, and were kept entertained by circuses and gladiatorial contests.

If we think deeply about our childhood, not just about our memories of it but how it actually felt, we realize how differently we experienced the world back then. Our minds were completely open, and we entertained all kinds of surprising, original ideas. Things that we now take for granted, things as simple as the night sky or our reflection in a mirror, often caused us to wonder. Our heads teemed with questions about the world around us. Not yet having commanded language, we thought in ways that were preverbal—in images and sensations. When we attended the circus, a sporting event, or a movie, our eyes and ears took in the spectacle with utmost intensity. Colors seemed more vibrant and alive. We had a powerful desire to turn everything around us into a game, to play with circumstances. Let us call this quality the Original Mind. This mind looked at the world more directly—not through words and received ideas. It was flexible and receptive to new information. [...] Masters and those who display a high level of creative energy are simply people who manage to retain a sizeable portion of their childhood spirit despite the pressures and demands of adulthood. This spirit manifests itself in their work and in their ways of thinking. Children are naturally creative. They actively transform everything around them, play with ideas and circumstances, and surprise us with the novel things they say or do. [...] Masters not only retain the spirit of the Original Mind, but they add to it their years of apprenticeship and an ability to focus deeply on problems or ideas. This leads to high-level creativity. Although they have profound knowledge of a subject, their minds remain open to alternative ways of seeing and approaching problems. They are able to ask the kinds of simple questions that most people pass over, but they have the rigor and discipline to follow their investigations all the way to the end. They retain a childlike excitement about their field and a playful approach, all of which makes the hours of hard work alive and pleasurable. Like children, they are capable of thinking beyond words—visually, spatially, intuitively—and have greater access to preverbal and unconscious forms of mental activity, all of which can account for their surprising ideas and creations.

...while Colbert wrote in the back seat of the Comedy Central Car, Media spun out of control. Back when Colbert was working Second City weird comedians had little competition. TV news seemed sane, its anchors staid, and the greying men behind the desk considered themselves journalists, not entertainers. In those final pre-Web years, newspapers were mostly reliable, free of the cluttered competition of websites, tweets and blogs. But a decade later with 24-7 cable spreading, and every poll and pundit saying whatever it took to get attention, the comic could scarcely be more outrageous than the media circus. As the age of Fox News and the Drudge Report dawned, opinion replaced fact, rumor was treated as truth, and no conspiracy, however trivial or trumped up, went unnoticed.

He who performs for praise and applause, is a circus clown. He is but an entertainer. Not an artist.

Here’s the simplest, most jargon-free definition of marketing you’re ever likely to come across: If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying “Circus Coming to the Showground Saturday,” that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed and the local newspaper writes a story about it, that’s publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations. If the town’s citizens go to the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and, ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales. And if you planned the whole thing, that’s marketing.

Yo, I’m bored.” “What do you want me to do about it?” “Entertain me.” “Fuck you. I’m not your circus monkey.” “I woke up my roommate, I snorted so loud. You should def dress up as a circus monkey for Halloween.” “Only if you dress up as an ass. Sorry, I mean donkey. You’re already an ass.” “What a comedian. Don’t quit your day job. P.S. You think I won’t do it? I’ll do it just so I can blackmail you with the monkey pics.” “You don’t tell someone you want to blackmail them before getting the blackmail material, dumbass.

Rothschild looked at Archie as if he had said the most preposterous thing. “There’s no fire in reason: no bread and circuses. Think of Orwell’s feelies. Entertain them, distract them, and light a fire under their feelings against those who disagree. That’s how to create truth.

Evening brings the people to their windows, balconies, and doorways. Evening fills the streets with strolling crowds. Evening is an indigo tent for the circus of the city, and families bring children to the entertainments that inspire every corner and crossroad. And evening is a chaperone for young lovers: the last hour of light before the night comes to steal the innocence from their slow promenades. There’s no time, in the day or night, when there are more people on the streets of Bombay than there are in the evening, and no light loves the human face quite so much as the evening light in my Mumbai.

If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying “Circus Coming to the Showground Saturday,” that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed and the local newspaper writes a story about it, that’s publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations. If the town’s citizens go to the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales. And if you planned the whole thing, that’s marketing.

Circuses are about entertainment and juggling and animals and all that shit. Sideshows are about freaks, about people and the limits of acceptability. We push those limits. If a circus is an escape, Fire said, a sideshow is a confrontation.

collectivity, on the other hand, is the place of what the seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal calls “divertissement,” an untranslatable word which roughly means “distraction” or “diversion”: It is the escape from life’s problems, and also its invitations, into activities that in ultimate terms are meaningless. It is a constant turning to superficial actions as a way to avoid facing the true realities of human life. The soap operas and situation comedies easily become an addiction. They take the place of the “bread and circuses” of ancient Rome. There was plenty wrong with Roman society and the Roman emperors offered the diversion of food and entertainment to make people forget the banality and meaninglessness of the lives they lived. Our society does much the same and has ever so much more in the way of sophisticated tools for doing so.

If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying “Circus Coming to the Showground Saturday,” that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed and the local newspaper writes a story about it, that’s publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations. If the town’s citizens go to the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and, ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that’s sales. And if you planned the whole thing, that’s marketing.

Far more entertaining than a high-wire or trapeze circus act is watching someone engage in a life-after-death-defying spiritual rebellion, while pretending we thoroughly condemn it.

The inside of my skull is more like a wall upon which decades of posters have been plastered - for circuses, for trials, for vaudevilles and public exorcisms - their images (some garish, some spare) pasted on top of one another. In places, the more recent additions have been torn and gouged away, revealing glimpses of events that have long since passed from view, but whose fragments are here patched with more modern entertainments, creating a sum far weirder than its parts. in others, an image has gathered echoes, and is now surrounded by bizarre puns and riffs upon itself.

taping of the Hollywood Palace TV show. In America then, if you had long hair, you were a faggot as well as a freak. They would shout across the street, “Hey, fairies!” Dean Martin introduced as something like “these long-haired wonders from England, the Rolling Stones.… They’re backstage picking the fleas off each other.” A lot of sarcasm and eyeball rolling. Then he said, “Don’t leave me alone with this,” gesturing with horror in our direction. This was Dino, the rebel Rat Packer who cocked his finger at the entertainment world by pretending to be drunk all the time. We were, in fact, quite stunned. English comperes and showbiz types may have been hostile, but they didn’t treat you like some dumb circus act. Before we’d gone on, he’d had the bouffanted King Sisters and performing elephants, standing on their hind legs. I love old Dino. He was a pretty funny bloke, even though he wasn’t ready for the changing of the guard. On to Texas and more freak show appearances, in one case with a pool of performing seals between us and the audience at the San Antonio Texas State Fair. That was where I first met Bobby Keys, the great saxophone player, my closest pal (we were born within hours of each other).

Soon after came a group of outstanding Jewish writers, who delighted us with readings of their poetry and also sang some rousing, Jewish revolutionary songs. Within the next few years all these writers were put to death. Of course, it reminds you of "pane et circensem" (bread and circus), the expression used by the Roman emperors 2000 years ago, meaning to give people subsistence and a little entertainment and they won't think of anything else, of what plight they are in. That was what we got, at the start. After the initial few honeymoon weeks were over, they clamped down on the population.

Do the religious texts and exemplars support anymal welfare or anymal liberation? What do religions teach us to be with regard to anymals? A concise formal argument, using deductive logic, rooted in three well-established premises, can help us to answer these questions about rightful relations between human beings and anymals: Premise 1 : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach human beings to avoid causing harm to anymals. Premise 2 : Contemporary industries that exploit anymals—including food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries—harm anymals. Premise 3 : Supporting industries that exploit anymals (most obviously by purchasing their products) perpetuates these industries and their harm to anymals. Conclusion : Th e world’s dominant religious traditions indicate that human beings should avoid supporting industries that harm anymals, including food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries. It is instructive to consider an additional deductive argument rooted in two well-established premises: Premise 1 : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach people to assist and defend anymals who are suffering. Premise 2 : Anymals suffer when they are exploited in laboratories and the entertainment, food, or clothing industries. Conclusion : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach people to assist and defend anymals when they are exploited in laboratories, entertainment, food, and clothing industries. If these premises are correct—and they are supported by abundant evidence—the world’s dominant religions teach adherents • to avoid purchasing products fr om industries that exploit anymals, and • to assist and defend anymals who are exploited in laboratories and the entertainment, food, and clothing industries. Such industries include, but are not limited to, those that overtly sell or use products that include chicken’s reproductive eggs, cow’s nursing milk, or anymal flesh or hides (fur and leather), as well as industries that engage in or are linked with anymal experimentation of any kind, and entertainment industries such as zoos, circuses, and aquariums.

By looking across the market boundary of theater, Cirque du Soleil also offered new noncircus factors, such as a story line and, with it, intellectual richness, artistic music and dance, and multiple productions. These factors, entirely new creations for the circus industry, are drawn from the alternative live entertainment industry of theater.

Other acts that were precursors of the Wild West were a July 4 commemoration in Deer Trail, Colorado, in which one Emil Gardenshire was crowned "Champion Bronco Buster of the Plains," and another Fourth of July celebration in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1872, featuring the riding of an unruly steer. And certainly Cody's buffalo hunt with Grand Duke Alexis was a harbinger of things to come, as were his hunting trips with General Sheridan, James Gordon Bennett and their friends, as well as the Earl of Dunraven. All that was needed, then, was to put the right elements together. Cody realized that he needed to earn a lot of money to launch a big show, and he was too proud to ask his wealthy friends for funds. Then, in the spring of 1882, he met Nate Salsbury, when they both were playing in New York. Salsbury, who later became Cody's partner, claimed to have thought of the idea of the Wild West when returning from a tour of Australia with the Salsbury Troubadours in 1876. On the boat he had discussed the merits of Australian jockeys in comparison with American cow-boys and Mexican vaqueros with J. B. Gaylord, an agent for the Cooper and Bailey Circus. As a result, said Salsbury, "I began to construct a show in my mind that would embody the whole subject of horsemanship and before I went to sleep I had mapped out a show that would be constituted of elements that had never before been employed in concerted effort in the history of the show business." In the end, of course, Buffalo Bill's Wild West went well beyond horsemanship to embody features of the West that had not been part of Salsbury's plan. Several years later Salsbury "decided that such an entertainment must have a well known figure head to attract attention and thus help to quickly solve the problem of advertising a new idea. After careful consideration of the plan and scope of the show I resolved to get W.F. Cody as my central figure." When the two men finally met,

As I say, I have never been a big fan of firework displays. All that brightness falling, the sad, smoke smell, the finale that is never quite as magnificent as it should be. And then there’s the dispiriting, figurative tendency in modern fireworks. To stand in the cold, watching coloured sparks momentarily take the ragged shape of a smiley face or a drunken script that spells ‘Happy Holidays’ would seem, by any objective standard, to be a very low form of entertainment indeed. Yet appreciating fireworks is one of those things by which one is judged on one’s child-like delight in life. It is perfectly acceptable to hate the circus. But to admit that one finds fireworks tiresome is to render oneself a pariah. I suspect that only the tiniest fraction of the crowd gathered on the top of Primrose Hill was genuinely invested in the spectacle, but we all stayed there for a full frigid hour, dutifully manufacturing sharp intakes of breath and other symptoms of ingenuous wonderment. from Notes on a scandal

in a system of high and growing inequality, entertainment is the contemporary equivalent of the Roman “games of the circus” that diverts the public from politics and generates a political apathy that is helpful to preservation of the status quo.

I just don’t want you to get bored while I go shopping.” “You’re enough entertainment for me alone. It’s like watching a circus.

I’m not begging for a seat at any table I was born to reign over. I don’t compete where I don’t compare. My silence isn’t weakness—it’s royalty choosing not to entertain the circus. A real queen doesn't announce her power. She embodies it.

As John Hammond welcomes his visitors to Jurassic Park, he welcomes us as well: when Drs. Grant and Sattler — the scientists whose approval he needs — first look at the dinosaurs, we look, too, and alongside them we are swept up in the sheer joy of looking. John Williams’s majestic score washes over us, underlining that what we are seeing is larger than life, that it is sublime. But we are also swept into these parallel histories of circuses displaying non-normative bodies for entertainment and films displaying female bodies for the male gaze.