“Perhaps the biggest reason why intellectuals excoriated entertainment was that they understood all too well their own precariousness in a world dominated by it. For whatever the overt content of any particular work, entertainment as a whole promulgated an unmistakable theme, one that took dead aim at the intellectuals’ most cherished values. That theme was the triumph of the senses over the mind, of emotion over reason, of chaos over order, or the id over the superego, of Dionysian abandon of Apollonian harmony. Entertainment was Plato’s worst nightmare. It deposed the rational and enthroned the sensational and in so doing deposed the intellectual minority and enthroned the unrefined majority.”

Source: Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality (1998), p. 21

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Perhaps the biggest reason why intellectuals excoriated entertainment was that they understood all too well their own p…" by Neal Gabler?

Neal Gabler1

American journalist 1950

Related quotes

“The more communities break down and poverty expands, the more anxious and frightened people will retreat into self-delusion. Those who speak the truth—whether about climate change or our system of inverted totalitarianism—will be branded as seditious and unpatriotic. They will be hated for destroying the illusion. This, as Gabler noted, is the danger of a society dominated by entertainment. Such a society, he wrote, “… took dead aim at the intellectuals’ most cherished values. That theme was the triumph of the senses over the mind, of emotion over reason, of chaos over order, or the id over the superego. … Entertainment was Plato’s worst nightmare. It deposed the rational and enthroned the sensational and in so doing deposed the intellectual minority and enthroned the unrefined majority.””

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

"The Illusion of Freedom" (2015)

“All over the world, for those who are part of it, music, entertainment and art are a work of emotions: be grateful.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) In tutto il mondo, per chi ne fa parte, musica, intrattenimento ed arte sono un'opera di emozioni: siatene grati.
Source: prevale.net

“All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

Notes to The Atrocity Exhibition (1970; written 1967 - 1969, annotated 1990)
Context: All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or ancient Egypt, is reassimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonise past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality in attractive and instantly appealing forms.

“Americans are the most over-entertained people on the face of the earth.”

Johnnie Ray (1927–1990) American singer, actor, songwriter and composer

Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIsdCfmkEho with Dennis Hunt in Las Vegas, c. 1982

“Art is the triumph over chaos.”

John Cheever (1912–1982) American novelist and short story writer

The Stories of John Cheever Knopf (1978).

“Sometimes, as much as writing saves one’s own life, you cannot imagine how it will save another’s. This is another reason why it is important to do the work, over and over again. It is food, the kind a soul needs.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

“It could even be said, perhaps, that this very opposition, this threat from the world of total work, is what characterizes the situation of philosophy today more than its own particular content. Philosophy increasingly adopts — necessarily, it seems — the character of the alien, of mere intellectual luxury, of that which seems ever more intolerable and unjustifiable, the more exclusively the demands of the daily world of work take over the world of man.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 65–66

“Judaism is an intellectually based religion, and the single most important theme is that of study.”

Norman Lamm (1927) American rabbi

Seventy faces: articles of faith (2002)

“I've explored a variety of directions and themes over the years. But I think in my painting you can see the signature of one artist, the work of one wrist.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Quote from Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen Köln, 2006, p. 15
1990s - 2000s

“The Left’s identity politics poses a threat to free speech and to the kind of rational discourse needed to sustain a democracy… The focus on lived experience by identity groups prioritizes the emotional world of the inner self over the rational examination of issues in the outside world and privileges sincerely held opinions over a process of reasoned deliberation that may force one to abandon prior opinions.”

Francis Fukuyama (1952) American political scientist, political economist, and author

"Against Identity Politics" https://web.archive.org/web/20180823073547/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2018-08-14/against-identity-politics (14 August 2018), Foreign Affairs <br class="br">2010s

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Neal Gabler1

Related quotes

Related topics