Grace Goodall

Mr. Johnson
English 1020
9 November 2016
What is this World Coming To?
Entertainment. We all have experienced it. Dance and art and music and theater and
television and film and literature are all around us. At this very moment, you are most likely
around two or more forms of entertainment. It is fun, effortless, sensational, mindless,
formulaic, predictable and subversive (Gabler 23). Throughout history, entertainment has
changed, shaping how we feel and how we confront conflict. It is a part of who we are. Neal
Gabler writes on the possible effect of entertainment on society in his book, Life the Movie: How
Entertainment Conquered Reality, stating, its eventual effect would be to overturn all morality,
to poison the springs of domestic happiness, to dissolve the ties of our social order, and to
involve our country in ruin (Gabler 182). Things are not that simple. Entertainment has the
power to shape society through the past changes in what was considered acceptable, and the
greater connections between people through the internet.
We can look fondly back to famous dance crazies like the twist, the mash-potato, and the
Charleston. Now we see them as classic, harmless dances, but at the time of their creation these
dances were downright scandalous. Dances we think of as old, and perfectly conservative, were
once not. It is important to remember that over time many things have changed. Our society has
come to accept things that shocked previous generations. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
Society is made up of the populations ideals. It is the overarching viewpoint of a people.
Humans grow, and adapt to new sources of information and ideals giving them the incredible

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power to learn and reflect on the past. Humans are creatures of progress. It is in our very nature
to expand our thoughts and beliefs, such as we have done in the field of science. The Waltz was
seen as an abomination. Couples dancing right next to each other; what a thought! The couples
hold each other and spin around in a fashion that was very scandalous for the time. The waltz
was too new and too terrible. It was something different that the people did not fully understand.
People were used to other types of dances that involved group dances and minimal physical
contact. Today it is viewed as a classic dance, something that the everyday person would not
know how to do without some training. Stephan Henkin writes on the grand waltzes of our time,
The big waltzes of Strauss, he says, are in a harmonic style like Brahms and Wagner. It
sounds easy, but in terms of compositional technique it is not. Next, Strauss was able to make
music that everybody could accept. It was universal music, for the court as well as the working
people (Henkin). The waltz is a part of universal music and style. It is a connection between
people of the past, and the grandeur that was representative of that time. It is no longer a scandal
to be put to shame, but instead a relic of the past.
Today, we are faced with our own waltz. We are under constant bombardment of the
media and new types of dance. Picture in your mind, a twerking Miley Cyrus on television with
her tongue sticking out. Imagine a little girl standing in front of the TV, soaking in all of what has
become of Hannah Montana. The mother is clear of this as she frantically yells to her daughter
that is not the once appropriate, country-pop singer. This is something entirely different. The girl
on the television is outrageous. We are shocked at the things Miley Cyrus is doing. She was once
an innocent child star, but she has turned into something entirely different. This scene really
exemplifies the absorption of culture into the minds of children. Miley Cyrus is a modern
example of how we are being shocked with new, increasingly more provocative entertainment. It

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can be the job of performers to be cutting edge and shocking to the public. However, many
women performers act in these outlandish ways to market their own message of freedom. Take
for example the Feminist art movement in the sixties. Jessica Holt goes into the intentions behind
the movement in her article The Changing Representations of Women: The Art of Hannah
Wilke, Lynda Benglis, and Cindy Sherman.
This newly found freedom led women artists, from Judy Chicago to Hannah Wilke, to
rebel against the constraints of tradition, creating a new paradigm for the female subject
in the art world. Feminist artists appropriated familiar images of women, and used them
as a means to propel their agenda. When depicted by women, the female body became a
powerful weapon against the social constructs of gender.
Women have taken power of who and what they want to be defined as. People are independent;
we are never sure of what a person might do, what kind of actions they will take, or how it will
influence society and the way we look at things. A twerking Miley today, might be tomorrows
waltz. This is perfectly okay. Freedom of expression is a great building block of progress. Our
society is shaped by what we believe and by what we are exposed to.
Our world is growing ever close. The Internet is a tool in communication as well as a tool
in expansion of culture. Information can be spread very fast over the Internet and there are few
filters to what we can view. Information is out there. We have the ability to see more and more
media, to become even more desensitized to the images around us. We are able to find things
faster and are more connected as a planet. Being closer together changes the way our society
works. This represents exponential growth in the field of continuously more people having
access to the Internet. In reality, the more people who use the Internet the closer we all become.
One source goes on to examine the change in the definition of community. It states, Many

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communicationsincluding online communicationsare local, with concerns ranging from
bringing home groceries to gossiping about current events to getting the job done right. Yet, the
proliferation of computer-supported social networks has afforded changes in the ways that
people use community: Community is becoming defined socially and not spatially (Wellman).
Our communities are changing; our ideals are changing. This is proliferating the spread of
information out to the world. We are not living in the same world as we did before. The Internet
has a great impact on the spread of provocative material. This is a new time and place, although
it reflects the past, we are moving at a neck-breaking speed.
The idea of the Internet is infused with the idea of censorship. Many countries in the
world do not allow citizens full access to the Internet. They are in full support of the idea of
censorship. In most cases, censorship is used to keep power in a non-democratic society. The ten
most censored countries-in both internet use and other forms of media- are North Korea, Burma,
Turkmenistan, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Eritrea, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Syria, and Belarus (10
Most Censored Countries). Leaders of many of these countries allow little to no media. A few,
such as Equatorial Guinea, have few privately owned media outlets. However, many citizens risk
arrest, or worse, from trying to reach new sources of media. "People in these countries are
virtually isolated from the rest of the world by authoritarian rulers who muzzle the media and
keep a chokehold on information through restrictive laws, fear, and intimidation," said CPJ
Executive Director Ann Cooper, a member of the Committee to Protect Journalists (10 Most
Censored Countries). This separates these groups of people from the rest of the world, going
against the ideals of many western countries. They are not a part of the internet age, and trail
behind the advancements of society.

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These countries are not only censored in the media, but also have some of the worst
human rights violations and oppressions in the world. North Korea is one of the worst civil rights
violators, A 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry found that abuses in North Korea were without
parallel in the contemporary world. They include extermination, murder, enslavement, torture,
imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, and other sexual violence (North Korea). The strict and
oppressive government of North Korea falls short in social justice and advancement. These
countries do not show the grand leaps of connections between people, but instead isolate people.
To the country, these actions are justified to keep the people safe from outside influence and
provocative material. They do not allow societal growth and are viewed by the rest of the world
as outsiders and oppressors. The citizens of these countries have no say in their society. They do
not have the freedom of expression and progression.
The Internet was created to share ideas with others, to transmit information from one
source to another. Although there are many governments forcing censorship on their people, a
battle that we are trying to deal with in this ever-moving world, overall the Internet is a place that
is constantly trying to overcome censorship. Censorship has been prevalent for as long as works
of art, literature, and other great things. However, we continue to overcome the idea of
censorship in order to make the world better. We do not want to be shoved aside. Words are a
form of expression. Entertainment is a form of expression, and will not be conformed to one little
box. It grows and changes over time. What is here today will not be there tomorrow. Things have
already moved on the next form of art, of entertainment. Nothing will stay the same, and none
will overcome the idea of censorship. When people are not happy, they will change the way
things are run. An article by Brad Kent explains this in a few words within his article "Bernard
Shaw, the British Censorship of Plays, and Modern Celebrity." It starts off by proclaiming, You

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cannot have a decent stage with a Censorship," Bernard Shaw said, "and without a decent stage
you cannot have a decent country (Kent). With the thought of censorship being pushed farther
out of the human mind, broader types of media are now reaching more people. People now have
a greater ability to find new things that may to amaze, shock, or terrify them. The world is
getting smaller, and people now have the ability to see things they would not have. With this
power, people are more use to the abnormal. The abnormal is becoming normal. What once
shocked us, simply doesnt anymore.
This is not a new phenomenon. Each generation wants to rebel against their parents. Each
decade wants to be more shocking than the last. Performers try to make their pieces be more
outlandish than previous one. New types of music, dance, art, and other forms of entertainment
are born out of the desire to do something different. The time period of rock and roll is a very
good example of this. Teenagers were trying to do their own thing, and at times had to fight for
what they wanted. It provides very good evidence of teenage rebellion against parent, against
society, and against social norms. Rock and Roll is my music. I initially encountered its power
and influence as a teenager. Rather than being perceived as a revolutionary change in music,
though, rock and roll was very much the norm to me (Cooper). Rock and Roll is for the
individual. People hold onto its ideals and make the their own. We do not want to listen to others
when we can be our own person. The spirit of rock and roll seeps into the culture of today. Kevin
Ei-Ichi DeForest expresses this in his article "Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll
Since 1967," writing, Although rock 'n' roll has undergone all but complete gentrification over
the past fifty years, the numerous offshoots of its music and image continue to fuel a healthy
engagement with visual art, serving as a cultural barometer of the current state of youth

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rebellion (DeForest). We still feel the effects of rock and roll. It represents all forms of
entertainment. It represents the will of change, of wanting to do things your own way.
Entertainment has the power to ruin society. Every generation has had a lasting impact on
the next. Every generation strives to be different than the last. They want to rebel against their
parents, thus creating shocking new forms of entertainment and pop culture. Entertainment does
have the power to shape society, but it is not destroying culture. Our culture is shaped by our
ideals and is our chance to say what is important. Society will always change. It will always have
the power to shock us, and chances are it will never stop shocking us. It will only grow more
provocative and more revealing. It will be spread in greater and new means then the Internet. It
will grow with our society and change to reflect the times.

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Works Cited
"10 Most Censored Countries." Cpj.org. Committee to Protect Journalists, n.d. Web. 8
Nov. 2016.
Cooper, B. L. "Forum: My Music, Not Yours: Ravings of a Rock-and-Roll Fanatic." Popular
Music and Society 36.3 (2013): 397. ProQuest. Web. 9 Nov. 2016.
DeForest, Kevin Ei-Ichi. "Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since
1967."AcademicOneFlie. N.p., July 2009. Web. 8 Nov. 2016.
Gabler, Neal. Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality. New York: Knopf,
1998. Print.
Henkin, Stephen. "Year of the Waltz King." The World & I 14.12 (1999): 8897. ProQuest. Web. 8 Nov. 2016.
Holt, Jessica. "The Changing Representations of Women: The Art of Hannah Wilke, Lynda
Benglis, and Cindy Sherman." Brooklyn College. Brooklyn.cuny.edu, n.d. Web. 17 Nov.
2016.
Kent, Brad. "Bernard Shaw, the British Censorship of Plays, and Modern
Celebrity."AcademicOneFlie. N.p., Spring 2014. Web.
Wellman, Barry. "Community." Association for Computing Machinery.Communications of the
ACM 48.10 (2005): 53-5. ProQuest. Web. 8 Nov. 2016.

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Reflective Letter
Time to think back on my argumentative essay. Project three was for sure more work than
the other two essays. This project is far more in depth than any of the others and it require more
of the writer. We were no longer just judging anothers work and words; we were coming up with
our own ideas and arguments. However how much work this paper was to complete, this project
is overall a very good assignment. It has allowed me to deeply think about a topic. I was forced
to be really proud of a paper, which is the first time I have felt this since starting college. I used
to love to write, but cranking out a paper in an a few days does not give me the same satisfaction
as working on that paper for months. The longer I work on a paper, the more I am able to come
up with good, genuine ideas. I have found the joy in constructing strong argument that flows
well. I grew the most in the writing and reflecting Course Learning Outcomes. This project
allowed me to critically look at my work and ask myself if it was the best I could do. It is a very
busy time of the year, and this was not my only assignment, but this time restraint only allowed
be to be more careful with my time. I started this essay earlier, and worked on it longer. This has
allowed me to grow as a writer, in both my writing skills and reflections. I am very proud of my
argument. It flows well and incorporates many different types of information that work together
to create a thoughtful and well organized piece. I have crafted a solid essay, that I am very proud
of. I am happy my name is at the top of the page, and am ready to dive into the next assignment.