hink of it all - of the life that is! Study your friends and foes!
Study the past! And answer this: "Are these times better than those?" The life-long quarrel, the paltry spite, the sting of your poisoned pride! No matter who fell it were better to fight as they did when the world was wide.
Bread and Circuses
"Last Wednesday, on one of the toughest ratings nights of the week — and much to everyone's astonishment - Nine's new "game show" Hole in the Wall was the second most-watched show in Melbourne. Nationally it was third, with more than 1.5 million viewers.It's a remarkably silly program, even by the standards of the genre. People stand with their backs to a large piece of lightweight injection-moulded plastic into which a human-shaped hole has been cut. With the help of their teammates, they have to pose their body in a matching shape to pass through the hole in the wall. Or they fall into a swimming pool. So essentially it's a night of people in unattractive silver body suits falling into a pool.
The renaissance of slapstick TV started earlier this year when Seven's Gladiators rated through the roof, drawing almost 2 million viewers with its first episode.
"These shows are an easy watch, you don't have to concentrate, and they have real universal appeal," says Nine's Len Downs."
::View Article::
This is kind of reminiscent of the culture of late 1st, early 2nd century Imperial Rome which the poet Juvenal described using the expression "panem et circenses". This means "bread and circuses" and describes the act of a small and purely self-interested section of society pacifying and controlling the masses (and thus society) by satisfying, or promising to satisfy, the latter's decadent desires.
It's a metaphor for the masses who are easily manipulated or appeased through 'food and cheap fun', and its a particular recognition of reality that is as old as the entire religion of Christianity.