Media Audience
The shift from music-hall/variety to early cinema transformed the audience experience: Critically investigate this claim from a primarily Irish perspective.
“Audiences are the same all over the world, and if you entertain them, they'll respond.” (Minnelli, L). This quote doesn’t need any explanation. As audiences, we spend our lives waiting for an experience that will entertain and captivate us, give us something to talk and fascinate about. This isn’t a new trait. Looking back to the mid 19th century, audiences were too awaiting this ‘experience’. However, they didn’t gain it from YouTube or television. Instead, they obtained it from music hall or theatres; which was, at its peak, the television of its day.
“During the 19th century the demand for entertainment was intensified by the rapid growth of urban population.” [Britannica. 2012]
This demand resulted in the creation of Music Halls. They originated in Britain during the mid 19th and early 20th century. Music hall was the entertainment for working-class Londoners. Staged in pubs or small theatres, it was loud, raucous and often rude. Variety theatre represented a more commercialized, 20th-century version of music hall. It took place in lavish, large theatres, built and run by the great theatrical producers.
Looking firstly at music halls. It can be said that they were also created to give people a diversion away from everyday life during and after the War years. According to John Kenrick,
“As Great Britain’s Industrial Revolution created a new urban working class in the mid-1800s, the music halls provided this new audience with inexpensive entertainment. In time, intellectuals and the upper classes took a liking to these unpretentious variety shows.” [Kenrick, J. (2011)]
People not only attended the halls for music and comedy, they went for the food, drink and to socialize. The atmosphere in the music halls was manic. Spectators joined in singing popular songs such as Marie Lloyd’s
“Audiences are the same all over the world, and if you entertain them, they'll respond.” (Minnelli, L). This quote doesn’t need any explanation. As audiences, we spend our lives waiting for an experience that will entertain and captivate us, give us something to talk and fascinate about. This isn’t a new trait. Looking back to the mid 19th century, audiences were too awaiting this ‘experience’. However, they didn’t gain it from YouTube or television. Instead, they obtained it from music hall or theatres; which was, at its peak, the television of its day.
“During the 19th century the demand for entertainment was intensified by the rapid growth of urban population.” [Britannica. 2012]
This demand resulted in the creation of Music Halls. They originated in Britain during the mid 19th and early 20th century. Music hall was the entertainment for working-class Londoners. Staged in pubs or small theatres, it was loud, raucous and often rude. Variety theatre represented a more commercialized, 20th-century version of music hall. It took place in lavish, large theatres, built and run by the great theatrical producers.
Looking firstly at music halls. It can be said that they were also created to give people a diversion away from everyday life during and after the War years. According to John Kenrick,
“As Great Britain’s Industrial Revolution created a new urban working class in the mid-1800s, the music halls provided this new audience with inexpensive entertainment. In time, intellectuals and the upper classes took a liking to these unpretentious variety shows.” [Kenrick, J. (2011)]
People not only attended the halls for music and comedy, they went for the food, drink and to socialize. The atmosphere in the music halls was manic. Spectators joined in singing popular songs such as Marie Lloyd’s