This class introduces students to pre-cinematic entertainments and technologies with a view to understanding the social function and cultural value of entertainment.The following material  provides a background on Vaudeville and Early film as well as examples of the types of spectacle each produced.Throughout the post you will find links to other related sites and at the end of the post links to two contemporary examples of film spectacle, one a Youtube clip of ‘animals dancing’ and another (Jana Sterbak + Stanley) an artistic reflection on the ‘spectatorial’ dynamics of popular representation  What Is Vaudeville? (From Virtual Vaudeville)Our vaudeville theatres make strong appeals to the public by offering an entertainment that amuses without taxing. To those whose minds are full of business cares and who do not feel up to following the dialogue and situations of a play which demands a certain amount of intellectual effort, vaudeville is a boon.— New York Herald, September 3, 1893Vaudeville was the most popular form of American entertainment from its rise in the 1880s through its demise in the 1930s. It played much the same a role in people’s lives that radio and later television would for later generations. Indeed, many early radio, television and film stars began as vaudeville performers: Bob Hope, Edgar Bergen, Abbott and Costello, the Marx Brothers, Bert Lahr and Ray Bolger (the latter two being best known today as the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz). Every medium-to-large size city had its own vaudeville theatre, and performers on the vaudeville circuit preformed for a national audience by traveling constantly from town to town. With its national circuits, its reliance on train transportation and the telegraph, plus its production of a mode of performance with interchangeable parts, Vaudeville was the first truly modern form of popular entertainment.Vaudeville was variety entertainment, consisting of a highly diverse series of very short acts,..