Culture relates to objects and is a phenomenon of the world; entertainment relates to people and is a phenomenon of life.
Interpretation
Culture encompasses the material aspects of society, while entertainment focuses on the human experience.
In this quote, Hannah Arendt highlights the distinction between culture and entertainment. Culture consists of the tangible artifacts, beliefs, and practices that define a society, whereas entertainment is rooted in the interpersonal experiences and emotions of individuals. Arendt suggests that while culture is a worldly phenomenon tied to objects and their meanings, entertainment springs from the nuances of human interactions and the vibrancy of life itself.
In practice
In a discussion on the importance of cultural literacy, one might invoke Arendt's insight.
A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow. While it retains its visibility, it loses its quality of rising into sight from some darker ground which must remain hidden if it is not to lose its depth in a very real, non-subjective sense.
Politically speaking, tribal nationalism [patriotism] always insists that its own people are surrounded by 'a world of enemies' - 'one against all' - and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.
We are wont to see friendship solely as a phenomenon of intimacy in which the friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands...Thus it is hard for us to understand the political relevance of friendship...But for the Greeks the essence of friendship consisted in discourse...The converse (in contrast to the intimate talk in which individuals speak about themselves), permeated though it may be by pleasure in the friendβs presence, is concerned with the common world.
Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx.
Even though we have lost yardsticks by which to measure, and rules under which to subsume the particular, a being whose essence is a beginning may have enough of origin within himself to understand without preconceived categories and to judge without the set of customary rules which is morality.
It is the nature of beginning that something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever may have happened before. This character of startling unexpectedness is inherent in all beginnings.
My biggest obsession is to show Africans and the world who the people of Africa really are.
Pop culture has entered into a nostalgic malaise. Online culture is dominated by trivial mashups of the culture that existed before the onset of mashups, and by fandom responding to the dwindling outposts of centralized mass media. It is a culture of reaction without action.
Whatever you say about popular culture, people like people who know things, who are experts, and it doesn't particularly matter what they look like.
Get the culture right, and everything else just falls into place.
We also want to try and slow down all this foolishness that's going on between the East and West. We gotta understand that Hip Hop is now universal. Hip Hop is not East coast or West coast.
There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.
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