Vaudeville!

Reading about Vaudeville was so much fun.  I am not even kidding.  It makes me want to go out, skip all my homework, and watch some live comedy.  Granted, comedy shows today are not exactly the same as Vaudeville, but there are of course, similarities.  One evolved from the other.   In actuality, reading about the vast variety of acts, and the mass amounts of people trying out new acts every single day reminds me a lot of a modern phenomenon: Youtube.  Youtube videos are kind of like the modern equivalent of Vaudeville acts, minus any kind of set order of acts: you can peruse them at your own leisure, picking out those that fit best with what sort of entertainment you are looking for.  There are music videos, news videos, live performances, parodies, comedy sketches, clips from funny movies, home videos...just about everything you can think of.  Vaudeville was very similar in its heyday in that the range of possible acts stretched from mimes to minstrel shows to musical acts to tap dancing to magic shows to acrobats.   I understand completely why the shows were such a big hit: we crave the same sort of entertainment today.  Vaudeville had celebrities that were larger than life, clothed in personas and characters.  The same could be said today of celebrities such as Lady Gaga, who people love to watch partially because no one is certain who she really is, or what she will do next.  Minstrel shows and body-bending acrobatics provided a "shock value" for the audiences, and even today there is a trend towards watching that which will be the most shocking- "crude" comedy movies such as "Meet the Parents"  continue to play off the idea that people will laugh if inappropriate concepts are treated in comedic ways.   While I can't say that I am particularly thrilled to put on our own Vaudeville acts (a little bit scary, no going to lie)  I think that the idea holds a lot of possibility.   The venue for Vaudeville-esque entertainment may have changed, but the general tenants remain the same and can still be widely entertaining.