Panes et Circenses

Before concidering the topic of what a "bread and entertainment" might be today, I was leaving class, thinking about how much I dislike the music of Mozart (yes, I know that is blasphemous.) While thinking about Mozart, I was reminded of my high school librarian. She had majored in library science, as well as in music history, which is not a very common major(she was a bassoonist.) She wanted to spread her knowledge of classical music to the students, since the majority of people in high school probably do not know much about it. As a result, she created "listening lunches," which were lunches that were themed by some important figure or time period in music history. The first one that she did was Mozart, of course. I had to go, seeing as how I worked in the library during lunch period, so there wasn't much of an escape. During these, she would provide free food and entertainment (well, some consider Mozart to be entertainment.) They were not incredibly popular, but some students were drawn in by either their love of music or the free food. At these lunches, she would play music by the artist, give out pamphlets of his biography, and chat with the students, trying to spark an interest in something that she loved. I have to admit, that she did play Mozart's better works, such as his operas, so I disliked him slightly less due to her event (but still disliked him.) This is similar to "Panes et Circenses," because free food and entertainment were involved to try to aquire a certain goal (she wanted to spread knowledge on Mozart, the Romans didn't want the people to revolt.)

While the lunches were on a smaller scale, I was thinking of schools giving out free food. This reminded me of UT. Reslife encourages RA's to provide free food and entertainment to their residents at certain events. I believe that the goal of Reslife is to get students to participate in fun, group activities on a Friday night, instead of reckless behavior, such as drinking (this is just a theory, but I really cannot think of why else they would do it.) However, I do not consider this to be a very successful "bread and entertainment," for a few reasons. The first is the events are supposedly free, but they really are not free. You pay for these events when you pay for room and board, so I would consider them to be "complimentary," which is entirely different. I also do not know of anyone who attends these events, and you cannot have bread and entertainment without people. Finally, anyone walking around campus on a Friday night knows that Reslife's goal of getting students to not drink is unsuccsessful.