For a Broadway show set in Bombay that has arrived by way of London, this musical winds up suggesting another provenance altogether: Las Vegas, land of the flashy floor show and simulacra of foreign metropolises, where live entertainment exists mostly as lavish background noise.
Blockbusters tend to be self-reinforcing, because firms spend more to promote products they think stand a better chance of becoming popular.Ms Elberse observes that blockbusters are not just a phenomenon of the cinema but exist across entertainment sectors.
That really doesn't exist for the live entertainment industry because there's not enough data recorded.
Horne's career started at 16 when her mother sent her to sing in the chorus at Harlem's Cotton Club (which still exists), an entertainment venue where black entertainers performed for wealthy white audiences.
The same leverage and opportunity for big money exists for entertainment transmitted via CDs, DVDs, radio, TV and the Internet.
His brilliant, highly audible forms exist not as entertainment, but to help us understand difficult truths.
In addition to the thousands of groups that exist for the entertainment value of naming a phenomenon (My Name is a Palindrome and I'm Awesome), there are thousands of alumni associations that provide a virtual, perpetual reunion, minus the plane ticket home and awkward cocktail conversation.
I was surprised that an authentic take on the mythology didn't exist in mainstream entertainment.
"I want to be able to exist in an entertainment community that doesn't care one way or the other what your sexuality is," he said.
Issues of race, gender, age, fairness, politics and the like certainly exist within the entertainment industry, but these serious problems are wrongly being defined within a glitzy award ceremony.
