Work and Play

Our everyday existence is divided into two phases,
as distinct as day and night.
We call them work and play.
We work so many hours a day,
and when we have allowed the necessary minimum
for such activities as eating and shopping,
the rest we spend in various activities
which are known as recreations,
an elegant word which disguises the fact
that we usually do not even play in our hours of leisure,
but spend them in various forms of passive enjoyment or entertainment —
not playing football but watching football matches;
not acting, but theatre-going;
not walking, but riding in a motor coach.
Therefore we need to define clearly the difference
not only between work and play but,
equally, between active play and passive entertainment.
It is, I suppose,
the decline of active play —
of amateur sport —
and the enormous growth of purely receptive entertainment
which has given rise to a sociological interest in the problem.
If the greater part of the population,
instead of indulging in sport,
spend their hours of leisure “viewing” television programmes,
there will inevitably be a decline in health and physique.
And in addition, there will be a psychological problem,
for we have yet to trace the mental and moral consequences
of a prolonged diet of sentimental
or sensational spectacles on the screen.
There is, if we are optimistic,
the possibility that the diet is too thin
and not nourishing enough to have much permanent effect on anybody.
Nine films out of ten seem to leave absolutely no impression on the mind
or imagination of those who see them:
few people can give a coherent account of the film
they saw the week before last,
and at longer intervals they must rely on the management
to see that they do not sit through the same film twice.