Entertaiment is a performance of any kind, from the clown at your kid’s birthday party to the Broadway show to your friends fighting over the last potato chip. It is usually amusing, but it can also be uplifting or instructive. Entertainment comes from the old French entretenir, meaning to hold together or entertain a guest, and in this sense it is closely linked to hospitality. From there it has come to mean a distraction, an amusement, and a way to escape from everyday life into another world or form of expression. An example is the story of Scheherazade, which has inspired everything from orchestral music by Rimsky-Korsakov and Ravel to a film by Pasolini to a video game.