I'll try to deviate from the whoring...
Lots of what was once considered entertainment is now considered art. Shakespeare wasn't considered art in his lifetime, he was entertainment. He needed to sell tickets. The bawdy parts were for "the people" and likely increased sales. The Marx Brothers were definitely not considered art in their time, but many now consider "Duck Soup" an art film (others simply call it a "timeless classic" which also sounds like art). The current generation always imposes its values on history in some way, so seemingly unlikely things get elevated to "art" after a generation or so and some drop off. Many consider early black and white animation to be art now. In the 1920s it was purely for guffawing to. In the 1950s and 1960s it was considered trash. The Beatles are slowly moving into the "art" realm some thirty five years after being the world's biggest entertainers. The examples go on and on: Warner Brothers Cartoons, old dirty books and movies, Tristram Shandy was a BIG best seller in the 1760s, critics trashed it to pieces as "lowbrow" and "popular", but now it's read in English departments as the forerunner of the modern novel. Will Harry Potter be considered art in 50 years? The line between art and entertainment can often be thin and fuzzy. And it's typically variable and amorphous. Not only that, art and entertainment seem to be merging more and more in our century, for better or worse. Japanese popular art is a good example (e.g., Takashi Murakami). It's sold in malls and it's in museums. Is it psuedo-art? Who decides?
I thought it was sarsaparilla
