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Abrahams, Roger D. 1982. “Play and Games.”
Motif: International Review of Research in Folklore &
Literature
(Columbus, OH), 3 (June): 4-7.
“Play and Games”
Roger D. Abrahams
[beginning of page 4]
One of the ways in which folkloristics and symbolic
anthropology have
converged to good effect is in the area of “native” aesthetics.
That
is, because of the cross-fertilization between these fields, there is a
growing interest in recording actual performances and in discovering
the
terms by which they are understood and judged by the performers and
audiences
themselves. This should assist us in breaking down the roughest
edges
of our inevitable ethnocentrisms, for now we begin to ask tradition
bearers
and their like what the important features of their art entails.
Recently, I have been approaching the problem of
ethnocentricity in
another related fashion, by attempting to describe the semantic pulls
of
the terms we use most commonly in pursuing our discipline. Here I
have been most interested in those terms, like myth and story,game
and festival, which are used by folklorists and by the
man-in-the-street
as terms of art (as opposed to our made-up terms, like
oikotype
and memorat).
We can redress some of the warping our discipline sometimes
inspires
on these terms, in fact, by relating our usage to that of the common
reader.
How often, for instance, do we see sporting events described as rituals
in folklore journals, when what is being discussed is certain elements
shared by sports and rituals. But surely there is such a thing as
a “pure” game of contest and a “pure” ritual in the domain of
experience.
That is, when we go to a baseball game we know that we are at a game
and
not a ritual -- though there may be certain actions taken within the
game
that are not compulsory, if not obligatory as in ritual states.
But let me get to the center of the problem by looking at
how we commonly
distinguish between ritual and play in the larger
sense.
Play and ritual are the two major terms for occasions that potentiate
significant
events
of the prepared-for sort. Both terms refer to activities which
are
removed from the flow of “everyday life” (the world of “paramount
reality,”
to use Alfred Schutz’s term for this psycho-social effect). This
removal is brought about by conventional framing devices and its
apartness
maintained by employing the moves and ways of expression which are also
conventionally associated with that kind of special activity.
Both
are concerned with the dimensions of these activities and with the
potential
of participation and celebration which arises because of these
conventions.
Both involve an open display of energies coordinated in such a way that
that participation in the event is encouraged. But play has an
“autotelic”
dimension, that is, it seems to operate as a congeries of acts and
activities
that exist for the experience itself. Freely entered into,
playing
invigorates as it focuses our energies. But it is neither
obligatory,
nor do the personal transformations it calls forth operate efficiently
outside of the playground, the playing field, or the playhouse.
This
is precisely what is not true of ritual, for even the most serious
sacramental
occasions bring to a head the possibility of an irreversible
transformation
of state within one’s regular life-condition -- such as happens when we
graduate, or are convicted of a crime, are married or initiated.
To be sure, we want to distinguish between those ritual acts which
encourage
and potentiate such transformations, and those which reconfirm or
commemorate.
But both exist within a universe in which ritual roles are endowed with
transforming powers.
The two magisterial studies in the literature of play,
Huizinga’s Homo
Ludens and Callois’ Man, Play and Games, attempt to
discover
man’s culture-making capacity through a definition of play that places
games at the center of the argument. Huizinga describes play as:
1) a voluntary activity, 2) not “ordinary” or “real,” that 3) is thus
disinterested
and life-adorning and enhancing, 4) is “played out” within certain
bounds
of time and space, 5) has a beginning and an end, and obeys rules, and
6) involves a contest for something while it evokes a
representation
of
something. He relates play to ritual through their common sense
of
enactment, a point of view he arrives at through his interpretation of
dromenon,
the representing of life drama (or at least life-conflict). By
choosing
to focus on drama, Huizinga discovers the source of interest in a wide
range of play activities -- the agonistic motive -- but in
doing
so he begins to substitute part for whole, and comes to regard anything
in culture which operates by arbitrary rules and draws upon agon
as being generated by the play principle. To be sure, an
important
meeting place of game, dramatic play, and ritual does lie in the area
of
conflict as enacted by individuals playing stereotypical roles.
But
dramatic performance calls forth many other ways of introducing
interest
through tension, not least of which is that engendered by the contrived
confusion of the real and the artificial through the process of
imitation.
Roger Callois, recognizing these limitations, points out
that agon
is but one of the motives that enters into play. The major
departure
from Huizinga arises from Callois’ insistence on the centrality of the
principle of the principle of uncertainty of outcome in the playing of
games. He points to four parameters of play: agon
(contest),
alea
(chance), mimesis (representation), and ilinx
(dizziness).
He proceeds to classify play activities usefully by the relative
intensity
of employment of these principles, alone and in combination. He
establishes
a continuum of playful behavior, from
paideia to ludis, from
the frolicsome free expenditure of energy to the highly conventional
and
rule-bound focus of game.
From a perspective which underscores the relationship
between all modes
of play activity -- not only games but festivals, theater and circus
and
other popular entertainments -- the strengths and the limitations of
the
Huizinga and Callois arguments are patent. For what both Huizinga
and Callois describe characterizes only certain kinds of game-play and
is applicable, as well, to other kinds of -- but not all -- play
activities.
It would be difficult, on the basis of just these elaborated
distinctions,
to distinguish games from other kinds of intense focused gatherings. [beginning
of page 5] Huizinga explicitly relates games to the dramatic
dimension of ritual (and, by extension, to narrative and especially
theatrical
drama). Callois, on the other hand, noting the limitations of
this
approach, rather ties games into the dimensions of play more definitive
of the carnivalesque and the celebratory and confirmatory events like
festivals
and celebrations. Perhaps the concept of play differs in English
from other European languages. But neither Huizinga nor Callois
really
offers explanations that encompass the wide variety of activities and
motives
included in our everyday meaning for play.
In the Anglophonic world, we make a distinction between game
and play
which is not so clearly made in French and other romance
languages.
On the other hand, the distinction which Callois pursues between ludus
and paideia he derives not from a native French distinction but
from the Latin and Greek. Americans do, in fact, link these
motives
of unbound and unbiased frolic and the more focused competitive
activities
under the general rubric of sport, recreation, fun, or amusement.
Let me explore the first of these for the moment to get at
some of thee
“native notions” I have referred to above. Though we continue to
refer to hunting and fishing as sporting activities in the
main,
we have developed that term primarily in the direction of organized
team
activities in which the participants are concerned with a defined
outcome,
usually winning and losing. Implicit in the idea of hunting, of
course,
is the bringing home of the trophy, and this too is to some degree the
objective of both individual and team sports, in which
both
excelling and winning becomes the means of obtaining the prized
object.
In this dimension of usage, we have begun to specify a difference
between
game and sport by how focused and intense and expertly played the
activity
has become, and by this, how much drawing power to attract spectators
it
has. Though sports are also called games, the former term is more
exclusive, a kind of game which invites observation and thus involves
the
distinction between player and spectator or fan.
Beyond this, we point to athletic events as a means of
emphasizing
these crowds that may be attracted, and the sharing of energies when
such
a coming-together occurs. An event must be a situation in which
great
energies and attentions are called forth.
When we choose to report everyday life in terms of a
significant kind
of event, alternatively we drift toward describing the activity in
theatrical
or game terms. This happens not just because they both convey the
possibility of completing action with a clear sense of meaning, point,
or resolution in the final move. The more self-conscious our
behavior,
the more Westerners in general and Americans particularly like to
impose
a completed frame of reference around the action, thus turning
confrontations
into resolvable -- indeed resolved -- conflicts. Whether we
project
the completed action as a dramatic resolution to a theater piece or a
movie,
or as winning and losing a game, we like to feel that we are getting it
over and done with. Thus in one way life models itself on art or
game; for in our tense moments in everyday life, by bringing about
closure
in our interactional exchanges, we magically seem to feel that the
problem
highlighted in the personal exchange will have been taken care
of.
Envisaging life in these terms contributes to the “pedestal effect,” of
course, perpetuating the fiction that life itself may enjoy an
integrity
and wholeness of experience -- that in intense situations we can finish
off whatever is started by having it out with boxers or
with
kid gloves, or by ventilating, yelling, gesticulating broadly, or
whatever.
Performance and game terms often seem to be used
interchangeably in
our discussions of interactions. In describing one of these tense
scenes, we often discuss the roles people are playing,
the
lines
they speak, even the scripts they play out; similarly, we may
describe
the same scene in terms of the game being played, the strategy of the
moves
made, and what game-plan is being followed. But there are very
major
differences between them, specifically with regard to our ways of
interpreting
movement, especially interactions, by the frames placed around the
activities
and the way in which patterned expectations are processed. In
games,
we exist within a bounded space and with a heavy burden of endowing
both
objects and conventional movements with power. The world of the
game
is extremely restricted, though there are motives that may be acted on
in such a “world” that are commonly restricted and redirected in the
everyday.
There are a limited number of designated types of players, as well as
styles
of play; moreover, the entire activity is governed by the rules of play
and the boundaries of the playing field (or board). Perhaps most
important, in game-play, there is seldom any question of the motives of
the players; rather, they are judged by their mastery of the repertoire
of moves and how well they demonstrate they have prepared
themselves,
through drill, practice, conditioning, getting psyched-up,
etc.
In fact, motive and meaning are virtually absent in the game world
except
as such criteria of interpretation are organized by the competition
going
on. We do talk about high or low motivation of players but that
is
far from the same as their motives in the playing.
[beginning of page 6] On the other hand, play
in performances
is primarily concerned with imitation and stylized extension of
everyday
interactional motives (only one of which is conflict). The range
of possible roles to play, though finite and subject to convention, is
much greater than in games. The major limiting factor in
performance
has to do with the range of outcomes. Whereas game is defined in
terms of having an indefinite outcome, performance calls forth an
expected
resolution (or an irresolute ending). We can rehearse a
performance
for this reason, making it more interesting and artful by devising
means
of intensifying even by misleading; but the audience then knows that
the
performers know how it is going to come out in the end, and they begin
to look forward to cues, hints, forewarnings. This looking
forward,
in fact, is often a looking backward as well, a reexperiencing of past
performances in this medium and this genre, for such a past provides
all
the clues one usually needs to know how the piece will end. To
take
a similar expectation into a game or contest is to guarantee that the
event
will fail to be interesting. If one feels, for instance, that a
wrestling
match has been thrown, or even choreographed, then either the
thrill
of the event is undercut or the spectator must begin to look at the
event
as a show, a display of acting ability brought to bear on
making
the performance seem spontaneous and the outcome unrehearsed.
Such a display is obviously more like a performance than a
game or a
sporting event. For performance involves a stylized celebration
of
the motives of the most common everyday actions -- in this case,
fighting
by wrestling. The vocabulary of performance -- dance, song,
reported
speech, and other behavior -- these are simple and stylized extensions
of the processes of the unmarked actions of walking, running, working,
talking as they are organized in the larger forms of engagement.
Performance, then, embroiders action and recurrent scenes by
stylizing
them through self-conscious display techniques. The frame
statement
of performance is, “This is just pretending” -- thus bringing into
relief
the relationship between the original and its imitation. The cue
that the performance is going on, moreover, relieves the player of
responsibility
for the results of his actions, as Diderot noted long ago. The
very
existence of rules of play, and of umpires or referees when games
become
sports, emphasizes that responsibility is not totally abrogated on the
field of play.
Moreover, continuity between the “worlds” of play and
real-life are
maintained at the same time as a profound disjuncture between them is
practiced.
This point of departure is often as simply done as using the word
“just”
-- as in “just fooling.” Such a use of just insists that we are
making
a connection between the two worlds of interpretation at the same time
we are articulating a continuity between them. This is what is
comical
about looking closely at the formulaic just statement of
fiction,
the stock disclaimer we find at the beginning of novels: “Any
resemblance
to persons ... living or dead is purely coincidental.” This is
not
only often a momentous lie, it is an open invitation to search through
the story which follows to see who it is that the novelist had in mind
when he wrote the story. It is, then, another of the little
self-cancelling
moves which simultaneously remind us of the materials of real life out
of which play is fashioned and the artificiality of the behavior within
the play-frame; the self-cancellation forces us to interpret the
activity
through a higher level of abstraction, one emerging from the
classification
of the enacted behavior as beyond the real.
“Play” in the context of performance, then, focusses on
virtuosity --
the way in which play language is extended and transformed into display
language. To be sure, other motives enter into the process by
which
we interpret and judge performance, motives which intensify the
participation
potential of both players and audience members in the play, motives
like
dramatic involvement, like dressing up and wearing masks, like
beginning
the show with applause, a prayer, or the singing of the national
anthem.
But these are intensifying, not defining features of performance in
which
we are concerned with the projection of imitative means and the nuances
by which the flow of play is enhanced.
But inherent in the notion of performance is that there are
certain
everyday activities which, by their very social construction, are
performables.
That is, they have sufficient intensity of dramatic interest that we
recognize
the activities as being reportable, susceptible to direct translation
into
one or another performance genre. Central to this notion is that
some kind of drama is being played out, the contending of
psychic,
social, or cultural forces as they are depicted, usually impersonated,
in the dramatic representation. In fact, some forms of
performance
are often categorized by the kind of face-of or tension that is being
depicted.
We make basic literary distinctions between, for instance, tragedy and
comedy based on the different modes of agon presented.
Tragedy,
it is said, depicts man’s contention with his fate, often in the form
of
conflict between hero and villain in which the hero must die but carry
the villain with him -- thus cleansing the depicted world and providing
the audience with a vicarious sense of catharsis. In comedy, on
the
other hand, the hero is more commonly a young man in search of a mate,
the villain a blocking character, usually an old man or a rival.
But these are imitated conflicts, and ones which are employed as a
means
of intensifying and focussing the mimetic activity being pursued.
In games, the face-off is the raison d’etre of the
activity.
Games involve the principle of direct combat between individuals in
actual
contention, but within the framework of game-playing, with a strong
sense
of rules and boundaries. The for-real character of the combat is
insisted upon in that the outcome is not predictable or foreordained,
and
the ones who are playing must care about the control of play and the
winning
and losing. Moreover, they have made themselves worthy of being
observed
and judged as players by intensifying through practice their everyday
abilities.
Thus, a player is both himself and not himself on the field; he remains
individually responsible for his actions even when he can get away with
some
otherwise forbidden moves since he is just playing. The
sense
of continuity between roles assumed in everyday life, and those on the
stage, and those of the player are not so great as in pure
performances.
Nonetheless, the dislocation or shift between the real and the play in
games is a profound one, equally worthy of being looked at closely with
regard to how it is brought off.
Games are activities in which all the dynamic elements of
play are brought
to bear primarily in the service of the agonistic motive.
Following
Caillois on the dimensions of play, we could say that all four kinds of
playing can be found in some measure in games: chance, vertigo,
stylized
and self-conscious imitation, and conflict. But in
game-playing,
the first three are put in the service of adding to the intensity of
the
last, the agonistic element by which we concern ourselves with
observing
(or engaging in) winning or losing. Following the developmental
psychologists
and ethnologists, we can point to the repetitiveness and the expansive
character of play, the strange sense of beginning, ending, the
encompassment
of the activity, the frequent shifts in role, and the constant
possibility
of rearrangement of significant moves, of stopping and starting and
mixing
of sequences -- all of these too are characteristic of game-play, but
they
also serve predominantly as a means of intensifying the sense of
conflict
in the contest.
To be sure, there is something like a connoisseurship which
develops
in game-playing, and becoming a sports fan may mean an approach
that looks for a beauty and a subtlety in play, as well as how such
dominion
contributes to the outcome. But such stylistic concerns we
recognize
even as we use them to describe game-play are criteria and judgment
appropriated
from performance. The success of game is determined by the flow
of
the play, by the building up of momentum on the part of a player or a
team,
a concentration of skills and energy that lead to a [beginning of
page
7] making of winning moves. Rightly we may discuss the beautiful
game that an individual has developed through practice and through
a development of style. But when we do so, we know we are doing
it
in analogy to a performance. Ultimately, a game-player is not
judged
by virtuosity except as it leads to victory. His or her behavior
is not really being held up to aesthetic judgment so much as being held
up for judgment within a framed event that makes the terms of all other
forms of play available for descriptive purposes. It is, in other
words, just as appropriate to comment on the festive or carnivalesque
features
of a game or even its ritualized character as it is to describe the
event
in performance terms.
Ultimately, we make the distinction between different play
events by
1) how they are framed and named, what their announced rules, ends, and
means are, including 2) their vocabulary, syntax, and conventions of
moves;
3) the relative fixity of how they are composed, put together, played
out;
4) the ways in which they are prepared for, both by participants and
onlookers;
and 5) the criteria used to judge their relative success, especially in
terms of how effectively the activities of the players are carried out,
and how successfully the participative energies of the onlookers
(audience,
spectators) are drawn upon.
Of these, perhaps the most interesting with regard to the
difference
between game- and performance-play has to do with the way in which
preparations
are carried out and themselves named. With games, preparation of
players is referred to as practice and drill and is
concerned
not so much with the rules, but the playing positions (or in
board
games, pieces), the available move and countermoves to each
position
or piece, moves which when complex are called plays. Coaching
in such activity means directing practice and working out, and
then
working
on plays. Simulating actual game conditions is referred to by
a wide number of game-specific terms, all of which might be encompassed
under practice game (short for practicing “under game
conditions”).
The greater the need to coordinate play, of course, the more
distinctions
will be made between types of practice sessions.
With performances, preparations are divided between practicing,
learning to control the materials and instruments of whatever type of
display
is involved; and rehearsal, in which the actual pieces to be
performed
are run through. Actually, of course, there are many kinds of
rehearsal
designated by theater people: read-through, blocking session,
and
so on. The equivalent to simulating game condition in
performance,
in which a full run-through is called for, is a dress rehearsal.
Again, the conditions of actual playing will be approximated as fully
as
possible, to the point of inviting an audience.
The more intense the play, the greater the need to establish
and maintain
the boundaries of the playing area, by having defined spaces for
players
and onlookers, by vicariously establishing the flow of play across
those
boundaries, and by having non-players in the playing area who maintain
both the integrity of the boundaries and the flow of the playing.
With game-play in organized sports and athletic events,
this
is carried out by umpires, referees, time-keepers, and other
officials.
With performance, this is done by masters of ceremonies, stage
managers,
or conductors, depending on what kind of performance is
involved.
The existence of these in-betweeners, these non-players on
the field
on the field or stage, underscores the deep importance of maintaining
the
play world within its bounds. To be sure, as Bateson has argued
so
convincingly, play doesn’t work efficiently if the boundaries are not
constantly
challenged. The constant reminders that play is in process must,
he demonstrates, be paralleled by the question, “Is it really
play?”
Ultimately, in terms of our native system of enactments or display
events
which I am outlining here, a major reason why this paradox of play must
be reiterated is that precisely this condition is not true of
ritual.
Though there may be a great deal of ludicrous behavior carried on in
the
midst of a rite, there is never a question as to whether the activity
is
real or not; for the effects of the action are intended to be carried
away
from the experience, to have potential effect far beyond the special
times,
places, and occasions in which the enactment occurs. As always,
then,
in this semiotic system of significant action, we are able to discover
best what is going on and what is meant by seeing the activity in
contrast
to other related ones. To the question implied in every
investigation
of play -- “Is this activity real or true? -- we may
truthfully
respond, “In contrast to what?” For play exists in contrast both
to the everyday and real worlds; but it also
distinguishes
itself from the serious and especially the potentially
transforming
ritual. Viewing play in this way enables us to ask the other
important
contrastive questions once we encounter play going on. For then
we
can ask “What kind of play?” and begin to recognize that different
cultures
have a number of distinct ways of playing which are recognizably
separate
because they arise in specific times, places, and occasions, set up
their
own distinctive boundaries, rhythms, and rules or regularities, and are
then judged and interpreted in distinctive ways.
Once having said this, however, it is clear that the
different kinds
of playing cluster together in at least two ways. Once we get an
excuse
to play in one way, we tend to play in others, especially if play is
associated
with holidays, vacations, even weekends. Second -- and perhaps
most
important -- the vocabulary we use to describe one kind of play (or
ritual)
becomes available to talk about the others. Thus, we often find
ourselves
describing game-play as if it were a performance, a festive
celebration,
even a rite. But it remains a game nonetheless.
Note
In an earlier form, this excursion was prepared for the
colloquium,
“Le Language de Jeu,” Montecani Terme, Italy, October 25-27,
1979.
In passing, I refer to the work of Gregory Bateson, which is most
conveniently
encountered in his Steps to an Ecology of Mind (San Francisco:
Chandler
Publishing Co., 1972). The concept of frames in relation to the
native
category “question” is pursued with subtlety and humor in Charles O.
Frake’s
“Playing Frames Can Be Dangerous...” in The Quarterly Newsletter of
the Institute for Comparative Human Development, June 1977, vol. 1,
no. 3, 1-7. Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (1950) is available in
a Beacon paperback, and Callois’ Man, Play, and Games (Meyer
Barasch,
trans., 1961) in a Schocken paperback. Much of what I have
learned
about play in games emerges from reading Brian Sutton-Smith’s ouvre and
from discussion with him. I have lined out the philosophic
rationale
of this approach in “Play,” in Proceedings of the Centennial of the
Folklore Society, Venetia Newell, ed., pp. 119-122; “Toward an
Enactment-Centered
Theory of Folklore, in The Frontiers of Folklore, William
Bascom,
ed. (published by AAAS, 1977); and “Ordinary and Extraordinary
Experience,”
Edward Bruner and Victor Turner, eds. (University of Illinois Press, in
press). Don Handleman’s argument in his “Play and Ritual:
Complementary
Frames of Meta-Communication,” in It’s a Funny Thing, Humour,
A.
S. Chapman and H. Foot, eds. (London: Pergamon, 1977), pp. 185-192,
covers
similar ground, but with a different focus.