Caillois—MPG (i)

Roger Caillois
trans. Meyer Barash
Man, Play and Games (1961)

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CHAPTER I

The Definition of Play

... even if he [Huizenga] discovers play in areas where no one before him had done so,

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he deliberately omits, as obvious, the description and classification of games themselves, since they all respond to the same needs and reflect, without qualification, the same psychological attitude. His work is not a study of games, but an inquiry into the creative quality of the play principle in the domain of culture, and more precisely, of the spirit that rules certain kinds of games—those which are competitive. The examination of the criteria used by Huizinga to demarcate his universe of discourse is helpful in understanding the strange gaps in a study which is in every other way remarkable. Huizinga defines play as follows:

Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside "ordinary" life as being "not serious," but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means.

Such a definition, in which all the words are important and meaningful, is at the same time too broad and too narrow. It is meritorious and fruitful to have grasped the affinity which exists between play and the secret or mysterious, but this relationship cannot be part of the definition of play, which is nearly always spectacular or ostentatious. Without doubt, secrecy, mystery, and even travesty can be transformed into play activity, but it must be immediately pointed out that this transformation is necessarily to the detriment of the secret and mysterious, which play exposes, publishes, and somehow expends. In a word, play tends to remove the very nature of the mysterious. On the other hand, when the secret, the mask, or the costume fulfills a sacramental function one can be sure that not play, but an institution is involved. All that is mysterious or make-believe by nature approaches play: moreover, it must be that the function of fiction or diversion is to remove the mystery; i.e. the mystery may no

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longer be awesome, and the counterfeit may not be a beginning or symptom of metamorphosis and possession.

In the second place, the part of Huizinga's definition which views play as action denuded of all material interest, simply excludes bets and games of chance—for example, gambling houses, casinos, racetracks, and lotteries—which, for better or worse, occupy an important part in the economy and daily life of various cultures. It is true that the kinds of games are almost infinitely varied, but the constant relationship between chance and profit is very striking. Games of chance played for money have practically no place in Huizinga's work. Such an omission is not without consequence.

...

In certain of its manifestations, play is designed to be extremely lucrative or ruinous. This does not preclude the fact that playing for money remains completely unproductive. ...

Property is exchanged, but no goods are produced. What is more, this exchange affects only the players, and only to the degree that they accept, through a free decision remade at each game, the probability of such transfer. A characteristic of play, in fact, is that it creates no wealth or goods, thus differing from work or art. At the end of the game, all can and must start over again at the same point. Nothing has been harvested or manufactured, no masterpiece has been created, no capital has accrued. Play is an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy,

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ingenuity, skill, and often of money for the purchase of gambling equipment or eventually to pay for the establishment. As for the professionals —the boxers, cyclists, jockeys, or actors who earn their living in the ring, track, or hippodrome or on the stage, and who must think in terms of prize, salary, or title— it is clear that they are not players but workers. When they play, it is at some other game.

...play must be defined as a free and voluntary activity, a source of joy and amusement. A game which one would be forced to play would at once cease being play. ...

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...

The confused and intricate laws of ordinary life are replaced, in this fixed space and for this given time, by precise, arbitrary, unexceptionable rules that must be accepted as such and that govern the correct playing of the game. If the cheat violates the rules, he at least pretends to respect them. He does not discuss them: he takes advantage of the other players' loyalty to the rules. From this point of view, one must agree with the writers who have stressed the fact that the cheat's dishonesty does not destroy the game. The game is ruined by the nihilist who denounces the rules as absurd and conventional, who refuses to play because the game is meaningless. His arguments are irrefutable. The game has no other but an intrinsic meaning. That is why its rules are imperative and absolute, beyond discussion. There is no reason for their being as they are, rather than otherwise. Whoever does not accept them as such must deem them manifest folly.

One plays only if and when one wishes to. In this sense, play is free activity. It is also uncertain activity. Doubt must remain until the end , and hinges upon the denouement. In a card game, when the outcome is no longer in doubt, play stops and the players lay down their hands.

Whereas in a Scrabble tournament, the game must continue to the end even if the outcome is no longer doubt because to resign would deprive your opponent of part of their hard-earned vacation!

This is from the very first page of the rules, heading "Conduct," right in between "Cheating and Collusion" and "Abusive or Disruptive Behavior":

I.B. Resigning

Except as specified below, resigning a game or quitting a tournament in progress are considered unsportsmanlike and subject to penalty unless approved by the Director for a medical or personal emergency. ...

Exception: The Director may allow a resignation option in any tournament where spreads and scores are totally irrelevant and where the Director has clearly stated the resignation policy in all tournament announcements and flyers. Under those circumstances, a player who is obviously losing a game may, on his or her own time, request to resign. The opponent then has the choice of honoring the resignation at the current score (minus any time penalties) or requiring that the game continue.

In which case one can only hope that one's opponent has drunk deeply at the well of Caillois and Huizenga.

... In a sports contest, the powers of the contestants must be equated, so that each may have a chance until the end. Every game of skill, by definition, involves the risk for the player of missing his stroke, and the threat of defeat, without which the game would no longer be pleasing. In fact, the game is no longer pleasing to one who, because he is too well trained or skillful, wins effortlessly and infallibly.

Also not always in evidence among lower-rated tournament Scrabble players, I think. Consistently true only of "experts," and even there not with perfect consistency.

An outcome known in advance, with no possibility of error or surprise, clearly leading to an inescapable result, is incompatible with the nature of play. Constant and unpredictable definitions

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of the situation are necessary, such as are produced by each attack or counterattack in fencing or football, in each return of the tennis ball, or in chess, each time one of the players moves a piece. The game consists of the need to find or continue at once a response which is free within the limits set by the rules. ...

Many games do not imply rules. No fixed or rigid rules exist for playing with dolls, for playing soldiers, cops and robbers, horses, locomotives, and airplanes—games, in general, which presuppose free improvisation, and the chief attraction of which lies in the pleasure of playing a role, of acting as if one were someone or something else, a machine for example. Despite the assertion's paradoxical character, I will state that in this instance the fiction, the sentiment of as if replaces and performs the same function as do rules. Rules themselves create fictions. The one who plays chess, prisoner's base, polo, or baccara, by the very fact of complying with their respective rules, is separated from real life where there is no activity that literally corresponds to any of these games. That is why chess, prisoner's base, polo, and baccara are played for real. As if is not necessary. On the contrary, each time that play consists in imitating life, the player on the one hand lacks knowledge of how to invent and follow rules that do not exist in reality, and on the other hand the game is accompanied by the knowledge that the required behavior is pretense, or simple mimicry. This awareness of the basic unreality of the assumed behavior is separate from real life and from the arbitrary legislation that defines other games. The equivalence is so precise that the one who breaks up a game, the one who denounces the absurdity of the rules, now becomes the one who breaks the spell, who brutally refuses to acquiesce

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in the proposed illusion, who reminds the boy that he is not really a detective, pirate, horse, or submarine, or reminds the little girl that she is not rocking a real baby or serving a real meal to real ladies on her miniature dishes.

...

...the preceding analysis permits play to be defined as an activity which is essentially:

   1. Free: in which playing is not obligatory; if it were, it would at once lose its attractive and joyous quality as diversion;
   2. Separate: circumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance;
   3. Uncertain: the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand, and some latitude for innovations being left to the player's initiative;

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   4. Unproductive: creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game;
   5. Governed by rules: under conventions that suspend ordinary laws, and for the moment establish new legislation, which alone counts;
   6. Make-believe: accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality or of a free unreality, as against real life.

(Later on, Caillois adds:
"...it being understood that
the last two characteristics
tend to exclude one another ".)
(p. 43)

These diverse qualities are purely formal. They do not prejudge the content of games. Also, the fact that the two last qualities—rules and make-believe-may be related, shows that the intimate nature of the facts that they seek to define implies, perhaps requires, that the latter in their turn be subdivided. This would attempt to take account not of the qualities that are opposed to reality, but of those that are clustered in groups of games with unique, irreducible characteristics.

...

[12] After examining different possibilities, I am proposing a division into four main rubrics, depending upon whether, in the games under consideration, the role of competition, chance, simulation, or vertigo is dominant. I call these agôn, alea, mimicry, and ilinx, respectively. All four indeed belong to the domain of play. One plays football, billiards, or chess (agôn); roulette or a lottery (alea); pirate, Nero, or Hamlet (mimicry); or one produces in oneself, by a rapid whirling or falling movement, a state of dizziness and disorder (ilinx). Even these designations do not

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cover the entire universe of play. It is divided into quadrants, each governed by an original principle. Each section contains games of the same kind. But inside each section, the different games are arranged in a rank order of progression. They cam also be placed on a continuum between two opposite poles. At one extreme an almost indivisible principle, common to diversion, turbulence, free improvisation, and carefree gaiety is dominant. It manifests a kind of uncontrolled fantasy that can be designated by the term paidia. At the opposite extreme, this frolicsome and impulsive exuberance is almost entirely absorbed or disciplined by a complementary, and in some respects inverse, tendency to its anarchic and capricious nature: there is a growing tendency to bind it with arbitrary, imperative, and purposely tedious conventions, to oppose it still more by ceaselessly practicing the most embarrassing chicanery upon it, in order to make it more uncertain of attaining its desired effect. This latter principle is completely impractical, even though it requires an ever greater amount of effort, patience, skill, or ingenuity. I call this second component ludus.

...

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1. Fundamental Categories

Agôn. A whole group of games would seem to be competitive, that is to say, like a combat in which equality of chances is artificially created, in order that the adversaries should confront each other under ideal conditions, susceptible of giving precise and incontestable value to the winner's triumph. It is therefore always a question of a rivalry which hinges on a single quality (speed, endurance, strength, memory, skill, ingenuity, etc.),

Well, perhaps it can always be summed up in a single quality, e.g., putting the ball through the hoop; but even basketball involves a few different skills. As is painfully obvious with certain specialist players, these skills don't necessarily correlate with each other.

exercised, within defined limits and without outside assistance, in such a way that the winner appears to be better than the loser in a certain category of exploits. ... In the same class belong the games in which, at the outset, the adversaries divide the elements into equal parts and value. The games of checkers, chess, and billiards are perfect examples. The search for equality is so obviously essential to the rivalry that it is re-established by a handicap for players of different classes;...

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...

The point of the game is for each player to have his superiority in a given area recognized. That is why the practice of agôn presupposes sustained attention, appropriate training, assiduous application, and the desire to win. It implies discipline and perseverance. It leaves the champion to his own devices, to evoke the best possible game of which he is capable, and it obliges him to play the game within the fixed limits , and according to the rules applied equally to all , so that in return the victor's superiority will be beyond dispute .

Indeed. And it is no coincidence, then, that where superiority is not (claimed to be) at stake, therein the limits of the game and the equality before the rules are suddenly not too interesting to the players. Which is to say that competition itself is not quite the a priori leading indicator of animalistic aggression or moral corruption that it has occasionally been made out to be. It could, some of the time, indicate the reverse.

Similarly, it could be questioned whether anyone with contempt for the rules is really interested in competition. They may be interested in the reward but not in proving themselves. Yet the desire to prove oneself could, as above, just as well be the saving grace as the fatal flaw.

Generally it is not a nice thing to say about someone that "they always have to prove themselves."

In addition to games, the spirit of agôn is found in other cultural phenomena conforming to the game code: in the duel, in the tournament, and in certain constant and noteworthy aspects of so-called courtly war.

In principle, it would seem that agôn is unknown among animals, which have no conception of limits or rules,... Yet, in considering certain facts, it seems that animals already have the competitive urge during encounters where limits are at least implicitly accepted and spontaneously

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respected, even if rules are lacking. This is notably the case in kittens, puppies, and bear cubs, which take pleasure in knocking each other down yet not hurting each other.

... observers have noted numerous games of pursuit that result from a challenge or invitation. The animal that is overtaken has nothing to fear from the victor. ... Never is there any pursuit or conflict outside the space delimited for the journey. That is why it seems legitimate for me to use the term agôn for these cases, for the goal of the encounters is not for the antagonist to cause serious injury to his rival, but rather to demonstrate his own superiority. Man merely adds refinement and precision by devising rules.

...

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...

Alea. This is the Latin name for the game of dice. I have borrowed it to designate, in contrast to agôn, all games that are based on a decision independent of the player, an outcome over which he has no control, and in which winning is the result of fate rather than triumphing over an adversary. More properly, destiny is the sole artisan of victory, and where there is rivalry, what is meant is that the winner has been more favored by fortune than the loser . Perfect examples of this type are provided by the games of dice, roulette, heads or tails, baccara, lotteries, etc. Here, not only does one refrain from trying to eliminate the injustice of chance, but rather it is the very capriciousness of chance that constitutes the unique appeal of the game.

...

In contrast to agôn, alea negates work, patience, experience, and qualifications. Professionalization, application, and training are eliminated. In one instant, winnings may be wiped out. Alea is total disgrace or absolute favor. It grants the lucky player infinitely more than he could procure by a lifetime of labor, discipline, and fatigue. It seems an insolent and sovereign insult to merit. It supposes on the player's part an attitude exactly opposite to that reflected in agôn. In the latter, his only reliance is upon himself; in the former, he counts on everything, even the vaguest sign, the slightest outside occurrence, which he immedi-

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ately takes to be an omen or token— in short, he depends on everything except himself.

Agôn is a vindication of personal responsibility; alea is a negation of the will, a surrender to destiny. Some games , such as dominoes, backgammon, and most card games, combine the two.

Scrabble belongs in this category.

...

The role of money is also generally more impressive than the role of chance, and therefore is the recourse of the weaker player. The reason for this is clear: Alea does not have the function of causing the more intelligent to win money, but tends rather to abolish natural or acquired individual differences, so that all can be placed on an absolutely equal footing to await the blind verdict of chance.

Since the result of agôn is necessarily uncertain and paradoxically must approximate the effect of pure chance, assuming that the chances of the competitors are as equal as possible, it follows that every encounter with competitive characteristics and ideal rules can become the object of betting, or alea, e.g. horse or greyhound races, football, basketball, and cock fights. It even happens that table stakes vary unceasingly during the game, according to the vicissitudes of agôn.

Games of chance would seem to be peculiarly human. Animals play games involving competition, stimulation, and excess. ... To await the decision of destiny passively and deliberately, to risk upon it wealth proportionate to the risk of losing, is an attitude that requires the possibility of

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foresight, vision, and speculation, for which objective and calculating reflection is needed. ...

Agôn and alea imply opposite and somewhat complementary attitudes, but they both obey the same law—the creation for the players of conditions of pure equality denied them in real life. For nothing in life is clear, since everything is confused from the very beginning, luck and merit too. Play, whether agôn or alea, is thus an attempt to substitute perfect situations for the normal confusion of contemporary life. ...


Mimicry. All play presupposes the temporary acceptance, if not of an illusion (indeed this last word means nothing less than beginning a game: in-lusio), then at least of a closed, conventional, and, in certain respects, imaginary universe. Play can consist not only of deploying actions or submitting to one's fate in an imaginary milieu, but of becoming an illusory character oneself, and of so behaving. One is thus confronted with a diverse series of manifestations, the common element of which is that the subject makes believe or makes others believe that he is someone other than himself. He forgets, disguises, or temporarily sheds his personality in order to feign another. I prefer to designate these phenomena by the term mimicry, the English word

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for mimetism, notably of insects, so that the fundamental, elementary, and quasi-organic nature of the impulse that stimulates it can be stressed.

The insect world, compared to the human world, seems like the most divergent of solutions provided by nature. This world is in contrast in all respects to that of man, but it is no less elaborate, complex, and surprising. Also, it seems legitimate to me at this point to take account of mimetic phenomena of which insects provide most perplexing examples. ...

Among vertebrates, the tendency to imitate first appears as an entirely physical, quasi-irresistible contagion, analogous to the contagion of yawning, running, limping, smiling, or almost any movement. ... Contagion and imitation are not the same as simulation, but they make possible and give rise to the idea or the taste for mimicry. In birds, this tendency leads to nuptial parades, ceremonies, and exhibitions of vanity in which males or females, as the case may

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be, indulge with rare application and evident pleasure. As for the oxyrhinous crabs, which plant upon their carapaces any alga or polyp that they can catch, their aptitude for disguise leaves no room for doubt, whatever explanation for the phenomenon may be advanced.

Mimicry and travesty are therefore complementary acts in this kind of play. For children, the aim is to imitate adults. ... However, acts of mimicry tend to cross the border between childhood and adulthood. They cover to the same degree any distraction, mask, or travesty, in which one participates, and which stresses the very fact that the play is masked or otherwise disguised, and such consequences as ensue. Lastly it is clear that theatrical presentations and dramatic interpretations rightly belong in this category.

Caillois returns to this point several times. It is dubious. He has already pointed out that "professionals" do not truly play in the manner he is interested in discussing, if they can be said to play at all. It must be added that reception too can be instrumentalized and this too makes play impossible for the audience.

What is left, then? Such theatrical presentations and dramatic interpretations as are undertaken with no instrumental aim. But it seems unwise to put any formalized theater practice in this category. The only such "practices," if they can be called that, are the everyday "dramas" of the proverbial Drama Queen. These are mostly not mimicry. They are more like whatever word is translated above as contagion. That is, they may just as well be about effecting mimicry in other as about engaging in it oneself; or at least, premeditation aside, this is likely to be one result.

The very notions of theater and drama seem to me always-already instrumentalized in precisely the way that preempts true "play," all the same if this instrumentalization is inessential or unnoticed or unwitting. The reason why has been veritably canonized in any number of sayings and anecdotes about actors and their reasons for gravitating toward acting. They are thought to be getting something from it. I personally know one actor who is not like this and takes great offense at the suggestion. But the higher purposes and social utilities given as alternatives merely point to another kind of instrumentalization; in fact, to a yet more clearcut case of instrumentalization than the much vaguer one of validating oneself.

I would think the same observation applies to the other forms of play as well. If the whole point is, say, that the victor's superiority will be beyond dispute , then always-already there is an instrumental aim. There are only a few ways this could be avoided. The prevailing way, I think, is to say (whether it is true or not) that we don't really understand this kind of motivation very well. e.g. Sutton-Smith remarks, ca. 1987, "There is not much power to the "explanation"...since little is known about self enhancement." Certainly it is elusive and prone to too-obvious platitudes which lead away from understanding rather than towards it; on the other hand, Rank and Becker, e.g., were not nearly as hesitant. I happen to find their account plausible. Failing that, there is the highly unfashionable and old-fashioned method of parsing observable behavior at face value. Rank has a powerful insight about this:

[39] Truth therefore is the conscious concomitant, yes, the affirmation of the constructive or creative completion of will on the intellectual level, just as we understand the perception of pleasure as the emotional affirmation of will expression. Accordingly truth brings intellectual pleasure as doubt brings intellectual pain. Truth as positive emotional experience means "it is good, that I will is right, is pleasurable." It is, therefore, willing itself the affirmation of which creates intellectual pleasure. That we do not know truth in its psychological nature but set it up as it were outside of every psychology, yes, as the criterion of psychology itself, as again related to its content. If we did not do that, this last intellectual way to justify will, the will to truth as a
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drive to knowledge which shall make an end of doubt would also be denied us. Once more we cannot enjoy completely the pleasure of truth seeking because it is an expression of our own will which even here on the level of knowledge and self knowledge needs the content of a general truth equally valid for all, in order to deny its own truth, its own individuality. And here, in my opinion, we hit upon the most paradoxical phenomenon of the human soul, the understanding of which I consider the most important result of my relativity theory of knowledge. It concerns the law of continuous development of our general psychological knowledge. This results not as one might think pedagogically, by the handing over and broadening of the already known, whereby he who follows knows more or sees better. No, it is not only that he knows more, he knows differently because he himself is different. And this "being different" is related to the continuous development of self consciousness, which alters the whole individuality because it determines it. This knowing differently about ourselves, about our own psychic processes is in this sense only a new interpretation of ourselves, with which and in which we free ourselves from the old, the bygone, the past, and above all from our own past. Creative individuals, in their advancing knowledge, represent therefore only the increased self knowledge of mounting self consciousness which manifests itself in them. Only in this sense can their truth also serve as the truth and not in relation to any extra-psychological content of the truth-emotion which transforms the positive affirmation of willing into conviction.

With this separation of the content of truth from the feeling of trueness, there is revealed to us the problem of truth and reality in its complete practical meaning, as well as in its psychological and epistemological aspect. The only "trueness" in terms of actual psychic reality is found in emotion, not in thinking, which at best denies or rationalizes truth, and not necessarily in action unless it follows from feeling and is in harmony with it. This, however, is seldom the case because the will for the most part does not permit it but preserves for itself the supremacy over the sphere of action. Then, however, action ensues either on the basis of conscious thought guided by will or is the expression of an affect and is, therefore, not emotionally true in either case. For the most part it stands thusm that the denial tendency arising
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from the negative origin of will and ruling our entire spiritual life in the sphere of thought and action, particularly as far as it concerns our relations to other people, manifests itself as self-deception concerning its own emotions, but really is the truth. The paradox therein is this, that exactly what we pretend consciously to be the truth, this it actually is psychically. It is only that we attach to emotion, as it were, this intellectual denial in order not to admit it to ourselves and the other. Again the will—in its negative form—presses in past emotion and must deny even while it sanctions it. This is the psychological side of the situation. In relation to practical action, to behavior, the result is that we pride ourselves on playing a role when it has to do with true emotional reaction. We actually play, then, what we are in truth, but perceive it as untrue, as false, because again we cannot accept ourselves without rationalization. Just so, in the exaggeration of an action or reaction, the more genuine it is, the more we perceive it as voluntary exaggeration. (I play the injured role, means, I am injured.)
The understanding of this relation between truth and reality is not only highly important psychologically as it reveals to us the psychic truth-status of lying, pretension, dramatization, but also practically for judging the actions resulting therefrom. This explains why we rightly judge a man by his actions and these again according to their manifest appearance, as not only the laity but also justice and education do. For the psychic motivation, upon which one finally stumbles with careful analysis, may be psychically true but it is not actually like the act itself whose psychological understanding always includes its interpretation in terms of the will-guilt problem. Accordingly, therefore, the so-called Freudian slip is psychologically truer than the correct behavior which always rests on a denial of what we really want to do and which usually comes through only in blunders where at the same time it is made ineffective, as also in the dream through the sleeper's incapacity for action. Here also light falls upon the peculiar phenomenon of the intentional blunder, in whose mechanism the emotionally true intention again betrays itself. In this sense the majority of our actions as we have previously described in conscious acting, pretending, falsehood, are really would-be slips.
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From this results not only a new comprehension of human behavior, but also an understanding of it, a view of life that is therapeutic in an anti-analytic sense. It is to the effect that our seeking the truth in human motives for acting and thinking is destructive. With the truth, one cannot live. To be able to live one needs illusions, not only outer illusions such as art, religion, philosophy, science and love afford, but inner illusions which first condition the outer.
(Rank, Truth and Reality)

The other way to elide the ascription of instrumentality is related to this: we can choose to disbelieve such obvious conclusions about observable behavior.

It must be said too that befitting the borderland quality of this question of "self enhancement," the line between gainfulness and instrumentality on one hand and truly free play on the other, this line may ultimately be invisible if we insist on drilling down far enough into the psyche. What I mean is: it can justifiably be objected that labeling "self-enhancement" or "proving oneself" as an "instrumental" goal is stretching the latter term too far, at which point there is only instrumentality and no play. Perhaps this is indeed where we're headed once there is no more free will. But even if so, the distinction between a "flow" state and other states would remain valid, if only retrospectively and phenomenally. Put yet another way, it would make sense for my purposes here to define the gainful or instrumental mindset as a conscious mindset; unconscious motivations may still exist, but we would thereby have decided for the sake of studying play specifically not to apply the notion of instrumentality to them.

The pleasure lies in being or passing for another.

But who will admit to this? It does seem to be true at least some of the time. But if the reason is so heavily repressed, how can there be any pleasure ?

But in games the basic intention is not that of deceiving the spectators. The child who is playing train may well refuse to kiss his father while saying to him that one does not embrace locomotives, but he is not trying to persuade his father that he is a real locomotive. At a carnival, the masquerader does not try to make one believe that he is really a marquis, toreador, or Indian, but rather tries to inspire fear and take advantage of the surrounding license, a result of the fact that the mask disguises the conventional self and liberates the true personality.

This makes more sense. And still the more mundane dressers among us are bound to ask: what liberation is this if it can only be purchased with disguise ?

The actor does not try to make believe that he is "really" King Lear or Charles V. It is only the spy and the fugitive who disguise themselves to really deceive because they are not playing.

Again McLuhan's quip is timely. The uneven "effect" on players and audience finds its most extreme form in the Method, proto-metonym for performers' total absorption in their parts.

And again, I'm not sure the goths-and-preppies issue is well accounted for this way. There the disguise is only partial, but the commitment is total. These people are not playing :

The spurious side of the social structure of modernity is composed out of the information, memories, images and other representations which become detached from genuine cultural elements, from the "true" sights, and are circulated and accumulated in everyday life. This is no longer a simple matter of an occasional souvenir ashtray or the little bars of soap from The Motel that are stored away with the pressed and dried wildflower. It is now possible to build an entire life out of these and other spurious elements. ...

A certain type of shirt and a certain type of pants do not carry the name or the picture of the islands they represent, but they are known, nevertheless, as Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts. Some young men on the west coast of the United States wear jackets of bright red, orange or yellow silk with a multicolored dragon and the word "Japan" embroidered on the back, the lettering of the word "Japan" simulating the brushstrokes of Oriental characters. I think both Durkheim and the Australian peoples he studied would be astounded by the lengths to which we have carried our "totemic" symbolism. If it is argued that we do not hold our symbolism in the same respect and awe that an Australian holds his, my answer is: try to insult someone's Japan Jacket, or question his taste in wearing Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirts, or in decorating his homes with touristic heraldry. If questioned to his face along these lines, a person will behave as if his entire being has been thrown into the balance.
(Dean MacCannell, The Tourist (1976),
Ch. 8—"Structure, Genuine and Spurious")

Activity, imagination, interpretation, and mimicry have hardly any relationship to alea, which requires immobility and the thrill of expectation from the player, but agôn is not excluded. I am not thinking of the masqueraders' competition, in which the

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relationship is obvious. A much more subtle complicity is revealed. For nonparticipants, every agôn is a spectacle. Only it is a spectacle which, to be valid, excludes simulation. Great sports events are nevertheless special occasions for mimicry, but it must be recalled that the simulation is now transferred from the participants to the audience. It is not the athletes who mimic, but the spectators. Identification with the champion in itself constitutes mimicry related to that of the reader with the hero of the novel and that of the moviegoer with the film star. To be convinced of this, it is merely necessary to consider the perfectly symmetrical functions of the champion and the stage or screen star. Champions, winners at agôn, are the stars of sports contests. Conversely, stars are winners in a more diffuse competition in which the stakes are popular favor. Both receive a large fan-mail, give interviews to an avid press, and sign autographs.

The thesis of spectator identification being channeled into mimicry is unconvincing, because "identification" can take so many other forms also.

p. 19 again:

Play can consist not only of deploying actions or submitting to one's fate in an imaginary milieu, but of becoming an illusory character oneself, and of so behaving.

The second way ("...becoming an illusory character oneself...") usually belongs only to the youngest sports fans. Adults are more in the business of "submitting to one's fate in an imaginary milieu." Ask any Vikings fan about this.

One is thus confronted with a diverse series of manifestations, the common element of which is that the subject makes believe or makes others believe that he is someone other than himself.

This makes "identification" elusive. One must remain oneself in order to identify, no?

He forgets, disguises, or temporarily sheds his personality in order to feign another.

I'm sure there are sports fans whose fandom can be described this way, but next time you're at a game, ask yourself: are those around you merely feigning? Or are they in their element?

... The nature of these spectacles remains that of an agôn, but their outward aspect is that of an exhibition. The audience are not content to encourage the efforts of the athletes or horses of their choice merely by voice and gesture. A physical contagion leads them to assume the position of the men or animals in order to help them, just as the bowler is known to unconsciously incline his body in the direction that he would like the bowling ball to take at the end of its course. ...

From first understating the willfulness of mimicry, this part risks overstating it. We have already been introduced to certain examples from the animal kingdom, where the subjects

are very much involved in the immediate and enslaved by their impulses, cannot conceive of an abstract and inanimate power, to whose verdict they would passively submit in advance

...

Among vertebrates, the tendency to imitate first appears as an entirely physical, quasi-irresistible contagion, analogous to the contagion of yawning, running, limping, smiling, or almost any movement.

The appeal here is to instinct, not to calculation. And it has since been shown that mimicry is indeed involuntary in many such instances. This casts no doubt on the thesis that sports are an exhibition , but it does make it dubious to think that the crowd is "playing."

...

[23]

...

Ilinx. The last kind of game includes those which are based on the pursuit of vertigo and which consist of an attempt to momentarily destroy the stability of perception and inflict a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind. In all cases, it is a question of surrendering to a kind of spasm, seizure, or shock which destroys reality with sovereign brusqueness.

The disturbance that provokes vertigo is commonly sought for its own sake. ...

[24]

It is scarcely necessary to invoke these rare and fascinating examples. Every child very well knows that by whirling rapidly he reaches a centrifugal state of flight from which he regains bodily stability and clarity of perception only with difficulty. The child engages in this activity playfully and finds pleasure thereby. ...

... In parallel fashion, there is a vertigo of a moral order, a transport that suddenly seizes the individual. This vertigo is readily linked to the desire for disorder and destruction, a drive which is normally repressed. It is reflected in crude and brutal forms of personality expression. In children, it is especially observed in the games of hot cockles, "winner-take-all," and leapfrog in which they rush and spin pell-mell. In adults, nothing is more revealing of vertigo than the strange excitement that is felt in cutting down the tall prairie flowers with a switch, or in creating an avalanche of the snow on a rooftop, or, better, the intoxication that is experienced in military barracks—for example, in noisily banging garbage cans.

To cover the many varieties of such transport, for a disorder that may take organic or psychological form, I propose using the term ilinx, the Greek term for whirlpool, from which is also derived the Greek word for vertigo (ilingos).

This pleasure is not unique to man. ...

[25]

... Even if these are pathological manifestations, they are too significant to be passed over in silence. ... examples in which the play element is certain are not lacking. In order to catch their tails dogs will spin around until they fall down. At other times they are seized by a fever for running until they are exhausted. Antelopes, gazelles, and wild horses are often panic-stricken when there is no real danger in the slightest degree to account for it; the impression is of an overbearing contagion to which they surrender in instant compliance.

...

Following the teetotum, mais d'or, sliding, horsemanship, and swinging of their childhood, men surrender to the intoxication of many kinds of dance,... They derive the same kind of pleasure from the intoxication stimulated by high speed on skis, motorcycles, or in driving sports cars. In order to give this kind of sensation the intensity and brutality capable of shocking adults, powerful machines have had to be invented. Thus it is not surprising that the Industrial Revolution had to take place before vertigo could really become a kind of game. ...

[26]

...

These machines would obviously surpass their goals if it were only a question of assaulting the organs of the inner ear,... it is the whole body which must submit to such treatment as anyone would fear undergoing, were it not that everybody else was seen struggling to do the same. In fact, it is worth watching people leaving these vertigo-inducing machines. ... the majority of them, before even recovering, are already hastening to the ticket booth in order to buy the right to again experience the same pleasurable torture.

...

It would be rash to draw very, precise conclusions on the subject of this curious and cruel assignment of roles. This last is not characteristic of a kind of game, such as is found in boxing, wrestling, and in gladiatorial combat. Essential is the pursuit of this special disorder or sudden panic, which defines the term vertigo, and in the true characteristics of the games associated with it: viz. the freedom to accept or refuse the experience, strict and fixed limits, and separation from the rest of reality. What the experience adds to the spectacle does not diminish but reinforces its character as play.