fun and games
by Douglas Messerli
Albert Mobilio Games & Stunts (New York: Black Square Editions, 2017
In a variation of “Bull-in-the-Ring,” the charging bull-man touches a
pair of hands, saying “Here I buy.” Reaching a second pair of hands, he shouts
“Here I bake.” A third pair is greeted with “Here I make my wedding cake.” But
upon reaching the fourth pair of hands, he lunges forward, “Here I break
through.” The author describes this as a “blood-sport,” with winners emerging
red-mouthed and heaving.”
In another game, titled “Elimination,” two “equal” groups take to the
field, each forming a circle or a square. There are, however, two members, one
from each side, outside this group with flyswatters. If they swat one of the
other team members, he or she must step aside. The remaining members work
together and, often, divide from their group, making the attacks easier. This
process continues until everyone has had a chance with the swatter.
“Pat and Rub” is an old stunt in which the player (in this case Jack)
“to pat the top of his head with one hand and simultaneously rub his chest or
abdomen with the other.” Complexity might be introduced by reversing hands.
Some games are far more dangerous, involving matches, razors, or knives.
Others involve a number of balls thrown at the opposing victims. Some, like “I
Doubt It,” “Do You Like Your Neighbors” and “Sesquipedalia” involve verbal
conundrums. Still others, like “Broom Lever” and “Spoon Photography” involve
special skills, real or imagined.
The rules of the games and stunts represent much of fun of this fiction,
but gradually we begin to know the players themselves. The self-assured Frank,
their described “leader,” believes in his own powers, including an ability to
read minds. Bean fantasizes about having sex with Jess—or anyone for that
matter—always spouting words like an adolescent like tit and wank. Sandy,
particularly, in her strange use of language, is a kind of born comic (to a
comment by Jack—“…up yours. You wouldn’t notice,” Sandy replies, for example,
“That hurts just hearing it go in.”).
These figures seem to have little life together other than playing their
games, which reveal not only their skills or lack of talent, but their dreams
and desires, as in the game “Where Am I?” which hints at where they might like
to travel.
If by work’s end, these figures still remain simply stereotypes, the
simple fact that, again and again, they have dared to take a chance with each
other, putting themselves—as Mobilio quotes from Roger Callois’ Man, Play and Games—into a sense of
uncertainty and doubt, opening themselves up to one another in a way that represents
their vulnerabilities, tells us a great deal. The author, in a grand metaphor,
suggests that all of our relationships might actually be thought of as a kind
of subtle series of game playing, particularly in our sometimes gentle and at
other times hostile gestures, queries, and prodding of one another.
By giving them a name and wittily ascribing written instructions,
Mobilio simply makes apparent what, in our personal relationships with friends
and strangers, we often attempt to obscure and dismiss.
I’d wish to see a drama of some of these some 46 games and stunts, which
might make for a wonderful theatrical event. After all, the first part of
Edward Albee’s great play, Who’s Afraid
of Virginia Woolf? was titled, if you recall, “Fun and Games.”
Los Angeles, September 14, 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment