Stephen King called them “thinnies” and Neil Gaiman referred to them as “liminal spaces.” Ancient cultures told stories about them, marked them with stones, and believed mushroom circles sprouted up around them. Everytime you see a good movie, get lost in a book, and yes, whenever you lose yourself in a game.
Consider the Proscenium…
There’s a theory in anthropology that theater began with early religious rituals. A priest or priestess would lead the ceremony, with members of the community participating as needed, but predominantly observing in a passive role. These early rituals helped provide structure and order to a chaotic world, at least in the minds of the participants. Many rituals were structured around the passage of time, whether seasons or between phases in the life of an individual or a community. They were tools used to guide and unite communities through the power of symbolic action.
Almost every ritual takes place in a sacred space. One member is given authority on behalf of the community and guides the participating individuals through a process of internal psychological change as well as a change in the way they relate to society. The participating individuals are walked through a symbolic death, though they know they are secure and safe within the confines of the sacred space as per the rules of their society, and they emerge born again.
The participants, the master of ceremony, and the space of the ritual, along with any tools or props used, are all considered taboo. While the word is used frequently today to mean anything which is forbidden, it possesses a greater nuance when used in the context of sociology and the studies of rituals; here “taboo” is used to refer to an object that is marked by either its repulsiveness or it’s sacredness. While the negative connotations are more common in everyday use, the sacred aspect of the taboo is just as important. The key is that possessing either quality makes an object significant to the point of existing outside of pre-existing social norms, requiring specific rules to properly interact with. (Fraser)
Another key term here is “liminality,” which essentially means to exist between two states. During a ritual, when the participants inhabit the sacred space and are between the symbolic death and the symbolic rebirth, they are not recognized by society and are considered to have no identity. Consider the following examples:
- Coming of Age: Also known as rites of passage and as initiation, his is a common form of ritual that exists in many cultures. While there are many variations, some elements recur frequently, and their clear structure makes them a frequent example when studying rituals. The initiate is separated from society. Whether it is a child about to become an adult or a freshman in a cliche fraternity hazing ritual, they are brought to a sacred place. There, they are stripped of their former identity, a symbolic death of their former self, and emerge initiated and as a fully fledged member of society.
- Ever wonder why to be knighted in movies, the king or queen touches the blade of a sword to the shoulders of a bowing knight-to-be? This act, one that puts the initiate very much at the mercy of the master of the ceremony, both is reminiscent of a symbolic death and sets a tone of subservience and loyalty that marks their new role as a knight.
- Baptism: The symbolic death doesn’t get much clearer than this. The initiate submits to the master of the ceremony and held under water. This symbolically washes away the sins of their old identity and marks their rebirth.
- Wedding: They always say that it’s bad luck to see a bride in her wedding gown, and this is a prime example of the nature of the taboo. Traditionally held in a church, at least in Western culture, which is quite obviously held to be a sacred space where swearing, violence, and other such profane acts are not permitted. Dressed in white, the bride is kept away from the ceremony, symbolically sacred and pure and ready to transition from single life to married life.
As time went on, these rituals started telling stories, adopted a narrative structure, and the participants of the ritual adopted certain roles. By donning a mask and entering into the sacred space, the participants of a ritual were allowed to temporarily leave behind their old selves and adopt a new persona. The sacred space became the first theater stage, and within its bounds is constructed a separate reality, a narrative space, that exists in the minds of the audience and the participants. To distinguish the separation of spaces, the everyday and the sacred, to clearly mark the boundary between overlapping realities, a structure was built: the proscenium arch.
Spaces apart...
Then is it such a stretch, is it so unusual that we create special spaces where the normal rules don’t apply? So much of our daily lives exist only by common agreement in society. What are jobs and money and traffic laws if nothing more than things we all agree to observe? Humans have always made rules that govern the ways we interact with each other, and for probably just as long we have sought escapes, alternate social spaces that we could explore and inhabit, to learn more about ourselves, each other, and the world around us. This is what is often referred to in digital media as “the magic circle,” and is frequently attributed to Johan Huizinga, who in his book Homo Ludens:
“All play moves and has its being within a play-ground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course. Just as there is no formal difference between play and ritual, so the 'consecrated spot' cannot be formally distinguished from the play-ground. The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc, are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e. forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart.”
-Huizinga, Homo Ludens
In other media, such as cinema and creative writing, there is frequently discussion about the concept of the suspension of disbelief. This is because, whether we do so consciously or unconsciously, there is an unspoken contract, one of expectations, which accompanies any story-telling medium. Just as in rituals, a separate and distinct space is created, one that has its own rules. Roger Caillois clearly discusses in his book Men, Play, and Games that play in particular can be defined largely by its separateness from everyday reality as well as the strict rules that govern that space.
"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."
-Cailloi, Men, Play, and Games
While there may be some discussion on the finer points of this definition, Caillois’s definition of play covers many of the broad strokes of what we might call here recreational rituals, being the methods and media that emerged from such ancient rituals as were described previously: separateness, a system of rules, and existing predominantly for its own sake. Make no mistake that this is fundamentally the same as what Caillois calls “play” and other authors will refer to as “games,” but while both “play” and “games” implies active and intentional participation, I choose “recreational rituals” for now as they leave room for passive participation such as theater, novels, and film. Philosopher and media theorist Marshall McLuhan refers to the passive consumption of content to be hot media, while media that requires higher level of participation to be cool media, but regardless of the audience’s power to act, or agency, they still agree to inhabit the liminal space of recreational rituals. It is this participation and their vesting of authority in the master of ceremony that allows for the magic circle to exist. For all it’s magic, it is just another social contract.
Beyond the border…
While the proscenium arch of a stage acts to mark the exact line between reality and the narrative space of a play, cutting off the audience from the actors, and an altar denotes the sacred space in which a ritual takes place, the liminal space of rituals can extend beyond these boundaries. The term “breaking the fourth wall” is a direct reference to the boundary created by the proscenium, and breaking it causes the two boundaries to merge. To “break character” or for a character to acknowledge their existence breaks the illusion of separation between the mundane space of the audience and the sacred space of the narrative and invites audience interaction. This can breach the social contract that destroyed the audience’s suspension of disbelief, akin to the mundane touching the taboo. It can also pull the audience into the liminal space, elevating them to the status of sacred as well. Many ancient holidays were just that, a liminal space expanded beyond the traditional boundaries of the sacred space. Here, all participants would lose their roles.
Saturnalia, the Roman predecessor to Christmas, was marked by an inversion of the social hierarchy, with the lowest members electing one of their own as The Lord of Misrule, a master of ceremonies of sorts for a ritual that engulfs the entire city. Bacchanalia was a similar festivity of revelry where the frenzy of the celebration would drive the participants to acts of madness. Mardi Gras, masquerades, and Carnival exist to this day, allowing participants to hide behind a mask and act in ways that would normally be forbidden. And when if not Halloween can one go door to door asking for treats and threatening mischief, saved from repercussions by their identity protecting disguise?
It can be called “mass hysteria” or “mob rule,” when the individual loses their sense of self into the greater whole, caught up and swept away with the crowd. In modern times, anecdotes are plentiful about the transcendent power of large concerts and wild parties. Carelessly giving in to such impulses can be destructive, as seen at times in the wake of major athletic events and riots. Perhaps then, we know why rituals are given strict rules and are watched over by the master of ceremonies, so that such tendencies can be explored safely, maybe even as a sort of pressure release valve for society. After all, Rome was said to be placated by bread and circuses.
The games we play…
But what differentiates games from other recreational rituals, from unstructured play and theatrical plays, television, books, parties and riots? Arguably they’re all games, ones with different rules that tell us how to have fun, how to get along with our neighbors, and how to live our lives. That does not provide a useful definition however. Instead, I turn to Jesper Juul, who defines games by six characteristics:
- A rule-based formal system
- Variable and quantifiable outcomes
- Where different outcomes are assigned different values
- Where the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome
- The player feels emotionally attached to the outcome
- The consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable
This most likely resembles what most people mean when they use the word “game.” In that sense, it meets its goal. However, I still find it lacking. It includes the structure of rules inherent to all games, it distinguishes games from other narratives by variable outcomes, but it barely hints at the value of games and the way they affect our lives and sense of self, the way we identify with the world, opting instead to merely comment that “the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome.”
It can seem a far stretch from ancient rituals, to theater, and all the way to video games. But art and spirituality have always gone hand in hand. Games, just like any other artform, allow us to explore another side of ourselves, one that everyday life keeps locked away.
