4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

drama, script, theater, and performance 107
with a captured mouse is “playing” with its prey; it is also completing
the hunting process. Chimps will convert play behavior into serious
behavior and back again, so that a play chase suddenly erupts into a
fight, the fight is resolved by gestures of dominance and submission,
this “contract” is “ratified” by mutual grooming, and soon enough
there is another playful chase.
In humans, the situation is the most complicated. First off, people
hunt other people with the same diligence that most other species
reserve for interspecies warfare. But if human aggression is nonspecific,
so is human inventiveness. So-called “serious” work in
humans is treated playfully; and so-called play can become very serious.
Humans can speak truthfully of “war games” and “theaters of
war,” and great issues can be carried on the shoulders of athletes or
actors who become important politicians. I will not elaborate these
ideas here except to insist that Huizinga was wrong when he decried
the “deterioration” of play because serious issues get involved in it.
Serious issues are always involved in play; just as, in humans, play is
inextricably involved in all “serious” work. When through industrial
or other means the play elements are taken out of work, work becomes
drudgery and less efficient, not more; and when the seriousness is
taken away from play, then playing grows sloppy and dull, not fun.
But what is “fun”? Everyone agrees that play is often fun. Certainly
this is so for humans, and it appears to be so for animals too. But I think
it is wrong to say that play is “free,” if Loizos was correct in saying that
play is the restructuring of other behavior. Also, we know that the
“rules of the game,” which order an otherwise chaotic situation, add
to the fun while taking away from freedom. Playful activity constantly
generates rules, and although these may change swiftly, there is no play
without them. In other words, to use terms developed earlier, all play is
“scripted.” Thus, “having fun” does not mean being “free from rules.”
Fun is something else.
Let me again return to the hunt. Real hunting – going for the kill –
can be fun. Watch a cat “playing with” a mouse or other small animal.
The cat lets the prey go, chases after it, catches it, lets it go again, and so
on. Finally, the kill is made and the prey is either eaten or carried
around triumphantly. Humans have even more fun hunting, including
hunting other humans. It’s not nice to think of war as a kind of