My Critical Play

In Critical Play, Flanagan made the definition that “Critical play means to create or occupy play environments and activities that represent one or more questions about aspects of human life.” Before I read this text this semester, I had never heard about critical play at all. Thus, with strong curiosity, I decided to design an activity which can be considered as a kind of critical play. This Saturday, I went to Chinatown to combine play and research with the question about human life—Why people choose Philadelphia to live in?

I will not ask natives this question, because the reason why they live in Philadelphia may be that they are born in the city, or there house located in the city. I want to ask settlers, which specialties of Philadelphia absorb them to let them stay here-- far away from their hometown. Thus, as a player, my goal is to find out the answer during my trip to Chinatown. I rambled along streets and visited stores there. I talked to different people with different jobs and did some interview to collect information.

My blackness always reigned as my dominant identity in high school, often times forcing me to choose between: black or woman.  Although I went to a relatively progressive high school, our discourse about race always seemed more significant.  I operated in a dual-consciousness that felt inherent.  In hindsight, I see that this was of course socialized, but it seemed natural to always be aware of how others perceive you, while expressing yourself in the way they can most understand.  I was use to always having to culturally translate or give the Black perspective, more concerned with how I said or expressed an opinion, than it’s actual content.  Of course I felt that it was unfair that my opinion in class would speak on behalf of my whole race, but I understood that I had no real choice.  Most of my peers never have to think of this intersectionality.  I felt that it was my job to educate them.  I had to make myself accessible, not only to socially survive, but also to contribute a valuable opinion that has been underrepresented in the classroom my entire academic career. 

According to Flanagan, subversion is “a powerful means for marginalized groups to have a voice”. I try to think of an experience in Philadelphia that corresponds to this, and calls to mind my encounter with a homeless person.When I was exhausted after a walking tour and sat on the ground having a rest near city hall, a deranged straggly old man walked towards me and started murmuring. It was a total shock, as I’ve never encountered a homeless person before, and held a stereotypical fear of them, so I said I don’t understand English and left in a hurry. I wasn’t lying, because I really couldn’t understand a single word he said. But as I walked away I heard a sentence that I could catch, “I just wanna give you a compliment!” I was perplexed—this is the city center, the place on the postcard in airport stores for every newcomer to see, where skyscrapers and banks cluster and every tourist visit, where cleaners work at midnight to keep it spectacular, and yet he felt so at ease despite of the fact that he didn’t have a house and clean clothes. He even offered me a generous welcome as a host, a welcome to the city as his home, a welcome to his world.

What a hot day! Amy and I walk on the street to find our destination-the train station for a long time. Compared to the Paoli Local, the way to R-100 is so long and this transportation is inconvenient for the students in Bryn mawr College. Finally, when we sit on the train, tiredness hit us and the views flashed outside the windows increase such feeling. It seems like we are in a forest, reminding me of my travel way in mountains in Taiwan. Trees fill up the blank space made by sky and sunshine. The music, coming out from the earphones of a man near me, and the tiny bumps made by the train, spread drowsiness among travelers. In Paoli Local, it is seldom to hear the music by others, and the air there is more serious. Here on the R-100, I thought I feel more relaxed.

When I visited Philly this weekend, I didn’t have much of a plan. I knew that I wanted to visit Elfreth’s Alley, but beyond that I decided to be spontaneous, let serendipity guide me. I went to Philly with Marcia, and we spent a little bit of time walking down the alley, admiring the bright colors on the shutters and doors, the flower boxes, the cobblestone street.

Soon, though, we were tired of admiring. We had the same itch that many do: we didn’t want to just look at something, we wanted to do something. So we started walking, heading towards the more well known area of Old City. On the way there Marcia asked me if I still wanted to go to the Constitution Center. Even though I had previously decided not to go, I thought that we may as well, as it sounded pretty fun when I looked at it online.

All this talk of critical play and plain play reminds me of Anne of Green Gables. I remember reading the book by L.M Montgomery at nine years old and marveling at how Anne was so comfortable with making mistakes and her guardian, Marilla. More importantly, she felt her life had meaning because of her active imagination. I remember she said that “Don’t you ever imagine things differently than what they are? Oh, Marilla, how much you miss.” Anne used her imagination to play in the purest sense of the world: She fashioned all these different lives with her fellow kindred spirit, Diana. She did it for no particular reason other than to keep her wonder for this world alive. She did not play critically, because I think she would’ve said the fun would’ve seeped right out of it. When Flanagan defines critical play as the creation of “play environments and activities that represents one or more questions about aspects of human life,” I strongly believe that critical play is not play at all. I also strongly believe that when you try to inject philosophical questions into your play, it starts to look an awful lot like schoolwork. 

Then

I started writing in the sixth grade.  Under my bed (to this day), tucked inside a plastic bin of winter sweaters, there is a green binder inked with the words “LE JOURNAL OF CHRISTINA” on the front.  The first entry reads,

“December 17 2006.  Hello. My name is Christina Celeste Stella.  I am eleven years old and this is my diary.  I attend Moravian Academy, and I think it’s safe to say that I hate it.  Sometimes I can be nice, and sometimes I can be a bitch.  I like to think that I’m funny, but it’s probably not true. But I do have two cats! That’s true. And a brother, and a mom and a dad, and we did just get a fish who I named Solomon. I named him that because Solomon was the name of a King, and all fish are kings of their own castles (or fish bowls, whatever Sol likes better).  I have pretty cool friends. I’m in love with Derek Turner.  He’s so beautiful.   It’s really cold out, and I’m tired, so I’m going to bed. I love you diary! Good night.  I’ll tell you how tomorrow goes.  You don’t have legs, so I’m not really that worried about you being there when I wake up, and if you’re not, I’m going to call the police.  Love always, Christina!”

Maybe the best place to start when talking about play is not in the context of a scholarly article, but rather to discover what differentiates play from the work that people do every day of their lives.  To start with the obvious, work is obligatory whereas play is a voluntary activity.  Work seems to be strenuous either physically or mentally, while play, although oftentimes the same, must also include some form of entertainment or else no one have incentive to participate. For all intents and purposes, our differentiation between work and play agrees with Flanagan’s explanation with one key addition:  “In play, the aim is play itself not success or interaction in ordinary life” (Mary Flanagan 5).

Last week when I went into the city, I was not thinking about “critical play” because I had not read Flanagan’s Critical Play: Radical Game Design. However, when I ventured into Philadelphia this week, I was consciously looking at my experience through the lens of “critical play.” Before and after I went on the ghost tour, I was critically thinking, and while I was on the ghost tour, I felt as if I were playing. Writing about the experience now, I feel as if I have answered the question I asked in my last paper: “If people do not write essays about ‘critical play,’ do they ever really understand the importance of it?” “Yes,” it seems like I could say; I did not have to write an essay to think critically about the ghost tour. Still, I am unsure if I were critically playing while on the ghost tour and if “critical play” is possible.

In “Performative Games and Objects” Flanagan argues both that play is “the aim of play itself” (5) and that “critical play” occurs when a person “critiqu[es] the status quo” (6). My most recent trip into the city leads me to argue that a person cannot play and be critical at the same time, but that a person can facilitate critical thinking before and after “play” if she has the intention of both playing and being critical.