Documentary Be Like…The Validity and Truth of Anthropological, Ethnographical and Observational Documentary of the 1930s – 1960s

This essay will analyse to what level a documentary can ever be considered truthful in its documentation of a subject and question if there is in-fact any point in attempting to achieve truth, when what it is to be true can be such a nebulous subject matter. While there will be references to documentaries of other time periods, the question will primarily be answered with specific reference to Anthropological, Ethnographical and Observational documentaries of the 1930s – 1960s and the varying means by which the documentaries in question violate the typical human understanding of truth based within clarity and objectivity. Furthermore, the context of the various documentaries’ production, be it the filmmaker themselves, the respective years in which the documentaries were made, the possible responses of audiences and finally the technologies afforded to the filmmakers in their respective time periods and specific scenarios they worked within will all be considered with reference to Bruzzi’s argument. Once these elements are considered, ideally the pursuit of an objective truth will appear to be a futile objective and not one that a documentary filmmaker should be concerned with achieving.

Bruzzi (2006) argues that ‘documentaries are a negotiation between filmmaker and reality and, at heart, a performance’, there is an argument to be made for this as being true of every documentary but that is not necessarily to the detriment of the documentaries. If one takes the word ‘performance’ when attached to the notion of an actor performing and considers what it is an actor is doing, which is to tell a lie through playing a role to create some form of truth within their performance, then it becomes easier to understand how a documentary can potentially maintain its integrity and its ability to demonstrate some semblance of truth to an audience. Of course, this depends on the documentary and the audience, as historically, documentary filmmaking has changed ethically and strategically as have audience expectations and interpretations, and further than this, documentary filmmaking and audiences will vary by society, be it, Britain in the 1930s, France in the 1950s or the USA in the 1960s or even a more generalised global society in a given time period.

Before one can begin to analyse the validity or the truth of a documentary, it is important to define what could be meant by truth. I.A. Richards (1926) highlights two different forms of truth, one he refers to as ‘scientific truth’, which must correspond directly with an observable truth in the world and the other he refers to as ‘poetic truth’ which is a proposition given meaning because of its effect on internal experience. These are of special relevance to documentary as it is liable to be the intersection of both of these understandings of the truth. The issue being that both forms of truth can regularly and simultaneously be applied to most any documentary and it is almost impossible to apply only one status to a given documentary, especially documentaries that observe a particular group, be it great or small as opposed to a historical, undisputable period in history. Moi, un Noir (Jean Rouch, 1958) is one such example of a documentary where both truths apply, as like the aforementioned performance of the actor, there is an element of deception that creates a poetic truth which may aid what an individual perceives as their own scientific truth. Equally, Moi, un Noir also possesses the capacity to observe a truth simply through the format in which it was created and the sub-genre it belongs to because of said format. Before Moi, un Noir’s status as an Ethnographical or Anthropological documentary, it is an Observational documentary because of the means by which it was made, and it is within its own genre that the word ‘observational’ is found, a word which corresponds directly to the definition of scientific truth proposed by I.A. Richards. Additionally, an individual’s own interpretation creates a poetic truth that can assist that same individual’s observation within reality, which is to say that each individual will have their own nuanced understanding, misunderstanding or nonunderstanding of a documentary.

Ellis (2011: 53) writes that ‘If we do not know how an exchange was framed (one we experience, or one we witness) then we are liable to misunderstand it’, which is of significance to the audience member’s individual level of understanding of a documentary and the documentary filmmaker’s experience capturing an exchange. There is no beginning however to which party demands what first, the audience demands to be captivated, be it entertained, informed or perhaps both and filmmaker demands their captivation, to entertain, to inform or equally perhaps it is both. It is this supply and demand scenario that brings forward the potential for questions of the scientific truth, as one must consider what the motivation the filmmaker has for fulfilling the ‘supply’ end of the agreement. When the filmmaker decides to make a film, such as Jean Rouch decided to make Moi, un Noir, he would have had to decide that he wanted to observe the reality of the Ivory Coast. He would also then decide in which direction the camera will point and whom it will point at. In only two decisions, albeit major decisions, he has chosen only to include the most minute fraction of the reality of the Ivory Coast. Referring once more to Richards’ poetic and scientific truths, Rouch has taken the Ivory Coast, which is an undisputable, observable reality and inflected upon it his own understanding of the reality of the Ivory Coast, what it is that he believes to be of the most merit for the audience member; the individual audience who will have their own understanding of the observable reality that is the Ivory Coast and based on Rouch, build their own understanding of it. The difference between the two parties being that Rouch had the experience of living for a time in the Ivory Coast and the audience did not, Rouch being in a position of privilege that only the filmmaker can hold, filmmaker itself being a position with its own varying levels of privilege.

It is important to note also that there is more than one understanding of the ‘truth’ when addressing a subject such as documentary and that there will never be an objective interpretation of what is actually happening. Ellis (2011: 45) writes that ‘There are two distinctly profound “things going on”. There is the film that we watch as an audience; and there was once a series of interactions between filmer and the filmed’ and within these ‘two distinctly profound “things going on”’ the filmmaker falls victim to an inherent flaw created by their own presence. It is the ‘series of interactions between filmer and the filmed’, the very process by which the documentary first comes to exist is where the very first question of its status as ‘truthful’ in the objective sense is raised and where Bruzzi’s argument of ‘performance’ begins to be realised. MacDougall (1998:134) claims that ‘No ethnographic film is merely a record of another society; it is always a record of the meeting between a filmmaker and that society’, this claim is very difficult to contend with as the documentary film found at the end of the process will have undergone just that, the process. When the film is shot, the director decides which direction the camera is facing and who or what it is facing, it is impossible to encapsulate all of the available information. Moi, un Noir for example, was shot using a 16mm handheld, wind-up camera that could only shoot in short bursts of approximately 15 seconds, forcing Rouch to have to take short breaks between shots to prime the camera once more, in the time between shots Rouch could very simply missed an essential piece of information and although the likelihood is that Rouch did all he could to prevent this occurrence, it is unavoidable and assists the notion that the filmmaker cannot gather all available information.

At the beginning of the 1960s, a new form of documentary was beginning to emerge out of various technological advancements, historically, documentary was filmed using ‘bulky, virtually immobile 35mm cameras’ (Cousins and Macdonald, 2006:249) ‘Direct Cinema’ is the umbrella that films such as Moi, un Noir, Chronique d’un été (Jean Rouch, 1961) and Primary (Robert Drew, 1960) exist under, but the latter of the three films are different to the first, they were shot using cameras only available to very few at the time. Primary was shot using a one-of-a-kind Auricon, funded by Robert Drew’s employer, Life Magazine, who deemed $1million to be an appropriate figure in the creation of only one camera. The issue with this being that, although what they achieved lead to the mass production of cameras of the same ilk, for a time Drew and his associates were the only people in possession of such a device and with it were the only people capable of producing documentaries with this level of potential influence.

Both Drew and Rouch held similarly arrogant opinions as to what it meant to be in possession of the cameras they then wielded; Rouch believed ‘that the camera was able to reveal a deeper level of truth than the “imperfect human eye”’ (Cousins and Macdonald, 2006:250) and Drew viewed Direct Cinema as ‘theatre without actors’ (Cousins and Macdonald, 2006:250). This is of merit to a point, as they were able to tell a truth far beyond what was previously possible in older documentary that was held back by technology and while this was true within that comparison, it is not true as an idea in itself. The view held by MacDougall that the ethnographic film is only ‘a record of the meeting between a filmmaker and that [another] society’ can be extended to encompass any form of Direct Cinema due to the tendency for it to focus on groups of people of varying scales. With this in mind, might one consider that the direction Drew pointed his camera during the filming of Primary might have been very different to someone whose political agenda was far opposed to John F. Kennedy’s own, or that the way Drew edited Primary may have been very different. The filmmaker holds immense power to pervert the audience’s understanding and in the context of a political film like Primary, that has the potential to be extremely dangerous, particularly if the audience enters the film believing that they understand how the ‘exchange was framed’ and that belief is that the documentary was filmed candidly and honestly.

This is not intended to portray all filmmakers as nefarious, nor is it meant to portray Drew or Rouch specifically as nefarious, but the powerful and privileged position of the filmmaker must be noted as not only do they decide what is shot, they also decide what is shown. As was mentioned previously, Rouch filmed Moi, un Noir on a 16mm wind-up camera, forcing him to have to consider when he would use his 15 second bursts, what he could not capture was sound. All of the audio heard in Moi, un Noir was constructed in post-production, and while the sound fulfils our expectations of how we would expect the locations to sound, each piece of footage does not have the sound that it had at the moment of shooting. Equally, Rouch stayed in the Ivory Coast for a total of nine months (Colleyn, 2009) and in that time would have captured far more footage than the 73-minute runtime could possibly contain. Of course, it would be impossible for a filmmaker like Rouch to ever use all of their footage, that is not the issue, the issue is the self-held belief that they are able to present a profound truth. When one pairs that self-held belief with him making the decisions as to how the Ivory Coast should sound, Rouch begins to appear as a god-like figure in his own mind as he deceives one of the two essential human senses for experiencing a film. By 1960, however, recording sound on location was no longer an issue for those who had access to such technology (Cousins and Macdonald, 2006:249) and one of the first films to utilise this newfound ability was Primary, ushering in a new era for documentary and allowing for a more honest process where the audiences’ senses were no longer deceived. Despite this, the fact still remains that what was recorded was a small fraction of the reality and what became the documentary a smaller fraction of what was recorded.

The documentary filmmaker is met with many hurdles when attempting to capture some kind of truth. They have to grapple with the inherent flaw of pointing the camera in only one direction at one time, they have to decide what will become the documentary film and they must also accept the flaws in their subjects. Studies in Sociology have suggested that when under observation, people will behave differently, Landsberger (1958) coined the term the ‘Hawthorne Effect’, in his study it was found that workers in a factory had only been more productive during a test period and once the test period was over they would return to their usual behaviours. Considering the Hawthorne Effect, how could documentaries such as Moi, un Noir or Primary ever be honest when people are so naturally capable of such dishonesty? In sociology, the observed are often referred to as ‘actors’, which is interesting considering Landsberger’s findings that people will in-fact behave differently or, act, when aware that they are being observed. Ellis (2011: 49-50) claims that ‘actors in fiction offer themselves to be looked at; if we were to look at a person in real life in the same way, we would be breaking the frame of the everyday face-to-face encounter’, apply this to documentaries of the same breed as Moi, un Noir and one has to wonder what it is that changes the way those who are filmed respond. They, as people, are offering themselves as actors, Moi, un Noir’s characters address this as each of the take on the role of a fantasy they wish they could be and tell the audience who their fantasy roles are. The problem arises from the fact that the film is ‘framed’ as documentary and what audiences understand of documentaries are that there is a level of reality and truth to them, this is not to say that Moi, un Noir is not documentary, but is to say that there is a danger when people have certain expectations of a documentary (Ellis, 2011: 53), particularly documentaries as intimate as Moi, un Noir.

In the same way that actors ‘offer themselves to be looked at’, so to do the subjects of a documentary ‘offer themselves’, the subjects are aiding the filmmaker in his or her vision. Scannell in Ellis (2011:47) writes that people ‘acknowledge that they are accountable to each other. This accountability is in essence a moral matter’, if the subjects as human beings have a deep-rooted, moral necessity to aid the filmmaker in the delivery of the film, this could distort the truth. However, if every human being feels the same moral inclination and we are all aware of it, then provided the filmmaker does not direct his subjects the same way a director of fiction would, the potential problems may not be so prevalent because the audience will also have an awareness of their own inclinations as fellow human beings. In the same way a researcher runs the risk of ‘going native’ and compromising the validity of their research from too much exposure to their subjects, so too can a subject run the risk of demonstrating the behaviours pertaining to the Hawthorne Effect from too much exposure, this scenario is not dissimilar to the filmmaker and their documentary subject. Goffman in Ellis (2011:47) refers to ‘a “back region” or “backstage” where the suppressed facts make an appearance’, many of the analogies used to describe the way humans behave relate to acting in fiction, it is interesting how acting is so intrinsic to our understanding of ourselves as a species; it penetrates cultures to the extent that Rouch can metaphorically step into the Ivory Coast and the characters he chose to capture were so easily able to become the characters he needed.

Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922) is considered by some to be almost a work of fiction because ‘the scenes of everyday Quebec Inuit life were reconstructed to enhance the film’s visual and narrative impact’ (Rony, 1996:301). Nanook of the North is one case where by the director specifically requested a performance from what were his actors because it is how he imagined Inuits to have lived in the past. Flaherty had his actors dress in furs instead of their own clothing, hunt with harpoons instead of rifles, live in igloos instead of modern structures the West would recognise, one of Flaherty’s most egregious decisions was to instruct Allakariallak, who played the title character Nanook, to be awestruck by a gramophone when Allakariallak was familiar with and fully able to deconstruct and reconstruct (Beattie, 2004). Had the film been ‘framed’ as a reconstruction of the past, it would be acceptable however it was ‘framed’ by the presupposition that it was a documentary demonstrating Inuit life in 1922. The ‘performance’ does not end with the acting, Flaherty was also culpable for his stylistic decisions, tasteless as they were, he chose to soundtrack parts of the film with whimsical, mocking music; Flaherty’s intent throughout was seemingly to subject the Inuits to mockery, a reflection of contemporary attitudes of 1922 which saw the Caucasian-Western way as the correct way.

Despite being a work of fiction, BabaKiueria (Don Featherstone, 1986) works within the mockumentary space and is as an ethnographical mockumentary, possibly more revealing of the reality of many Aboriginal Australians with its dark and revealing mockery of the way white people have treated Aborigines and their culture throughout history. An inverse of Nanook of the North for the way it creates a fictitious world but without exploiting the already exploited party, BabaKiueria is effective in its approach of telling a lie to tell the truth that it could be seen as utilising idiocy in the philosophical sense. Bakhtin (1968: 81) writes of ‘the jester’ who is ‘proclaimed king’ in folk festivals of time long since passed, a time in which authority is overturned and the usually ‘profane’ is celebrated, Bakhtin (1968) refers to the jester as being ‘metamorphic’ and ‘of king and god’ and in this power is able to ‘reveal the real’. Using the genealogy of Bakhtin, BabaKiueria can be seen as the ‘metamorphic’ as it embraces its position and utilises its nature as parody to reveal a truth that may have gone unseen in a documentary such as Moi, un Noir which bases itself so heavily in Rouch’s own pseudo-reality that it could be read as tone-deaf and fails to reveal any real truth.

In a not too dissimilar field to Direct Cinema or anthropological documentary, are the documentaries made by the GPO (General Post Office) in Britain in the 1930s. Coined ‘Mass Observation’ and headed by a number of educated, middle-class men, the intent was to alter the view of the working class held by many and purveyed by the mainstream media at the time. Some of these documentaries focused directly on the working-classes, whereas others were intended for the audience the working-class provided. Making Fashion (Humphrey Jennings, 1938) was one of the latter, the film reads like a prolonged advert for a particular dress designer but was intended to be shown to the working class despite the dresses being totally unobtainable by most, if not all people considered working-class at the time. Another perspective might see it was simply documenting a very middle-upper-class pursuit, in the same way Spare Time (Humphrey Jennings, 1939) documented what the working-class did in their spare time. This film is one that supposedly intends to support the working-class, but its structure undermines its supposed intent. Divided into three parts, the film moves through three occupations typically undertaken by the working-class and what the respective workers might do in their spare time. Of course, as discussed in regards to Rouch, it would be impossible to film everything, but given the knowledge that these films were headed by working-class who believed themselves to be doing some good, it reads rather patronisingly that there should be only three occupations considered for the documentary. In this case, the ‘performance’ is not found in the subjects, but instead in the intentions of the director, who may not have had any ill intent, but perhaps arrogantly assumed that he could better the understanding of a group of people from on-high.

The GPO Film Unit was also responsible for documentaries that can very easily be described as ‘propaganda’, films such as The Coming of the Dial (Stuart Legg, 1933) informed the public of the arrival of new technologies or innovations in Great Britain. Stylistically, The Coming of the Dial, was designed to flaunt said technologies and innovations in an effort to make Great Britain appear great in the eyes of the public and inspire belief in their country. Shots of smiling women working hard and close-up shots of the uniformed, clean, modern machinery behind the interface could be read as a visual metaphor for the people of Britain working to keep Britain at the forefront of global society, especially in the years leading up to World War II. While the endeavours were designed to inspire Britain, there is always going to be a level of falsehood to a documentary of this sort and while it is not ethnographical or anthropological in the same way Nanook of the North or Moi, un Noir are, it is targeted at a particular group, it just happens that in the case of the GPO it was not an ethnic minority.

In conclusion, Bruzzi’s argument stands true to possibly all forms of documentary and is of significant importance to consider as filmmaker or audience member. Anthropological documentary, Ethnographical documentary and Observational documentary can be especially guilty of the performative nature Bruzzi observes in documentary but are also guilty of exploiting their audiences through their frame which masquerades as somehow truer than true. Not all filmmakers are guilty of intentionally exploiting their audiences and the frame of truth they place their films in and those who are guilty of it typically believe that they are doing it for a purpose so important that it justifies their decision. Perhaps some of the most honest documentary, is the parody, masquerading as a documentary but in doing so developing a lie so penetrative in its delivery that the individual will relate what they are seeing to their own perception of the reality being parodied before their eyes, without their perception of the reality being altered without their permission. Historically, the already exploited parties of the world have been subject to further exploitation at the hands of a party who claims to have a desire to help, in the case of a documentary filmmaker and their subjects, the exploitation isn’t a violent one and it’s likely that these filmmakers do wish to tell the story of their subjects. However, it seems that often the filmmaker will become absorbed in the power they have assigned to themselves and forget that they, as humans, are capable of succumbing to the inherent flaws presented by even choosing to start filming.

Bibliography

Bakhtin, M.M. (1968) Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Beattie, K. (2004). ‘Constructing and Contesting Otherness: Ethnographic Film’ in: Documentary Screens: Non-Fiction Film and Television. Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York.

Colleyn, J. (2009). Jean Rouch. Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma.

Ellis, J. (2011). Documentary. London: Routledge.

Landsberger, H. (1958). Hawthorne Revisited. Ithaca: Cornell University.

Macdonald, K. and Cousins, M. (2006). Imagining Reality. London: Faber and Faber Limited.

MacDougall, D. and Taylor, L. (1998). Transcultural Cinema. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.

Richards, I. (1970). Poetries and Sciences, a Reissue of Science and Poetry (1926, 1935) with commentary

I.A. Richards. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Rony, F. (1996). The Third Eye. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Filmography

Chang, Mandy (2011). The Camera that Changed the World. [TV Documentary] UK: Lambent Productions

Comolli, Jean-Louis (2008). Moi, Un Noir: Introduction Au Film de Jean-Louis Comolli. [Audio] Accessed January 16, 2019. http://archives-sonores.bpi.fr/fr/doc/2742/Moi_+un+Noir+_+Introduction+au+film+de+Jean-Louis+Comolli.

Drew, Robert (1960). Primary. [Documentary] USA: Drew Associates, Time

Featherstone, Don (1986). BabaKiueria. [TV] Australia: ABC

Flaherty, Robert J. (1922). Nanook of the North. [Documentary] USA/France: Les Frères Revillon, Pathé Exchange

Jennings, Humphrey. (1938). Making Fashion. [Documentary] UK: Dufay Chromex

Jennings, Humphrey. (1939). Spare Time. [Documentary] UK: GPO (General Post Office) Film Unit

Legg, Stuart. (1933. The Coming of the Dial. [Documentary] UK: GPO (General Post Office) Film Unit

Rouch, Jean (1958). Moi, un Noir. [Documentary] France: Les Films de la Pléiade

Rouch, Jean (1961). Chronique d’un été. [Documentary] France: Argos Films

Watt, Harry. Wright, Basil. (1936). Night Mail. [Documentary] UK: GPO (General Post Office) Film Unit

Videogames Be Like…’The Ludic and Narrative Circuit of The Videogame’

The first videogame was spawned quite some time after the first motion picture, with Pong (Atari, 1972) arriving a full seventy-seven years after the first motion picture, Sortie de l’usine Lumière de Lyon (Louis Lumière, 1895) and the influence had by film unto videogames is undeniable, from presentation and narrative to more capitalistic pursuits such as franchising, distribution and exhibition. This is not to say that every videogame is developed with the intention of being a narrative-heavy critical darling, much like every film is not made to be an arthouse, indie darling. Videogames still exist in many genres and formats, from the resurgence of the ‘retro’ visual style of games like FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games, 2012), rather unceremoniously assigned to the genre broadly known as ‘Indie’, to the rise of ‘Live Services’ such as Destiny 2 (Bungie, 2017), the videogame has managed to steer clear of total homogeneity. The same can be said for film, we are still able to enjoy an action thrill-ride like Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQaurrie, 2018) and on the other hand bare witness to a very different breed of film such as The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Ethan Coen & Joel Cohen, 2018), the former, a Hollywood blockbuster and the latter, a straight to Netflix Western of a much smaller scale. What this essay intends to discuss, is the history and evolution of the circuit of the human and the entertainment media we consume, which is to say, how we as players or as an audience engage with the game or film, to what level we engage with it and how this differs across time and genre in the West.

To begin dissecting the concept of the circuit, what must first be discussed is the notion of ‘play’ and its evolution throughout history. Johan Huizinga (1955) describes play as being ‘universal’ and an activity enjoyed by animals alike, he also indicates that play, despite its universality, is not ‘instrumental’ to our lives. He outlines, what to him are, the five aspects of play; play is free, play is not ‘ordinary’ or ‘real life’, play is distinct from ordinary life and occupies its own time and space, all players must follow the rules of the game (ordinary rules of the everyday are suspended) and finally, play is connected with no material interest and no profit can be gained from it. Of course, when Huizinga first published this in 1938, these five aspects may have applied but since the very beginning of videogames in 1972, these five aspects have slowly begun to lose their relevance to what much of the Western world views as ‘play’. Consider now, at the time of writing, that a ‘Triple-A’ (AAA) videogame will sell at full retail price for upwards of £50GBP and that within 24 hours of its release, Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games, 2013) made $800million (Goldfarb: IGN, 2013). Of course, there is an argument to be made that one could refrain from ‘play’ such as this but as is the nature of any evolution, there is not any particular way to go back once one has arrived and as ‘play’ has arrived in the exceedingly profitable place it has now, it will not be returning to 1938. It is in this sense that play is not free, not in the material sense or in the sense of freedom to do as one pleases as there is a barrier to entry. Huizinga’s second aspect of play is almost true, but it is better addressed alongside the third aspect. There are many games designed to simulate parts of reality, usually parts of reality that a large amount of the player-base does not participate in but videogames such as Microsoft Flight Simulator X (subLOGIC, 2014) can still be considered simulations because they imitate the ‘real world’. Equally, play is not solely confined to its own time and space, with mobile games and portable consoles like the Nintendo Switch it is possible to turn play into something one participates in at any time or in any space they deem to be convenient or acceptable. Huizinga’s fourth aspect is also subject to scrutiny in the era of videogames, as most every popular videogame released will be set upon by, for lack of a term less steeped in pop-culture implications, hackers. The term ‘hacker’ does not refer to a hivemind and not all subject to the label will have the same motivations, it varies from game to game with it being most problematic when allowed to thrive unpunished in competitive titles such as Rainbow Six Siege (Ubisoft, 2015). Finally, Huizinga refers to ‘material gain’ which in the year 2019 is the primary interest of videogame publishers, with the CEO of Take-Two, publisher of Grand Theft Auto V, publicly stating that his company are ‘under monetising its users’ (Whitaker: The Escapist, 2017). These are not abstract occurrences in the games industry, the modern industry of ‘play’, but are exemplary of the way ‘play’ has evolved since Huizinga’s work in 1938 and the way the implications of the circuit have evolved over time.

Roger Caillois (2001) outlined four types of game: ‘Agon’ referring to a competitive game, ‘Alea’ referring to a game of chance, ‘Mimesis’ referring to simulation and Ilinx referring to vertigo. The four can be combined and with this, form the groundwork for most every videogame to ever and that will ever exist. With this is as the basis for the circuit formed by a player and a game, it is clear that the most basic elements of the circuit have remained unchanged but it is the human element that has continued to stretch the boundaries that Caillois’ four elements present.

The ‘circuit’, pertains to the connection or connections between the human and the game or film, but it is not so simple as the human merely picking up a controller and playing a game, there are countless implications attached to this process. Even when one removes the videogame and brings the concept of ‘playing’ to something more traditional like playing the game of football, the implications still remain, albeit different implications. There are many implications as to a child playing football. The child may support a team, the child may collect football cards, the child may have friends who play football and mutually, they all wish to remain ‘in the loop’, each of these elements feed back into the other and the child continues to play football. This is not an exhaustive list but the cause and effect nature of the analysis of the circuit, in this context, means that if one so desires, one can find every segment of what is essentially described by Friedman (in Lister et al., 2009: 306) as a ‘feedback loop’:

‘What makes interactions with computers so powerfully absorbing – for better or worse – is the way computers can transform the exchange between reader and text into a feedback loop. Every response you make provokes a reaction from the computer which leads to a new response, and so and, as the loop from the screen to your eyes to your fingers on the keyboard to the computer to the screen becomes a single cybernetic circuit’ (Friedman in Lister et al., 2009: 306)

Extend Friedman’s references to keyboard, computer and screen to controller, console and screen and one can see the obvious similarity, it is more than similarity though, they are identical scenarios. The player inputs commands to the controller and before their eyes, a ‘reaction[…]which leads to a new response’, Swink (in Blomberg, 2018) and Blomberg write that ‘In general terms, videogame controllers are all devices that [translate] muscle movement[…]into a language the computer understands’. The circuit that is created is a cybernetic one. While the player is playing the game they become ‘a fusion of the two[,][…]a cyborgian subjectivity – composed of wires, machines, codes and flesh’ (Kennedy in Lister et al. 2009: 306). Blomberg (2018) refers to the controller as being ‘an integrated part of the videogame experience’ and goes on to reference Keogh who acknowledges that ‘as one becomes more experienced, the controller becomes more habitualised and recedes more and more to the background’. Consider this alongside the ‘cyborgian subjectivity’ and one might begin to see the way in which the circuit remains with the player once it has been established for enough time and this does not stop with just the experience of playing the game, very often the circuit will enlarge to incorporate more of the player’s ‘space and time’ – referring back to Huizinga – than just the space and time in which they are actually playing the game.

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (David Slade, 2018) is a bridge of sorts between the game and film, lending more heavily toward the medium of film than God of War (SIE Santa Monica Studio, 2018) for example, which alongside its focus on narrative and cinematic elements, is very traditional in its 3rd person action-adventure ludic interface. Bandersnatch however, could be considered less immersive in its ludic interface as the viewer, or player is stopped at intervals and prompted to make decisions about the direction the narrative will progress in next. For those who can be considered ‘cyborgian’ in their relationships to their controllers, Bandersnatch presents them with the television remote, an unknown medium for them to interact with in relation to anything even slightly resembling a game. While the ludic interface presented to the gamer is similar to that of a branching-narrative RPG like Mass Effect 2 (BioWare, 2010), the medium that would typically create a ‘cyborgian subjectivity’ fails to create that and the ‘integrated part of the experience’ fails to be as integrated, particularly with a piece of media as experimental in format as Bandersnatch. Similarly, motion controls which claim to be more immersive are also guilty of disrupting the circuit of the player and the game. One might argue that Bloodborne (FromSoftware, 2015) is especially guilty of the decision to include what are from the perspective of the game’s ludic interface, redundant motion controls that only remind the player that they are holding a controller in their hands, in the ‘real world’, counteracting the ‘habitualisation’ referred to by Keogh. The Last of Us Remastered (Naughty Dog, 2014) is also guilty of including motion controls that disrupt the player-game circuit by utilising the controller as a reverse-simulation of the game’s flashlight feature, forcibly reminding the player of the controller in their hands as they shake it to prevent the torch, wielded by the game’s lead character, Joel, from going out. Blomberg and Keogh acknowledge how essential the controller has become to videogaming, not just for a means of controlling the game but for the layout that players have come to expect and how that guides to an extent the player’s ability to form an easy circuit with a game. Recent endeavours to further utilise the concept of a controller have typically only led to, as was previously described, a ‘forcible’ ejection from immersion and implication in the game and instead misguidedly imply the player in the ‘real world’ space they are playing the game within.

Newman (in Lister et al. 2009: 306) states that ‘the interface [of a videogame] is a continuous interactive feedback loop, where the player must be seen as both implied and implicated in the construction of the experience’. Again, the ‘circuit’ varies depending upon the player and the game, which is exceedingly important when utilising Newman’s claims. In a narrative heavy, single-player experience the player is subject to the narrative and while they are able to interact within that narrative, the narrative will not change. This would surely contest with the concept of ‘freedom’ when playing a videogame and instead be closer to a film in its construction, whereby the film will always have the same narrative from beginning to end every time it is viewed. An example of this is The Last of Us, by progressing through the ludic elements of the game, you develop the narrative elements of the game. They exist in tandem making it impossible to progress in any capacity without also completing the story, the game is linear from both a ludic standpoint and a narrative standpoint but its linearity does not detract from the way the player is ‘implied’ and ‘implicated’. This is due very simply to the interactivity of a videogame. Consider ‘interactivity’ alongside Hayles’ (2007) idea that ‘stimulation works best in other words when it is associated with feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness’ , despite the linearity and unchanging nature of The Last of Us, the player remains stimulated, because to simplify what Hayles states, they are in control of the moment to moment within the ludic interface.

Hayles (2007) found from a study by the University of Rochester that gamers ‘found even more satisfying than the fun of playing, the opportunities offered by the games for achievement, freedom and in some instances, connections to other players’. Hayles’ findings only acknowledge a fraction of what the ‘circuit’ can mean but within that fraction is a hugely significant factor – and an indication of how great the number of implications a circuit can contain. The ‘connections to other players’, much like the example of the boy whose friends play football, suggests the player will form relationships that bring the player back to the game. The game is not solely about the ‘playing’ of it, it has various implications to the individual. Lister et al. (2009: 306) suggest that ‘the “real world” is not left behind for the blinking lights, geometries and disembodiment of cyberspace’, which alongside the claims made by Kennedy (in Lister et al. 2009: 306) support a notion that the player never truly leaves behind the real world, no matter their level of immersion, as the human component of the ‘cyborgian subjectivity’ must remain a constant for it to even be considered a ‘cyborgian subjectivity’.

The circuit of the player and game has grown in complexity since the era of Pong, when the player was only able to play against one other human at a time and the circuit very isolated to those two players. Those two players could of course share the result of their matches of Pong with others and the ‘circuit’ for each player would expand to include the meaning given to their personal experience with the game by their friends. Today, there is a far greater potential for sharing the experiences of one player with countless others thanks to the existence of online multiplayer services like Xbox Live or PlayStation Network (PSN). With these services, the player is able to share their experiences with other players with immediacy unknown to players as far as even the early 00s. This interconnectedness of players is now one of the greatest parts of the circuit of the modern gamer, it is not restricted to just the friends of players, its reach extends to platforms like YouTube and Twitch where the circuit becomes almost infinite. One of the core components of sharing one’s videogame footage on the internet, is the desire to make money. In the last decade, the term ‘Let’s Play’ has made itself more and more well known but what does it refer to? This itself has changed over time, with it becoming one of many definitions for what are now recognised occupations for a handful of the gaming community. Felix Kjellberg, known by many as ‘PewDiePie’, made his start on YouTube as a ‘Let’s Player’, uploading videos of him playing a game and giving commentary over it simultaneously. He is now arguably the most well-known YouTube star but this was not always the case as every YouTuber begins their YouTube career performing ‘free labour’. A ‘Let’s Player’ will begin by inadvertently advertising a videogame for a publisher and delivering content for YouTube to capitalise on without initially paying the uploader. This is subject to change, as with increased popularity on platforms like YouTube, comes increased earnings and the boom of ‘Let’s Plays’ saw rise to numerous other channels all seeking the same popularity but really only performing free labour services for YouTube and their favourite videogames. Further than simply the recording and uploading of videogame footage is the rise of critique videos in which the uploader will critique a particular videogame, sometimes garnering millions of views. ‘I HATE DESTINY 2 – I’m Done.’ (I Hate Everything, 2017) is just one of these videos and further than just the differing style of content is the impact a video such as this can hold, with the potential to influence the sales of the game and the way the videogame will be remembered in time to come.

It is important to understand the significance of internet content and its influence as it has made the circuit of the player and the videogame less intimate than it has ever been. The internet has turned the circuit into a network of gamers all interacting with each other and bringing further meaning to each individual’s respective meaning, this has even reached a point where to become a part of a particular game’s community, it is advised that one views preliminary YouTube content to learn the ‘meta’ of competitive shooters like Rainbow Six Siege or Fortnite (Epic Games, 2017). More important than the videos, is the concept of the ‘meta’, which in itself is a circuit specific to the interior of any one game, typically competitive. This is one of the areas that challenges to what extent a player will be invested in and by extension, a part of the circuit of a game. The ‘circuit’ as has been mentioned before, is not the same for each player, it is a personal circuit within a network of other circuits that together create the type of network that Latour (in Lister et al, 2009) refers to in studies of ‘Actor-Network Theory’. Actor-Network Theory suggests that the individual does not have individual agency but instead finds agency within a network of others, it also does not make a distinction between human or computer when using the term ‘actor’ as all within the network are given agency by the other. The ideas proposed by Actor-Network Theory are especially true of online multi-player videogames as without other players, or human actors, there would be no videogame to play, equally, the videogame as an actor would have no agency within the network without actors to play it.

An interesting question raised by Actor-Network Theory (Latour in Lister et al, 2009) is one of the value of ‘alternate currencies’ in videogames. Many games have fallen foul of the ‘microtransaction’ but not all are as egregious in their application of microtransactions as others. Fortnite and FIFA 19 (Electronic Arts, 2018) are two of the best cases to study in reference to Actor-Network Theory as they are both guilty of forced scarcity but in different ways. Fortnite presents its users with a ‘store’ containing ‘skins’ that only affect the player character on an aesthetic level, these skins are of varying quality or ‘rarity’ and of course as the ‘rarity’ increases so to does the price, this is not the primary concern, however. The primary concern is one of ‘value’ and ‘rarity’, because for something to be rare, it must be ‘(of an event, situation, or condition) not occurring very often’ (Oxford Online Dictionary, 2019) and if the developers of Fortnite are in control of what is effectively an infinitesimally duplicatable piece of digital content, then it is no longer rare. If all 200 million Fortnite players (Gilbert, 2018) purchased a skin of the highest tier of rarity, it cannot be considered a rare item but it would maintain its status as ‘rare’ because ‘rarity’ is an arbitrary concept in an isolated economy managed by one company and utilised by one, albeit incredibly large, network of individuals. The same can be said for FIFA 19 which specialises in forcing its players to have to ‘pay-to-win’ by purchasing ‘packs’ of yet again, varying quality, each with differing chances at the best and unsurprisingly, rarest players. The difference that is beginning to become apparent is that Fortnite gives every player access to its ‘rarest’ content, whereas FIFA 19 gates it behind odds slimmer than <0.1% and with odds that low the most efficient way for a player to get what they may want is to gamble real money on products in an economy run by the developer. Both of these examples relate to Actor-Network Theory by the way they influence the human actors to purchase products, much like the aforementioned example of the boy collecting football cards, the player desires to remain ‘in the loop’ – and by extension the circuit – with their friends. Equally the game’s role as actor in the network cannot exist without its players who spend money, which is not to say that the game provides a service but instead merely acknowledging the roles the individual parties play to maintain the greater circuit.

Dreams Rewired (Manu Luksch, 2015) claims that digital media is the ‘mobilisation of dreams’ and videogames are possibly the perfect manifestation of this notion but there is a danger to videogames providing us with access to our dreams. For some, the desire is as innocent as building a house in Minecraft (Mojang, 2011) but for others, it could be to build a Nazi monument in the same game and this is not a disparaging comment on the freedom that Minecraft affords a player but a comment on the personal implications an individual can inject into their player-game circuit. However, for some, the actions they take in a game is meaningless to them, so if a player decides to murder civilians in Grand Theft Auto V, this might not be their ‘dreams realised’ (Dreams Rewired, 2015) but is the player utilising the freedom presented to them within the game’s sandbox, to what extent this is the individual’s player-game circuit varies by the person as Grand Theft Auto V presents a linear narrative within its open-world as well as Grand Theft Auto Online, which is Grand Theft Auto’s answer to Actor-Network Theory (Latour in Lister et al, 2009). The aforementioned ‘danger’ only increases in games that abide to what Baudrillard (1994) labels a ‘simulation’, meaning a simulation of the ‘real world’. Bown (2018) writes in reference to Black Mirror (Charlie Brooker, 2011-)and Blade Runner 2049 (Dennis Villeneuve, 2017) of the possibility that ‘robot lovers of the future may do nothing more than narcissistically affirm the user’ but with our potential for simulation, videogames have already made it to a very similar point. Expanding on this, Bown refers to the application Replika (Luka, Inc., 2016), which is the realisation of the fiction presented in both Black Mirror and Blade Runner 2049 as the app is designed to ‘match your personality and become your best friend’. If these are the dreams that people want realised, then the gamification of human relationships will only continue, as Bown also acknowledges the existence of the ‘smart condom’ i.Con which tracks the sexual performance of the user and sends statistics to a smartphone app. What is concerning about the i.Con is that it does present a player-game circuit that could easily develop into a feedback loop where the ‘gamer’ turns their libido into a ludic interface and alters their perception of reality, turning an aspect of their very reality into a simulation.

For some, the gamification and simulation of ‘real world’ events can be more real than the reality they inhabit. For those who are addicted to a simulation or ‘simulacra’ – a fictional world with no ‘real-world’ elements – (Baudrillard, 1994), they are in ‘denial of reality’ (Diamond, 2010) which is an interesting notion to consider when a player might choose a simulation of reality instead of reality. This is most problematic in mobile games like Episode (Episode Interactive, 2013) that present relationship scenarios to anyone who can navigate the App Store, which with the game’s 12+ rating could well be children who will be influenced by the gamified portrayal of romantic relationships. A more perverse game, closer to the fears expressed by Bown, is Summer Lesson (Bandai Namco Studios, 2016) which is evocative of a highly exploitative player-game circuit where the player, being all-powerful, is given charge of teaching an attractive, young female character over Summer. It creates uneven power dynamics and presents a reality to those more susceptible to influence that is not real and has the potential, much like the i.Con to alter a person’s perception of reality as it gamifies something intimately human.

In conclusion, the inherent natures of the human and videogame mean that there will always be a circuit created between the two elements, the implications of the circuit, however, are numerous and will never be as simple as ‘the player plays the game’. What the player brings with them is their humanity and what that humanity means in the era they belong to, in the information era that this essay belongs to, the player brings an immediacy of communication and dissemination of information that allows for videogames to be implied in much more than the countless rooms they are being played in. There will always be dangers to this power games now have to spread but it is the player who has allowed for games to hold the power they now do and the player ultimately holds the power to stop the player-game circuit or in wider terms, the player-game network from being implicated in any further elements of human life. Simulations have the power to distort our humanity but so to do they have the power to enrich an individual to ‘mobilise their dreams’, again, it is the player who maintains control of this. What is essential to maintain, is the understanding that the ‘circuit’ will never be a homogenised constant for every player but instead the circuits that each player develops with the videogames they play are what forms the network of people able to provide each other with meaning in the videogame worlds they choose to inhabit, be it in masterfully crafted narrative of God of War or the freedom of the ludic interface of Grand Theft Auto V, while the circuit always exists, so to does choice within it.

Bibliography

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Dumazedier, J. and McKenzie, M. (1974). Sociology of Leisure. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Ltd.

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Hayles, K. (2007) ‘Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes’, in Profession, 2007, pp.187-199, available at: http://media08.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/my-article-on-hyper-and-deep-attention

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Lister, M., Dovey, J., Giddings, S., Grant, I., and Kelly, K. (2009). New Media: A Critical Introduction (Second Edition). London: Routledge.

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Filmography

Brooker, Charlie (2011-). Black Mirror. [TV] UK: Zeppotron, Channel 4 Television Corporation, Gran Babieka

Cohen, Ethan & Cohen, Joel (2018). The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. [Film] USA: Annapurna Pictures, Annapurna Television, Mike Zoss Productions

“I HATE DESTINY 2 – I’m Done. – YouTube.” Accessed January 25, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqyco2NYBOs.

Luksch, Manu (2015. Dreams Rewired. [Documentary] Austria: Amour Fou Vienna, Ambient Information Systems, Bildschon Filmproduction

Lumière, Louis (1895). La Sortie de l’Usine Lumière à Lyon. [Film] France: Lumière

McQuarrie, Christopher (2018). Mission: Impossible – Fallout. [Film] USA: Paramount Pictures, Skydance Media, TC Productions

Slade, David (2018). Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. [TV] USA: House of Tomorrow, Netflix

Villeneuve, Dennis (2017). Blade Runner 2049. [Film] USA: Alcon Entertainment, Columbia Pictures Corporation, Sony

Ludography

Atari (1972). Pong. [Video Game] Arcade Cabinet. Atari, Inc.: USA.

Bandai Namco Studios (2016). Summer Lesson. [Video Game] PS4. BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment: Japan

BioWare (2010). Mass Effect 2. [Video Game] Xbox 360. Electronic Arts: USA

Bungie (2017). Destiny 2. [Video Game] Xbox One. Activision: USA.

EA Vancouver (2018). FIFA 19. [Video Game] Xbox One. EA Sports: USA.

Epic Games (2017). Fortnite. [Video Game] Xbox One. Epic Games: USA.

Episode Interactive (2013). Episode. [Video Game] iOS. Episode Interactive, LLC.

FromSoftware, Inc. (2015). Bloodborne. [Video Game] PlayStation 4. Sony Computer Entertainment: USA.

Luka, Inc. (2016). Replika. [Application] iOS. Luka, Inc.: USA.

Mojang (2011). Minecraft. [Video Game] PC. Microsoft Game Studios: USA.

Naughty Dog (2014). The Last of Us – Remastered. [Video Game]. PlayStation 4. Sony Computer Entertainment: USA.

SIE Santa Monica Studio (2018). God of War. [Video Game]. PC. Sony Interactive Entertainment: USA.

subLOGIC (2014). Microsoft Flight Simulator X. [Video Game]. PC. Microsoft Game Studios: USA.

Subset Games (2012). FTL: Faster Than Light [Video Game] PC. Subset Games: China.

Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Toronto (2015). Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. [Video Game] PC. Ubisoft: France.