Issue No. 612
Culture
Previous issue
Site map
|
|
14 - 20 November 2002 Issue No. 612 Culture |
Current issue Previous issue Site map | |
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Sad about the board
It is hardly a fortuitous moment, no high-spot in anyone's life, standing in a supermarket way after midnight, and not just in a supermarket but in the toy section of one, feeling vaguely excited that there, piled high on the shelves, is a stack of board games that are recognisable, the rules of which you remember, can almost picture because they were part of your youth. But it was a supermarket, it was way after midnight, and I could picture the rules, knew every trick in the rule book, and I did recognise the games. For I had, once upon a time, been vaguely addicted to the board game. And it is not an addiction of which I have ever been proud.
That was a long time ago. In the interim I had come to the conclusion, a not very difficult conclusion to reach, that the board game had been designed for the terminally bored, that solving all those murders -- it was Miss Scarlet, in the library, with the lead pipe -- and buying all those properties, conquering the world or exposing the unscrupulous nature of your friends, was a sad occupation, an ersatz existence in which you too, for a couple of hours, could pretend to be Napoleon, or a filthy rich property tycoon, or Sherlock Holmes. A peculiar choice of role models all, and as wish-fulfillment goes, it doesn't get much cornier. Sadder still, perhaps, that 10 minutes later I am standing at the checkout with several of the boxed sets in my hands. I live alone. I don't even have anyone to play with. Boredom -- I think it was André Gide who said it and if it wasn't it should have been -- is nothing but abated fervour. Well fervour doesn't abate much further than this.
In defence it seems necessary to state that nocturnal shopping has not yet become a habit. The toy sections of shops are not a regular haunt. I am reasonably fastidious when it comes to dry- cleaning. I do not possess, and never have possessed, anything that might be construed as a dirty mac. I read good books. Not long ago I knew an awful lot about patterns of artistic patronage in mid- to late 19th century France, and more than is useful to know about Russia's pre-revolutionary avant-garde. And still I am excited as, in the safety of my sitting room, I pull the cellophane off my boxed sets of Monopoly, Risk and Cluedo.
Click to view captionAnnie always gets her gun They are all locally manufactured, which means that they do not cost an arm and a leg. Whether they are manufactured under licence or not is unclear, there is no indication on the packaging, no indication inside. But Monopoly and Cluedo are at least creditable copies. They contain rules, in English and Arabic. They contain, or at least appeared to contain, all the necessary pieces to complete a game. (This latter contention can only be proved when I actually complete a game. I live alone, as noted, and I have not yet reached that level of desperation where I will contemplate playing against myself.) But Risk, which is a game, as many of you will undoubtedly know, of world domination, was far from being a creditable copy. It lacked rules, and the rules are extremely complicated, at least by the standard of board games. And from the depths of my childhood I recall that it used to involve a set of cards, each with a country printed on it and when that card was in your possession then you could occupy that country. But there were no cards.
The board from my youth was an example of clarity. It was a classic of sorts, in the way that the map of the London underground is classic. No real attention was paid to geographic accuracy -- that, in any case, is impossible in any flat representation of the world, as several centuries worth of cartographic treatise make clear. But at least Kamchatka was where Kamchatka might be. East Africa was to the east of that continent. Papua New Guinea was not where Japan should be. There used to be dotted lines across oceans, indicating that yes, North Africa could be attacked from Western Europe, that East Africa could be attacked from Brazil, that Australasia was a possible launching pad for an assault on South East Asia. Not so in my locally produced version. The flat block of blue that stood in for the oceans has been replaced by strange translucent lines in blue and green and aquamarine. And the dotted lines that once dictated the routes across which armies could travel have disappeared. Western Europe has somehow transformed itself into Wethern Upe, While West Africa has migrated across the continent. There are no rules, just lots of plastic bags full of lots of plastic pieces, the armies that are supposed to be pushed around the board. It is a strange place, in which Ukraine has suddenly become the largest country in the world, and where Egypt occupies half of Africa and cannot, seemingly, be approached from any direction. Nothing is in the right place, there is no attempt to replicate scale, or geographical proximity, or contiguity. Just a misshapen world. Which might say something about geo-political understanding domestically, which might say something about geo-political understanding globally. It might all be a piece of thoroughly post-modern irony, and not a result of incompetence.
But back to Cluedo. That at least is recognisable. And in the end it always seems to be Miss Scarlet, always in the library, always with the lead pipe. You know where you are with murder, just as you know that Annie always gets her gun.
|
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: weekly.ahram.org.eg Updated every Thursday at 20.00 GMT, 10 pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
