Movies and Television give the most frequently occuring evidence that art and even life as a whole is seen as a game. This section gives samples of how the game gene is made apparent in these everyday circumstances.
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Terminator Catch - Distraction games work too well

May 28, 2002

In the movie T2, with Linda Hamilton as Sara, Sara is intending to escape from a mental hospital from a psycho ward under prison conditions.

While trying to escape, Sara plans to throw a set of keys towards a guard in order to distract him long enough to assault him. If the guard is sure of her identity, he can decide that she is a foe and reject the game of catch. If he remains unsure of Sara's status as friend or foe long enough to see first that a game of catch is happening it might distract him. The plan is based on the fact that Sara knows that there is a compulsion to play catch, because it is a universal childhood game. For her the compulsion to play that game is obviously more powerful then any logical duty or serious intention the guard might have.

Everything happens in a split second without the use of language either in their minds or on their lips. Sara throws the keys and the guard automatically catches them which gives Sara the opening she needs to assault him.

She wins the fight of course, but this distraction tactic works and is used everyday in real life in all kinds of situations from politics to business. The basic idea is to find a game your opponent wants to play and give them no alternative but to play that game.
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Deliverance: a Great Film

(1972) Forget the critics' themes of
identity and machismo,
this is really about games, and
'good technology' vs. 'bad nature'.

Geoffrey Hamilton, May 10, 2006

As a little kid growing up in Toronto the movie Deliverance was talked about for two reasons only -- the freak show stature of the characters and the humiliation of Ned Beatty's character in the rape scene. When I attended high school the movie played on late night TV and seeing the entire thing shifted my view towards the canoe trip and the macabre adventures that resulted. Today the film seems clear to me to be a profound philosophical treatise on nature.

The opening scene has the government building a dam through the use of explosives and a general rape of the land. A voice-over conversation by the four main characters (somewhere offstage) has them rationalizing their weekend trip down the pre-dammed river as a chance to see nature in its purity before it's all gone. These Atlanta businessmen are casual about the river's impending destruction and the local peoples' loss of their land. You are first allowed to think the film's irony is placed against the city-boys for their callousness, but every hillbilly comment or inbreading snipe towards the locals seems to be justified - it really is a freak show.

The machismo of Burt Reynold's character, Lewis, seems to paint him as a bully, until you realize he's a survivalist at heart and expects 'the system' to collapse any day. But he's not worried nor wishes to hasten the end, he is just trying to understand nature clearly and a canoe trip through hill-billy country is one of his methods. He says survival is the name of the game -- but games, he thinks, not survival, are what we do.

When Lewis kills a hillbilly to save his friends' lives the theme of nature as a game comes up again, this time regarding death and the law. Lewis recognizes that a jury of locals will convict them no matter what, so when one buddy, Drew, says, "If you conceal this body, you set yourself up for a murder charge. That much law I do know! It ain't one of your fucking games! You killed somebody. There he is!"

Then Lewis responds, "I see him Drew. That's right I killed somebody. But you're wrong if you don't see this as a game."

Drew, "...It is a matter of the LAW!

Lewis, "What law? Where's the LAW Drew?"

At every stage Lewis sees what is happening as a game even when Drew is killed and he himself is seriously injured and in horrific pain. While Lewis never falters, it is Jon Voight's character, Ed, that is left to make the hard decisions.

Ed has been indecisive about many things -- on why he likes tagging along on Lewis' adventures, on the dam project, on his friends and on the meaning of their lives. When he hunts deer he loses heart and fails, but doesn't give up. He's become an emotional mess. Finally, when Lewis is unable to help them all escape, Ed screams at Lewis, "You're the one with all the answers. What are we supposed to do now!"

Lewis says clearly, "Now you get to play the game." So Ed too now kills in order to survive.

When it's all over and the three survivors canoe into the submerging hillbilly town, Ed sees 'the system' behind the dam's destructivness and can only agree with a local cop when the cop remarks that he'll be happy to see the whole rotten place flooded.

'Nature' now seems to be no mothering being to Ed. To see that one valley submerged is a comfort to him, but even as he returns home to Atlanta and kisses his wife, Ed can only appreciate what horrors 'the system' is really holding back.

GRH

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Big Fish 2003, Ed Bloom, "Armed with the foreknowledge of my own {inevitable} death, I knew the giant couldn't kill me."

Big Fish 2003, Will Bloom, "Have you ever heard a joke so many times you forgot why it was funny? then you hear it again and suddenly it's new? You remember why you laughed in the first place."

Big Fish 2003, Ed Bloom, "I once heard in Sunday school that the more difficult it was the more reward you get in the end."

House of Flying Daggers, 2003
Police captain to spy "Don't turn a game into reality and ruin or plans."
Spy "Who cares as long as the plan succeeds"

ET
year 1983
some kid says "That's like life, you can't win at life"

Thomas Crown Affair
1968
Cop: "What does a guy with four million bucks want with two million more?"
Secretary: "What do you get for the man who has everything."
Cop: "Is that what it all comes down to? Kicks?


Rebel without a Cause
Before Jimmy and Punk race cars to edge of cliff.
Jimmy Dean, "Why do we do this?"

Punk, "You gotta do somethin. Don't ya?"

Romy and Michele - In the Beginning

Romy "Maybe it's life. I mean those super models aren't any happier then we are. Maybe no one is ever happier and it's all a big joke."
Michelle, "Nah. I think there's a back room somewhere where people are having fun. And someday we'll get in."
Romy, "And then all the cool people will move to some other back room."


In Cold Blood
1967
Capote's stand in, "According to an expert in forensic medicine, niether one of them (Dick nor Barry) would have done it alone (killed the Cutter family), but together they made a third personality. That's the one that did it."
Dick and Barry about to kill the Cutter family. Barry says, "Why did I go along with it? When it first began...who know where anything really begins? When Dick first told me the plan it didn't even seem real. Then the closer we got, the more real it became. Like the whole crazy stunt had a life of its own, and nothing could stop it. Like I was reading a story and I had to know what was going to happen - how it would end.

Deliverance (1972)

On canoe trip
Bobby, "We beat it, didn't we? Did we beat that?"
Lewis, "You don't beat it. You don't beat the river."

Lewis, "The system is going to fail and then..." Ed, "Then what?" Lewis, "Then the ability to survive. That's the game: survival."

Drew, "If you conceal this body, you set yourself up for a murder charge. That much law I do know! It ain't one of your fucking games! You killed somebody. There he is!"
Lewis, "I see him Drew. That's right I killed somebody. But you're wrong if you don't see this as a game."
Drew, "...It is a matter of the LAW!
Lewis, "What law? Where's the LAW Drew?"

Ed (Lewis is incapacitated), "You're the one with all the answers. What are we supposed to do now!" Lewis, "Now you get to play the game."

House, TV Show, Episode 47 Meaning Sept. 2006, speaking to Dr. House
Dr. Wilson, "After you were shot. You chose life. You decided you wanted meaning. So you took a case with no mystery. Something any Doctor could do....The reason we crave meaning is because it makes us happy....you want to save lives...but all you're taking away from this is the game..."

Shaft 1972
Lt. Androzzi to John Shaft. "I'm not asking you to sell out. Just tell me the name of the game so I know the rules."

Sleuth 1972
Detective: "Is there nothing that you would not consider a game sir? Duty, work, even marriage?"
Mystery writer: "...oh please! ...Sex is the game, marriage the penalty.

(later) Caine: It's a real game and a real murder. There's absolutely no point in playing another pretend game.
THE VANISHING
Games of Death
Geoffrey Hamilton
May 11, 2000

Movies (on video)

A Dutch movie called "THE VANISHING" is an original horror movie which shows the game gene in its more frightening aspects. In it, a French professor of mathematics, who is quite a common person in many ways, does something heroic which his wife and daughters admire. But this act of his makes him ask the question "If I am a hero what is the worse thing that I can still do?" He answers this himself with the idea that he must murder someone to test himself. He proceeds to set up a plan of action. He methodically times and works out the variables of his plan. When he takes the first steps towards implementing his idea he finds his math skills fail him in the light of reality.
The Vanishing continues
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