War and Peace

I was at a house shared by some Mennonites, see, playing the Lord of the Rings version of Risk. I had never even played regular Risk before, but the game requires four players, and I was available. At church the day before I was talking to a young woman about it who said that she never played Risk either, but left it to her husband and his buddies. “Should Mennonites even be playing that?” she asked. “It’s about war!”

I brought this up with my competitors while we were setting up the game, and was told that it was an outlet. A nice Menno has gotta let off some steam. I’ve been wondering about that. In fact, I was already wondering about it when we saw Star Wars last month. Back when I was in grad school I took a course on the media and children, and this is what they called the “catharsis” theory: if kids enjoy violent entertainment they’ll get it out of their system and be able to go on peacefully the rest of the time. It is, not surprisingly, a popular idea with makers and supporters of violent entertainment. Trouble is, there’s really no evidence to support it. In fact, the various studies we looked at it that course offered a consistent connection between violent entertainment and aggressive behavior.

I don’t think it’s really going to make a difference on these adult Mennonite guys...

But there’s a larger question behind all this: what is fantasy? Modern society seems to assume that we have this ability mainly for our own amusement. Sure, there are important practical ways to apply imagination, in terms of inventing new technologies, creating strategies, and so on. Risk itself emphasizes that type of imagination. But what of a complete narrative, like the epic on which our game of Risk was based?

[via The Musings and Searchings of Camassia]