- Nations have been born while others have disappeared from the map of our planet.
- Some athletes have been accused of using performance-enhancing drugs to gain an unfair advantage.
- Ethnic diversity has rocked Olympic events, ranging from the exciting performance by Jesse Owens at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin (which delivered a rude reality check to Adolf Hitler's dream of an Aryan victory) to the terrorist attack on the Israeli team at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.
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| The most successful athlete at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, African-American athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals |
Whether one considers sports such as football and gymnastics or board games like Monopoly and Scrabble, the rules and point systems for these activities have been carefully codified in order to standardize competition. Over time, rules can merge with tradition and nostalgia to form a unique culture with regard to a particular game -- a culture that inspires fans and impacts the way contestants strive for victory. Occasionally, the people who call the shots (team managers, coaches, referees) become so passionate about their game's culture that they risk losing objectivity and falling into a pattern of denial.
The game-related trivia that people have memorized with fetishistic glee can turn out to have surprisingly less importance than true believers imagine. In his 2003 book entitled Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Michael Lewis described how the Oakland Athletics, under the leadership of general manager Billy Beane, took a giant risk by reassessing cultural norms that professional baseball teams (and their fans) had taken as gospel for many years and putting their faith in statistics. Bennett Miller's 2011 film adaptation of Lewis's book helped audiences to view baseball through a new set of lenses.
If we look at businesses like Amazon (1994), Craigslist (1995), Google (1998), HuffPost (2005), Airbnb (2008), Uber (2009), and Bitcoin (2009), we see a pattern of disruptive innovation ventures launched by brash entrepreneurs eager to rewrite the business models for long-established industries. Their success could not have been possible without rapid advances in computer technology. However, a desire to upset the apple cart by trying something new requires much more than a mere whim or gut instinct. As the following video clip shows, solid data and a winning strategy are key ingredients to success.
While some people insist that the rules must be strictly followed in any type of game, more adventurous souls are willing to bet that some rules were made to be broken. Judging by two recent game-related dramas, it would seem that instead of ancient Greek gods looking down at the playing field, the gods of comedy and tragedy have been calling the shots.
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Recently screened at the 2018 Berlin and Beyond Film Festival, Streaker (Flitzer) gives its gimmick away in the movie's title. That doesn't prevent it from being a hugely entertaining film filled with delicious plot twists. |
| Poster art for Streaker (Flitzer) |
Directed by Peter Luisi, Streaker's antihero is 53-year-old Balz Naef (Beat Schlatter). A single father who has been struggling for years to raise sufficient funds to build a museum in honor of the 19th century Swiss poet, Gottfried Keller, Naef is a somewhat lackluster German teacher at a high school in Baden.
Although the school principal (Dominic Deville) promised Naef that funding for his dream was available, at the last minute he put Naef's idea to a vote and the issue was solidly defeated in favor of directing that money toward the school's sports program. Naef's despondence is magnified by the fact that his teenage daughter, Elisa (Luna Wedler), attends the same school where he teaches, is mortified by his presence, and works hard to conceal their relationship from her fellow students. To make matters worse, one of Elisa's classes is taught by her father.
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| Kushtrim (Bendrit Bajra) and Naef (Beat Schlatter) hit on a winning idea in a scene from Streaker |
While getting a haircut from Kushtrim (Bendrit Bajra), Naef learns that his barber has a thriving side business as a bookie. Deciding to go for broke, the schoolteacher (who keeps the financial records of the school's funds) bets the money that was supposed to go toward his museum project on a soccer game, but loses it all when a streaker runs across the field, instantly ruining the winning team's momentum. The crowd, understandably, goes wild with excitement. Eager to learn the streaker's motivation and techniques, Naef tracks him down and pumps him for information.
With a schoolteacher's analytical skills, Naef comes up with a brilliant idea. If he can find a way to get a streaker onto the field at various soccer games, he might be able to generate a way of betting on the odds. With Kushtrim's help, he determines that if he can get gamblers to bet on how long the streaker can last between the time he takes off his clothes and is tackled and escorted off the field, he might be able to earn enough money to pay off the school funds he lost.
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| Schoolteacher Naef (Beat Schlatter) finds himself under increasing pressure to pay off a loan in a scene from Streaker |
In order to recruit potential streakers, Naef places a notice on a website similar to Craigslist, advertising classes for people who are looking to build their self confidence. As an experienced teacher, he has no trouble interviewing applicants, scouting out a training location (a quiet barn), and devising a syllabus for training his enrollees. The people who show up for his program range from an extremely shy woman to a huge and heavily muscled bodybuilder; from a zealous exhibitionist to an aging call girl.
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| Naef (Beat Schlatter) demands that an aspiring streaker prove his talent in a scene from Streaker |
It doesn't take long for complications to arise. The biggest brown-noser in one of Naef's classes is a pretty young teen named Annina Strebel (Una Rusca) who raises her hand to answer every question and whose mother, Sandra (Doro Müggler), is one of the leading detectives on Baden's police force. In order to keep Sandra at bay, Naef starts to woo her as a way of distracting the detective. But as the love-hungry Sandra starts to become more romantically aggressive, Naef finds himself caught in between a rock and a hard place -- a situation complicated by the fact that Sandra has chained him to her bed. Things don't improve the following morning, when Sandra heads off to work and Annina finds Naef heading for the kitchen in his underwear.
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| Schoolteacher Naef (Ben Schlatter) woos an unlikely romantic prospect (Doro Müggler) in a scene from Streaker |
All bets are off as Streaker nears its hilarious climax. Schlatter gives a wonderful performance as the sad sack teacher whose aspiring mentees end up thrilling crowds at Swiss soccer matches. Bendrit Bajra is refreshing as Naef's sidekick, with Doro Müggler adding to the fun as a horny female detective. If you need a healthy dose of silliness to brighten your day, Streaker wastes no time answering Clara Peller's classic question: "Where's The Beef?" Here's the trailer.
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Five years ago, when an independent video game developer named Zoë Quinn released a new online game, she became the surprising target of hostility from some easily-threatened men in 4chan and other parts of the online gaming community. That summer, Quinn's former boyfriend (Eron Gjoni) published a nearly 10,000-word screed which quoted extensively from prior online correspondence with Quinn (chat sessions, texts, emails). Feeling betrayed because Quinn had moved on to another relationship, he suggested that her new boyfriend was responsible for a favorable review that her video game (Depression Quest) received on Gawker Media's Kotaku website.Gjoni's post provoked extensive doxing of his former girlfriend (including threats of rape and death) from members of the male gamer community as well as the hacking of several of Quinn's online accounts. It revealed a festering anti-feminist subculture driven by rage, bile, and misogyny yet notably lacking in impulse control. An article in The New Yorker Magazine quoted one threat which declared "Next time she shows up at a conference we... give her a crippling injury that's never going to fully heal... a good solid injury to the knees. I'd say a brain damage, but we don't want to make it so she ends up too retarded to fear us."
No one ever suggested that gamers don't have feelings. Or that, in an age of rampant sexism within the tech community, excitable nerds with wounded egos who think of themselves as mighty keyboard warriors aren't capable of holding a grudge.
Following a year in which charges of sexual harassment have obliterated the careers of numerous politicians as well as industry titans such as Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and James Levine, as part of its Sandbox Series for New Works the San Francisco Playhouse is presenting the world premiere of a chilling new dramedy entitled Non-Player Character.
With the rampant sexism within the tech and entertainment industries (and pushback from the #MeToo movement) front and center in today's media, Walt McGough's two-act play features a cast of six that moves back and forth between the real and virtual worlds of contemporary life. Inspired by 2013's #Gamergate controversy, it does more than merely put human faces on characters who hide behind their keyboards. It reveals the pathetic insecurity of men who can't handle rejection; virtually-empowered snowflakes whose emasculated war cry in real life boils down to a simpering sob of "It's not fair!"
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| Emily Radosevich as Katja in a scene from Non-Player Character (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
Non-Player Character begins in the middle of an online session of Spearlight as teammates Katja (Emily Radosevich) and Trent (Devin O'Brien) alternate between slaying fantasy villains and discussing the recent changes in their offline lives. Now living in Seattle, Katja has been experimenting with an idea for a new game which has no competition and no guns, but rewards its players on the basis of their creativity. Trent, who has lost his job and been forced to move back to Lancaster, Pennsylvania (where he is living in his parents' basement), has been depressed and aimless since they broke up.
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| The fantasy characters of Non-Player Character (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
When, through the tortured logic that results from a toxic combination of limited social skills and male fragility, Trent suggests moving out to Seattle so he can reunite with Katja and "help her" with her project, he is stunned by her rejection of his poorly-conceived idea. Act I ends as Trent is seen talking to his online friends in an effort to disavow their overreactions to his action cry that "It's not fair." But the audience understands that, having unleashed the repressed feral instincts of grown men who think with their dicks instead of their brains, matters have already begun to spin out of control. In a not-at-all subtle moment of symbolism, a growing mob of male gamers juiced up on their own version of toxic masculinity, have found the key to Pandora's box.
Act II finds Katja working part time at a Starbucks in Seattle. Having been forced to leave her home due to an ongoing barrage of threats from misogynistic gamers, she has been offered shelter by her manager, Naomi (Charisse Loriaux), as she struggles with her emotions and justifiably increased paranoia. When Katja finally gets up the courage to file a police report, she is informed by a precinct clerk (Annemaria Rajala) that there's nothing the police can do to follow up on her situation unless she is actually attacked. While the clerk confesses that she worries about her own child's intense interest in video games, she obviously doesn't understand the kind of harassment Katja has been experiencing.
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| Emily Radosevich as Katja in a scene from Non-Player Character (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
Several days later, Naomi encourages Katja to fill in on the morning shift for a worker who is sick. The two women are surprised when a mild-mannered man enters the cafe and recognizes Katja. Explaining that, even though he was not an active participant in the doxing that targeted her, he feels horrible about what happened and wants to apologize. Grant (Dean Koya) also reveals his online identity as the Spearlight player whose avatar, Morwyn (Annemaria Rajala), is a fierce but rather dumb blonde glamazon.
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| Tyler McKenna (Feldrick) and Annemaria Rajala (Morwyn) in a scene from Non-Player Character (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
The fact that the clueless Grant has been searching various Starbucks locations in the hope of finding Katja sends her over the brink as she erupts in a Category 5 rant that eventually sends the terrified gamer running up the street toward safety. The play ends as Katja shows Naomi how her new game works and the two women, entranced by their newly-found capacity to create a tree, watch it grow and transform over the course of nature's seasons.
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| Emily Radosevich (Katja) and Charisse Loriaux (Naomi) in a scene from Non-Player Character (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
With scenic design by Jacqueline Scott, costumes by Leandra Watson, and lighting by Wolfgang Wachalovsky, Non-Player Character has been righteously directed by Lauren English, whose staging of Katja's scathing meltdown is a red-hot moment of theatrical brilliance. Special credit goes to Theodore J. H. Hulsker, who designed the production's sound and projections.
While Charisse Loriaux, Devon O'Brien, Annemaria Rajala, Tyler McKenna, and Dean Koya shine in supporting roles, Non-Player Character's protagonist offers a compelling opportunity for Emily Radosevich, who erupts with volcanic rage in the second act. Writing on the San Francisco Playhouse's blog, the company's artistic director, Bill English, notes that:
"Based on the Gamergate scandal, in which coder Zoe Quinn was systematically harassed by male counterparts intent on driving her from the business, Walt McGough’s Non-Player Character lands squarely on the moment in which we live, as we try to come to grips with the avalanche of sexual harassment cases in entertainment, politics, and the world of non-profits. The vast majority of these appalling examples of sexual harassment coming to light in recent months have resulted in forced resignations, prosecutions, and career-ending firings for the perpetrators. But how does that work in virtual worlds where no actual crime has been committed but where toxicity seems to multiply exponentially, where perpetrators become capable of levels of cruelty that would not be possible in real life. How is it that on-line male personas get permission from their human alter egos to magnify hostility and rage towards women? What can be done about it? Can sexual harassment performed on-line be a crime? How can these sexual predators be called to account?"Rather than settling for speculation, witness Anita Sarkeesian's account of the gender-based hostility she encountered from Internet trolls.
Performances of Non-Player Character continue through March 4 at the Children's Creativity Museum Theatre. (click here for tickets).
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