The Monopoly Metaphor

TOPIC: Cultural Text

SOURCE: Pages 94-95 in RR discuss the process of interpretive drift and the idea that as a person becomes more closely involved with a particular activity, he tends to exhibit a drift in the way that he interprets the events associated with that activity. And page 20 discusses the way that this sort of situation can be used as a “text of significant symbols—words, gestures, drawings, natural objects—that carries meaning,” revealing important characteristics about the game/object/ritual and the people who create and involve themselves with it.

RELATION: The effect that involvement in an activity has on a person’s interpretation of that activity and the meanings that we ascribe to those events and activities can be seen in our every- day lives and in the things to which we ascribe meaning. Some of our key metaphors in society work under these same principles, just as we see in the case of sports like football and baseball (CC 310), or even board-games, like in this instance.

DESCRIPTION: I do not like the game Monopoly. And as much as I wish my Monopoly-obsessed friends would quit inviting me to play the game with them, I could not miss out on the opportunity to perform some anthropological fieldwork in a setting I knew would be so rich with American culture. The game itself, which consists of each participant’s forming monopolies over the “land” that is the game-board in hopes of causing all others to declare bankruptcy, would give me all I needed, and I delighted further in the fact that my friends in particular happen to be over-the-top competitive in everything they do, especially when it comes to board games. Upon looking closer, however, I realized that there was a sort of pattern to the way that they all seemed to compete, each of them playing a similar role to the ones that they do in our ordinary social group. For example, one friend kept trying to form alliances (with the intention to “take down” another friend, of course) while another friend simply wished to acquire a certain color of properties, regardless of value. Then there was the friend who wanted everyone to win, even if it meant sharing her money and getting yelled at by each previously mentioned player, as well as a fourth player who seemed to forget that any of us had ever been friends as soon as he placed his thimble on the board…And because these Monopoly gatherings are a regular event for these folks [“Routines are comforting; they bring order into a world in which players have little control” (CC 312)], most of them have their own good luck charms and rituals to perform, which is fun to watch, especially if that person begins to win and that trick appears “important or somehow linked to good performance” (CC 312) and therefore continues in full force in each game that follows. The best part is this: that it’s all very silly. And as it happened, I got to watch each of my friends change and become more and more driven to win in strange ways And for the most part, they seemed not to notice that it was odd, because they were still being themselves, only in a different situation that, due to routine immersion in that situation, they have come to think about very differently.

COMMENTARY/ANALYSIS: What each of these players has in common is their treatment of the game as a battle, much like in the way that Robbins compares American football to war. The game, which each of them has been playing since he/she was little, seems ordinary and innocent enough, but as someone not familiar with the rules of the game until much later on in life, I started to see that the cut-throat nature of the game does not stem solely from the people who play it. The game, in its very nature, promotes capitalism, competition, and dominion over others—and the game is that way because the creators made it that way to begin with, just as people choose to exaggerate or downplay those features in a modern playing of the game. And that, I think, says a lot about not only the people who play this game, but those people who made it, knowing that people would enjoy that sort of thing. And of course my friends enjoy it: It’s a metaphor for the capitalistic society in which they/we live—and thrive.