Please identify and deconstruct a scene in the film Hell House that demonstrates Clifford Geertz’s notion of “deep play.” You can use (if you’d like) some of the discussion of the film and play in Ann Pellegrini’s article to assist you.
The essence of deep play, high stakes in a co-performative environment, is encountered in the rave scene of Hell House through the dual nature of the high-risk threats present in both the subject matter and the co-performers. Clifford Geertz defines “deep play” on its most fundamental level in Jeremy Bentham’s words as “play in which the stakes are so high that it is, from a utilitarian standpoint, irrational for men to engage in it at all.” (Geertz, pg. 7)The rave scene concerns itself with the plot that date rape at an electronic music scene leads to suicide, a fact that exemplifies the idea that “deep play” on some fundamental level has an element of a fight in it, a fight against some entity that could threaten to push them over the edge. This idea of violence or a fight mirrored in deep play is underscored by Geertz’s comment that “Every people, the proverb has it, loves its own form of violence.” (Geertz, pg. 10) In the case of Hell Houses, and thus also this scene, the fight is always one against the devil, to save those who may be tempted to follow his signs. This is elucidated by the fact that in every scene, including the rave scene, the devil features at the closing, as an entity that they lost against. In order to achieve the desired goal of winning against the devil, they have to actually lose within the performance space, to create an illusion of reality, and thereby allow the co-performers to retroactively change their views. Particularly the rave scene provides a strong co-performative aspect, given that the ‘viewers’ actually inhabit the ‘stage’ and are dancers immersed in the happenings of the staged scene.
Although there are high stakes within the scenes, namely loosing against the devil, these cannot be viewed as the only, or even primary, ones since the nature of them are deterministic, i.e. the outcome is inevitable, predetermined. As a result, the high stakes for the performers and the co-performative audience are distinct, unlike in the Balinese cockfights. For the performers these center around the fates of the audience. This not only refers to someone not converting, but to Ann Pellegrini’s two-fold musings: 1)“Can we rule out the possibility that for some young people … just getting a glimpse of same-sex eroticism is a perverse pleasure, revealing possibilities they were not otherwise supposed to contemplate?” (Pellegrini, pg. 920), and 2) at the other pole that some scenes “may well feel like a profound and profoundly alienating blow to the self.” (Pellegrini, pg. 920) In fact, it could be argued that this is the true reason why the word ‘irrational’ can be applied to the act of engaging in these scenes. Without the potentiality that someone may be pushed closer to the devil than they already are as a result of these scenes, contributing to such a performance would not seem irrational, as the outcome could only be positive by helping others be saved (provided you echoed this causality). This fear is voiced at the beginning of the documentary when the main organizer of Hell House at Trinity ruled against the ‘lesbians at the bar’ scene, likely due to the fact that closeness during the rehearsal process may potentially spark, in their views satanic, homosexuality. The responses of some of the youth to the question “What was your favorite part?” illustrated clearly that this suppressed yearning is also present in the co-performative audience at the rave scene. Their enthusiasm for being allowed to dance uncovered yearnings for physical expression not permitted otherwise, thereby potentially making such places more appealing rather frightening. In essence, the rave scene appears to provide an excellent example of Geertz’s notion of “deep play” given that it is co-performative play sparking deeper emotional engagement yet having inherent high stakes that seem irrational given the risk involved of driving someone closer to the devil.
Nevertheless, the presence of an overall social good and a lack of consequences in reality, that are implied or stated by Geertz as aspects of “deep play”, can be contended, depending on whose perspective one chooses to adopt. Geertz describes the Balinese cockfights as violence contained within the illusion of the performance. Status wars, instead of ending within actual bloodbaths between individuals, were acted out through the medium of the cockfights. The implication was that they contained violence and animalistic tendencies to the performance space in order to rid their reality of it. One could argue though that the intentional antagonism involved at the potential expense of those attending the Hell House at Trinity could likely lead to consequences in reality by carrying the fight present in the scenes outside of the performance space. This fact was actually observed in the documentary, when an argument broke out between a group of youth and one of the organizers of Hell House about the demonization of homosexuality, given they had friends who were homosexual. One could imagine a similar situation for the rave scene where individuals bring their personal experiences of the topic addressed into the performance space, and feel profoundly trivialized or attacked by the views presented at Hell House. The question is whether whether a lack of consequences in the real world is even possible for any potential “deep play”. Due to the emotive nature of “deep play” everyone will likely carry the emotions roused during the act into everyday life, and thereby change its course. I would argue that it is almost impossible to silo any one act from the rest of reality. Hence, the question remains what constitutes of a consequence relative to “deep play”? If we use the Balinese cockfight as template to base musings off of, then it becomes evident that the significant difference between Hell Houses and Balinese cockfights is that the former appears to resolve conflicts while the latter provokes it. Thus, consequences can be defined as additional conflict created in reality as a result of “deep play”. Hence, overall it appears that the ‘rave scene’, while satisfying central requirements of deep play, fails to create a social good through a restoration of order, but rather reaps benefits only for the individual through being saved.
References:
Geertz, Clifford. “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” Daedalus 101, no. 1 (1972): 1–37.
Pellegrini, Ann. “‘Signaling through the Flames’: Hell House Performance and Structures of Religious Feeling.” American Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2007): 911–35.
TDM 97 Reflections 
Hi Kami,
First of all, thank you for this incredibly well considered and well argued essay. In your first paragraph, its seems as if the stakes, represented by the poles of the devil and Jesus are the conflict between secular and religious culture. We see this throughout the documentary — it is oddly most apparent when we see the brief scene in the classroom (not the classroom staged in the Hell House) where the knowledge taught is modified by Christian beliefs. There is a deep fear that secular culture has infected the community too much and that the system of Evangelical beliefs must police everything coming from secular culture – including the STEM disciplines. So the conflict is real because if secular beliefs and pleasures “infect” Evangelical culture, the real risk is that the knowledge will cause questions of the belief systems and deny the existence of God as “real” and the bible as the governing entity. Instead defending this phenomenon in their own community, the community resolves its internal conflict by projecting it outward — reflecting their version of what threatens them as society’s flaws. So all who you identify as “co-performers” of the rave scene know that the community coheres when they enact their moral tale. But when they also explain how much they enjoy the dancing, that energy gets redirecting (presumably) to their cause rather than questioning why it’s prohibited in other moments in their lives. Again – it makes the enacted mission, as you note, more appealing than frightening for them. But the excuse of “play” shields them from acting out elsewhere. So, unlike Aristotle’s idea that catharsis happens only for the audience — these scenes of violence actually address the structure of feeling that can otherwise prevail in real life — the restrictions on dancing, sex, experimentation with drugs, or with violence. The dramaturgy lets one have one’s cake and eat it too — act it out and show the negative consequences of the morality tale. And they call the event a success – meaning that, as community it binds the believers closer together and reinforces the terms of its beliefs. Doesn’t the rave scene “restore” order because it allows for the expenditure of that repressed energy in a way that allows the community to disavow the act but do it anyway — with the caveat that doing it in real life has brutal consequences? One gets “released” and instructed through mimetic production.
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