October 10, 2014 - 00:46
In Weilla’s Post, limited playing time, she writes, “Unlike other kids, I’ve always had a time limit --- ‘You must come back in half an hour.’ My family always believe that read more books is better than ‘just play and learn nothing’’’ (Yuan). Weilla describes the struggle of having a limited play time, or not being able to play with her friends how she wanted to or for as long as she wanted to because she would face harsh consequences from her parents. And as someone who feels as though their wanting to play a certain way was hindered by a parent, I can relate. But in reading this post, it made me think about the article Playing in Industrial Ruins: Interrogating teleological understandings of play in spaces of material alterity and low surveillance.
In this article, the authors made it a point to make play analogous with the ruins. People often describe play as not real or serious. They see it as a useless act, a wasting of time. One intellectual quoted within the article even described play as “‘hedonistic and gratuitous, ‘emotionally pleasurable to all participants’ (36), an opportunity for people to fully be themselves and… transcend the roles which have been defined by them for work and domestic life’ (46) . And with ruins, it is often described as unkempt, or disorderly, a sign of “economic downturn” (Edensor 1), wastelands, useless areas, etc. Just like Weilla and her parents, many people often associate the idea of play with ruins. People see play as an unnecessary, unproductive, separate hedonistic entity from work and the ruins as a marginal, useless, unwanted area of space representing what used to be contrary to how they view booming and not vacant infrastructure.
Unfortunately for Weilla, she believed that her play time was shortened due to the fact that she had to work. And although unlike her parents she recognizes the necessity and the harmlessness in play. But, one thing she did similar to them was making work and play two separate entities. In this article, they focus on explaining how work and play go hand in hand. Nothing is useless within play just like the ruined sites aren’t useless. They go on to describe the different ways that the ruins are utilized. There was: destructive play: joyriding, burning and smashing, hedonistic play: drinking, drug-taking, partying and sex, artistic play: graffiti and other interventions, and adventurous and expressive play: actions sports and urban exploration. Although these forms of play may seem destructive, harmful, unproductive, and some of them are even illegal, the space is still useful and utilized by someone. Within these acts that seem unnecessary, productiveness does come out of it. This assumption that people have of the ruins and play time and the unproductiveness and harmfulness they both have on children’s lives is counteracted in this quote which states “For a while ‘there is an assumption that in losing themselves in disordered spaces, children actually find their selves become “true” children… (Clarke and Jones 2005: 312)’ (Edensor 9).” “Assertions that play is the antithesis of production, order and responsibility are analogous to the ways in which disordered spaces such as industrial ruins are similarly conceived as marginal, lacking purpose and wasteful; and they are further typified as excessive, dangerous, and ‘out of place (Edensor 2005a)’” (Edensor 8).
Now when people think about work it is often described as productive. It is often goal oriented, useful, regulated and structured. But so are the types of play as described above. For example, in artistic play there is a goal, and that is to build what you believe to be a masterpiece that is well put together. It is very productive, in the sense that it is a way of expression. But work can be just the opposite of the adjectives used to frequently describe it. It can be very useless in a sense that you are not benefitting or helping anyone benefit from it. But, it can also be fun and be unregulated. In a lot of the article the play and fun was often due to the fact that there was not regulation or structure within the ruins and the play. And that can be a characteristic of work/ We have identified a wide range of diverse playful practices that blur distinctions between productivity and pointlessness, creativity and destruction, legality and illegality, and respectability and abjection, confounding the simple distinctions between play and work as discussed above” (Ednensor 8).
All in all, I believe that if the authors of the article were to read Weilla’s post, they would say that her play time wasn’t limited because her parents made her do work, but that she limited her own play time being that the two aren’t two separate practices. Her play could have actually never stopped. And, I agree with this idea. I believe that you can find play in everything you do, if you allow yourself. People often stop enjoying themselves and having fun because they believe when it’s time for work they are supposed to be strict and serious, in order to be focused and do the work correctly. But, you can achieve these goals even when you are having fun and enjoying yourself.