Rashomon Games

These games are concerned with multiple interpretations of particular events. The film Rashomon (Kurasawa, 1950) gives four very different versions of the same event, giving name to the Rashomon effect, and this group of games.    

‘Fake news’ is one newly-named variety of this ancient game which gives a version of facts or events which is different from another perhaps more generally accepted version, usually (in current usage of the phrase) advocating a conservative point of view. Sometimes it’s the more generally accepted version which is labelled as fake news, while another less likely and sometimes comically skewed version is put forward as the more genuine. That ‘history is written by the winners’ (Winston Churchill) is an acknowledgement that a canonical version usually issues from multiple interpretations, at the expense of due recognition of complexity: another labour-saving ‘coping mechanism’ we have evolved to accept.

From the other end of the political spectrum, the détournement games of the Lettrist International and later Situationists involved decontextualising capitalist forms with the propagandistic aim of causing a revolutionary paradigm shift. Their once-radical gestures were themselves not immune to later recuperation as they were repositioned back into the mainstream and monetised in the punk and indie movements, and other commercialized versions of counter-culture. 

To play this game, add your own amusing and provocative speech bubbles or captions to cartoons, photos and pictures, or adjust, cut up and reassemble well known adverts and iconic images.

In the game of Advocates, people can watch the same YouTube clip after deciding beforehand to be either advocate or adversary – for example, watch with a friend a Krishnamurti video clip of him talking to children about fear, one of you imagining him to be a gift from god, and the other seeing him as a bullying megalomaniac. It’s more fun if you can switch roles from what you both actually believe. Of course, some lawyers get to play this game for a living.   

Watching the TV or YouTube with the sound off and making up your own script/story/news/song is another example of a Rashomon game, though it should be done more than once to be true to the original model.