A Game for the Ages: Hide and Go Seek

We’ve all played it. Hide and go seek. Do you remember the thrill of hiding from the seeker? The adrenaline rush that you received when the seeker came looking for you? Did you treasure that small, secret hiding place in which you stayed? I know that I did. Every time that I would play hide and go seek I would sneak into a little cabinet in the corner of my house, praying that no one would find me. I wanted to feel like I had disappeared into thin air. That I became invisible.

In Anne Cheng’s essay, “Passing, Natural Selection, and Love’s Failure: Ethics of Survival from Chang-rae Lee to Jacques Lacan,” she starts by quoting Roger Caillois in his work, The Mask of Medusa.

“Camouflage is the blending of the animal into the pattern, the environment; it is a search for invisibility…With men too, invisibility is an ever recurring desire.” (Cheng, 553)

Invisibility is an ever recurring desire. There are many examples that prove this statement true. The ancient Greeks associated the ability to become invisible with a hero. In Greek mythology, Perseus uses a cap of invisibility to escape from the Gorgon sisters.   He was legendary for being the first hero whose exploits led to the defeat of monsters. In the iconic Lord of the Rings trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien and first published in 1955, Frodo Baggins is entrusted with a ring that holds mysterious power. Among one of its powers is the ability to make the wearer invisible. The ring is also addictive and it becomes an obsession for the wearer. Although it may not have been the author’s original intention, the ring’s ability to make the wearer invisible and obsessed with it, shows a correlation between fascination or preoccupation and invisibility.

The preoccupation with the power of invisibility can be seen on the big screen also. In many superhero movies, there are heroes with powers of invisibility. In the hugely popular movie, The Incredibles, the daughter, Violet, has the power to turn invisible. What’s more is that she does not just use her power for defeating villains-she also uses in her regular high school life. When I first saw that Violet used her powers of invisibility to sneak around in her school, I wished so badly that I could become invisible too. Would it not be thrilling to be a fly on the wall? To be so hidden that people would not be able to find you no matter how hard they tried?

Violet right after a boy (that she had a crush on) looked at her when she was invisible.

     Roger Caillois asserts that the desire for invisibility cannot be the same as a desire for a mode of survival. In other words, invisibility is not used for survival. If invisibility is not a survival mechanism, but rather used for something else (like how Violet uses her invisibility even when she is not fighting her nemesis), then why do people desire it?

Anne Cheng states,

“Even more intriguingly, according to Caillois…’Above, and under disguise, I postulate a fascination with the Other, suggesting this as the reason for mimicry and adaption [sic]’ (86)…Being outside or beside oneself, it would appear, provides an inestimable source of psychic pleasure and nourishment.” (Cheng, 554)

Mimicry, a disguise, the blending of a subject into its environment, is the same as invisibility. As humans, we find pleasure in being able to blend in. There are many possible reasons for why this may be true. Some reasons are simple: one reason being that we like the feeling of wanting to belong, to not stand out. Cheng points to this reason,

“This “fascination with the Other” conditions social desire as such, but it also speaks to an imbricated ontic pleasure.” (Cheng, 554)

The fascination with the Other means an interest in things that are not yourself. Ontic relates to existence as real rather than phenomenal. This statement is pointing out that in addition to a desire to connect to others, the preoccupation with mimicking others is borne out of a desire for a regular rather than extraordinary existence.

Other plausible reasons for why it is pleasurable to mimic others and blend in are more complicated. Instances where a subject employs mimicry for no apparent reason except for pleasure abound. Take, for example, Smiley and his friends in Cary Fukunaga’s film, Sin Nombre. In the film, Smiley becomes a part of the Mara Salvatruchas, a dangerous gang in Mexico. The leader of the gang gives Smiley a gun so that he can murder a man. There is a certain scene where Smiley is spending time with his friends, who are not in the gang, and he shows them the gun. They all say, “Cool!” and marvel at his increased power. They also play with his gun and imitate being gang members with it. Why did Smiley’s friends do this? While Smiley did need to have a gun to survive (he was threatened by the gang), they did not need guns. So why did they mimic him? They held a fascination for him, a fascination for his life as a gang member. This correlates to an innate preoccupation with the Other that Caillois explains. By mimicking him, they did not gain anything except for their own pleasure. Perhaps mimicry is pleasure because you can pretend that you have something that, in actuality, you do not have. The young boys, naively, saw Smiley’s gun as a symbol of masculinity, strength, and adventure. Thus, they found satisfaction and enjoyment in pretending to possess these different characteristics.

Another very plausible reason for why it is quite enjoyable to pass yourself off as someone else is because you want to escape from yourself. Charles Dickens himself said,

“I want to escape from myself. For when I do start up and stare myself seedily in the face, as happens to be my case at present, my blankness is inconceivable-indescribable.”

Thus passing as something else can give someone great, indescribable pleasure, because for those moments, they can find liberation from their own life.

There are many examples of people who turn to performance to escape from their own personality or life. Take for example, Beyonce. In multiple interviews she has stated that she has an alter ego when she performs. This alter ego, which she names “Sasha Fierce”, gives herself the bravery to be free and sexy during her performances. Otherwise, she says, she is normally a very shy person. It is very interesting how she performs in two different aspects. Not only does she perform her music, but within that performance there is another performance in which she acts like a different person.

Mankind’s attraction to the idea of pretending to be somebody else, to the game of hide and seek, can be explained by Cheng’s theory. She argues that there is a type of euphoria that is found in displacing oneself. Numerous examples in literature and in popular culture support this idea, demonstrating the “delirium of perfection in mimicry.” (Caillois) From authors to musicians, all have perpetuated this theme, which can be seen in ancient Greece and modern America.

So why is mimicry often looked upon with disdain? It brings pleasure to the performer, and becomes a way for the performer to relate to others, take on desired characteristics, and escape from himself among other things. In this aspect, a performance given can provide insight into the performer’s emotions and true feelings, allowing that performance to take on important meaning.