Girls just want to have Fun (or perpetuate capitalism whilst calling it Fun)
From leisure as purely respite from the monotony of the 9–5, to leisure as continuation of capitalist rhetoric, the way we experience fun has always been deeply political. Here I will consider the philosophy of game playing inside of a utopian social system and raise the question ‘Do Girls just want to have fun? Or do girls just want to perpetuate capitalism whilst calling it fun?’
To truly understand girls and their ability to have fun under capitalism I will be considering both current leisure and leisure time inside a utopia; paying close attention to the philosophical debate between Bernard Suit and J.S Russell who cannot decide whether it is idleness or game playing that will be championed under such utopian social structures. I will use the debate to develop my interpretation that the notions of enforced competitiveness, and scarcity spurred on by capitalism have completely augmented girls’ current ability to ‘just have fun.’
GIRLS ARE NOT CURRENTLY HAVING FUN
From the brands we wear, the media we choose to consume, and even the types of produce we eat everything concerning who we are is maintained and birthed inside of the constant flux of how productive one is under capitalism, so naturally, the same holds for how we approach our leisure activities.
To take on my own leisure time of running, it is my current goal to achieve a 90 minute half marathon, whilst I am having fun perusing this, I have to acknowledge that this whole goal has been shaped and birthed from the capitalist rhetoric that emphasises consistent striving over guilt free relaxation. Often this is referred to as ‘type two’ fun, which is essentially fun that is grueling in the moment, but feels fantastic afterwards. It can be easily argued that ‘type two’ fun is closely tied up in the capitalist value system. Here, the system seems so ingrained into me that I continue to exert a lot of time and energy in the name of ‘fun’ to prove myself worthy against the arbitrary criteria of capitalist productivity.
Philosopher Laurence Hinman in ‘Marx’s theory of play, leisure and unalienated praxis’, raises an interesting point of analysis in relation to this, he writes that ‘the character of leisure activity is justified only as a way to increase productivity’. The worker is alienated in the sense his leisure activity only has meaning and value in relation to increased productivity is recognized.’ (1978) This is certainly relevant in the running for fun example, in which the activity of leisure is so bound up by current capitalist mentality that it is not, truly, a girl having fun, but a girl perpetuating capitalism whilst being conditioned into thinking it’s fun.
Even if we consider a more relaxed leisure activity, such as lying in bed watching TV, our ‘fun’ is still tied up and structured by capitalism. In Ramsay’s ‘Reclaiming Leisure: Art, Sport and Philosophy’ it is claimed that ‘we are never away from commercialised work and its environment’ because even our leisure is just us seeking to ‘escape the obligatoriness of work.’ Even our lying down in bed is just a result of capitalism; for this type of leisure is providing us time to rejuvenate well enough to more efficiently work, and therefore alienate ourselves, at work. Capitalist rhetoric is so omnipresent that even our lower impact leisure is born at the expense of overcoming capitalism.
Now that I have ascertained that ‘fun’ under our current structure is just capitalism reifying itself, I can now move onto considering if girls can just have fun inside of Bernard Suit’s fictionalised utopia.
Suits & Utopia
‘The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia”, (1978) claims that under the perfect living conditions, where capitalism has essentially been eradicated, the only remaining thing to do, for girls to have fun, is to play games. According to Suits, playing games is the ideal because we get to ‘seriously strive’ toward our own sets of goals, despite how arbitrary or non-instrumental they are.
Suits says games allow for the reintroduction of emotions associated with ‘striving’, ‘adversity’ and ‘failure’ etc. Without games as the plain provider of fun Suits believes that ‘Love, friendship, art. etc will become obsolete’ as they require sharing in feelings of ‘success, failure, adversity.’
I would argue against this idea, we have been conditioned under capitalism to view notions such as adversity versus prosperity as necessity for a fun, functioning life, but this just isn’t the case. I would argue these ‘Game-related emotions’ so essential to Suits Utopia are just another advent of capitalism. Suits himself asserts that ‘our culture is based on various kinds of scarcity — (economic, moral, etc) whereas the culture of Utopia will be based on plentitude.’ With this in mind, there is no logical reason to try and replicate the type of scarcity we have grown accustomed to.
The enforced competition and anxiety that we currently live under has led to the belief that we need these feelings of pressure to function in life. In ‘The Myth of Normal’ Dr Gabor Mate emphasizes how this is not the case. writing; “The problem in our culture is that we don’t just have stress; we have a chronic assault on our bodies and our minds, which keeps us in a state of perpetual anxiety and insecurity.”
The pervasiveness of productivity in our current society has caused girls, who just want to have fun, into a state of increased anxiety in which everyone is struggling to differentiate their lesiure from the labor.
GIRLS JUST WANT TO BE IDLE
Girls just want to have fun but with Suits attempting to replicate the emotional landscape of capitalism with the addition of striving for games, girls are stuck in the same loop of perpetuating capitalist values whilst calling it fun. We are operating from a ‘scarcity’ mindset, and therefore our enjoyment of games is wrapped up inside of the compulsive need to prove ones potential and perform at maximum capacity.
J.S Russell claims that it is idleness which is the ‘preferable candidate for an ideal of human existence.’ Russell remarks ‘In Suits’ Utopia, the perfect psychological health of Utopians and absence of scarcity and any significant obligations will help greatly in cultivating a certain calmness of mind, in particular from feeling internal or external pressures.
This strengthens my interpretation that girls’ ability to have fun has been severely augmented under capitalism, as when girls have the clear mind that Russell suggests, they will be better able to restructure and reassess what they view as fun.
This is not to say girls will give up running and other competitive leisure to begin lying on the beach sunbathing all day, but rather they will have the clarity of mind to not be constantly pushing themselves toward arbitrary goals in the name of fun.
What matters here is that without the external pressure of capitalism obscuring their understanding of what is actually fun, girls will have the ability to be idle and whatever activity girls choose to fill their time with is completely of their own choosing.
There’s certainly strong validity to Russell’s idea that the idle life is the good life. And Russell’s paper amplifies my argument that under capitalism girls are not having fun, but there is one issue worthy of interpretation and that is, if we are all idle in Utopia, then how do we form our identity?
ESSENTIALISM AND IDENTITY
In a society plagued by capitalism we are so desperate to distinguish ourselves outside of our work that we become hyper-obsessed with cultivating identity around our leisure activity. This is particularly present online with the suffix ‘-core’ clinging on to about every micro-trend that can dictate ones identity (soccer-core, gamer-core, travel-core). I have been a keen runner for years and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t brought in certain consumerist gimmicks that place me into a ‘runner’ social category.
A salient example in my own life is the purchase of a a running backpack from Salomon, overly-expensive and honestly, not even that great. There are plenty other running backpacks out there at a fraction of the price but I chose this brand specifically because of its associations in the running community with ‘sleek, trail runner, professional, put together. This Salomon backpack has brought about an identity for me, and even though it is non-essential (that is, Salomon wearer was not innate to me at birth) to me, I still feel a certain smugness using it. Albert Piacente acknowledges this non-essential identity smugness and notes ‘items can nonetheless be the seat of the deepest possible feelings, attachments, and commitments.’
So how can we navigate this satisfaction and source of identity in a utopia devoid of consumerism and capitalism? Ramsey points out ‘Pre-consumerist leisure often required fewer external resources and relied more upon utilising and developing people’s inner resources — imagination, will, love.’ (‘Reclaiming Leisure: Art, Sport and Philosophy’) If girls could have fun devoid of capitalist rhetoric, then we would be able to regress back to this anti-consumerist mode of having fun and our identity could be comprised of a multitude of things; our hobbies, our relationships, our cooking — not just our fancy backpacks.
In our current society, leisure and fun is all about neutralising the heaviness and stress of living under capitalism, but in a utopia not plagued by capitalist expectations there is no stress needed to be neutralised and therefore our compulsion to ascribe our fun past-times to our identity will completely dissolve.
TO CONCLUDE
In ‘Reclaiming Leisure: Art, Sport and Philosophy’ Ramsay writes that ‘Our modern stresses may be relieved if we can recover leisure as commitment to time and choice that are truly ours, not others’ convenience or profit.’ (2005) I believe this to be the case, but under the relentlessness of modern-day capitalism we have become so used to the pressure of constant forward momentum and success that we have forgotten how to approach leisure activities. Therefore girls are not just having fun anymore.
To conclude, girls do just want to have fun, but they have essentially forgotten how to as they are constantly finding their leisure activities in harsh contrast to their lives under capitalism. In a world devoid of the tyranny of capitalism girls would regain their ability to understand what constitutes fun without the heavy, weighted pressure of success and productivity.
