The Deep, Dark Play of the US Capitol Riots

Abstract

This article interprets the US Capitol Riots of 6 January 2021 through the lens of various classic and novel theories of play. Its aim, in doing so, is to explain a major shift in US cultural politics after Trump. The weird co-existence of violence and silliness in the Capitol Riots led commentators to declare them "surreal," or else to posit the simple theory that the rioters' playfulness was "camouflage" or "cover" for their true intentions: to commit acts of white supremacist violence. A close performance-minded reading of video footage from the riots tells a different, more complicated story. To lay the foundations for telling such a story, this article re-reads canonical play theories (Geertz's "deep play," Schechner's "dark play") and builds new theories of political play on the ideas and practices of the contemporary Trumpist right (truthful hyperbole, play by fiat, owning the libs). These Trumpist theories of play have not only turned a presumptively left-wing, anti-authoritarian value into the basis for a right-wing, authoritarian tactic; they have also helped the right-wing rank and file feel differently about their politics. "Pleasure won this election," Lauren Berlant declared after the 2016 election of Donald Trump. On 6 January 2021, pleasure came perilously close to overturning the next US presidential election. Instead of debunking such "pleasure" or "play," this article suggests we might use a similar "vocabulary of sentiment" to tell different, deradicalizing stories. A recent work of political satire, Circle Jerk by the New York-based theater collective Fake Friends, is offered as a model of such deradicalizing work.