Roger Caillois, games of chance and the superstar

Abstract

Superstars are not by accident a conspicuous phenomenon in our culture, but inherently belong to a meritocratic society with mass media, free enterprise, and competition. To make this contention plausible I will use Caillois’s book, Man, Play and Games, to compare the mechanisms underlying the superstar phenomenon with a special kind of game, as set out by Caillois. As far as I know, Caillois’s book is not quoted in the literature dealing with income distribution theories, although the comparison with play and games is, for limited purposes, interesting. In play and games we find almost all elements which play a role in theories of just income distribution: equality of opportunity, chance, talent, competition and skill, reward, entitlement, winners and losers, etc. These are not chance similarities, for “. . . games are largely dependent upon the cultures in which they are practised. They affect their preferences, prolong their customs, and reflect their beliefs . . . One . . . can . . . posit a truly reciprocal relationship between a society and the games it likes to play”. Moreover, as we will see, superstars combine the four basic characteristics of play that make their activities a special kind of play.