Experience ambiguity of play: fate as play, power as play, or identity as play.

 Last Sunday, I celebrate the Korean New Year day with my Korean friends. We ate rice cake soup and played a game of yut. Before have taking the J762 seminar, I just thought that play is easy or simple to define. However, I knew that play can be explained by different views and several rhetorics (e.g., fate as play, power as play, or identity as play). In this celebration, I have opportunities to think about ambiguity of play, especially rhetorics of fate, power, and identity.  First of all, traditionally in the morning of the New year, entire family gather together to eat rice-cake soup, tteok-guk. It is the most representative dish eaten on New Year’s Day. Tradition dictates that New Year’s resolution is embodies within the tteo-guk and when one eat that tteok-guk, one is withing New Year’s wishes. Long cylindrically shaped rice cake symbolizes luck and good health and long life. Koreans enjoy same custom, culture about Lunar New Year’s Day if other people even don’t know. By doing so, Korean can build a sense of community or identity through play.

Moreover, a game of Yut is Korean’s popular folk game, make two teams and play with yut. There are Do, Gae, Gul, Yut, Mo. Do means pig and Gae means Dog. And, Gul means sheep, Yut means cow, and Mo means horse. When you get Do go 1 block, Gea go 2 block, Gul go 3 block, Yut go 4 block, go 5 blocks when you get Mo. A game of Yut looks like a game of chess or board game. A game of yut can win as throw yut well, but it stands on how use marker well. As I mentioned, this game can be shown as fate as play because if you throw yut well, you are likely to win. Fate as play positions the “events and outcomes of lay origination outside of the player (p.68). Fate as play embodies a belief that one can exercise control over life’s circumstances even when it is known complete control is impossible (p.53). However, it is also important to how use marker well or how plan your strategy in this game. In terms of power as play, physically skill and intellectual strategy are important forms of contest (p.74). Additionally, from a social play perspective, power as play is an expression of conflict that is realized through competition. During playing this game, we were praying to throw yut well and were planning strategies to win. Through celebration to New Year play, I could experience identity as play, fate as play and power as play.