Monster Camp

[RPG Post]

Monster Camp

The film Monster Camp is about NERO LARP. More to the point it is about the people who play NERO. It is a documentary with a group of role players near Seattle. It follows some of the players over the course of a year, including a father/son duo. When I complained before in my discussion of Bones that gamers are portrayed as freaks, this documentary is … similar in approach. Like Todd Browning's Freaks. One could argue whether the film is exploitive, understanding and sympathetic, or takes both approaches.

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I personally found it to be gawking and tittering exploitation of some people in sad situations who make choices that exacerbate their misery. When one subject notes his young daughter complained she was not getting to spend enough time with him, because he played World of Warcraft all the time his solution was to buy her a computer and create her a WoW account so they could play together, sitting right next to each other. I should, in all fairness, note that my son and I play DDO seated at desks that touch. However, it's not all we do together. Aside from many XBOX games and watching movies together, we also sometimes just talk, or cook or play outside.

I imagine there are certain personalities that are attracted to dressing in costume and role playing. And perhaps none of those types blend in well in the real world. I do not believe that is true, but perhaps evidence might point that direction. And yet, folks at the Renaissance Faires (again, in the spirit of disclosure I dressed up for Faires and taught juggling) are doctors and lawyers and engineers who shed their Renaissance skins and reintegrate into maistream society, quietly lurking until the can put on stockings again. [Do not, for a moment, think stockings are comfortable when your legs rival alpacas for hirsuteness.]

I have not LARPed. Unless … unless one counts SCA. Then I suppose I have LARPed. But where I was going with this is, I think Monster Camp may be enjoyable [though I did not enjoy it] but it is still cinema first, veracity second. All gamers are not emotional stunted, socially awkward dorks.

Check out these links for additional discussion on gamers in media.

• Potrayal of Gamers in Media
• The Gamers: Dorkness Rising

Read more Monster Camp reviews on Amazon

[SalmonMax]

The key, I believe, is balance. RPG's are, in essence, a form of escapism comparable to movies, television and books. Innocent and harmless unless they become the dominant force in your life, that is. Everyone needs a way to psycho-emotionally renew themselves...disconnect from the various sources of stress in one's life and find simple enjoyment. Most of the gamers I know use gaming in that vein, and you'd never know them as 'gamers' using classical stereotypes. They are successful in their professional and private lives, assertive, even (reasonably) attractive individuals.

But...as anyone who follows the mass media markets knows...those people are boring. What's FUN is the extremists. The ones who take it waaaaaaay too far. Look at the movie Trekkies (and, in a fictional way, Galaxy Quest). It doesn't focus on the millions of people who enjoy Star Trek enough to watch it if it's on, but don't think about it much otherwise. It focuses on the -nutcases-. And why not? Those are the people I don't know. Those are the ones in a shadowy subculture I'm only peripherally aware of. This movie has an obligation to educate and entertain, right? Well, kind of.

That kind of narrow focus means that most people will assume that's what ALL gamers (Trekkies/etc) are like. They've no way to determine otherwise, since their info is coming from one source, and that one source presents only one viewpoint. One could argue that it's incumbent on people then to seek out alternative viewpoints from other sources...but lets be honest. Why should they care enough to do that? Unless the issue is brought home somehow, most people would view this with casual curiosity and quickly lose interest. Do I read about model trains, or growing tulips? God no. What's more boring than someone else's hobby?

But I'd watch a show about model train freaks who build scale model maglevs in their backyard, and dress as engineers and conductors and go to big, weird train conventions.

I will say that gaming has strikes against it that other hobbies don't. For one, it's one that kids typically get into young...and typically don't get into if they have thriving social lives. Most kids would be in sports, band, camping, texting, etc...if they had those options. So it's the "other" kids that group up and get into roleplaying. That creates an impression that people remember as adults.

"Dungeons and Dragons? Oh yeah, all the dweebs used to play that in high school."

And there's also a quasi-religious sense that most people have that states that pure imagination (fantasy/scifi) is somehow...childish. It's okay for children to like magic and dragons and spaceships, but aren't you a bit old for that now? And then, not only to still LIKE those things, but to actually act them out? Do funny voices? Really? You DO that? How embarassing for you.

To say nothing of the very-not-quasi-religious sense that such games can lead one to worship pagan gods/demons and attempt to use witchcraft in one's life. Or that you'll totally lose your grip on reality and kill someone with your convention-bought faux katana.

Anyway, my point...which I veered off of way back in Paragraph 2...is that movies like Monster Camp are caught in a kind of vise. To earn attention and money, they find themselves having to attract attention to something most people would find astonishingly dull, or perhaps juvenile and a tich immoral. The easy, time-tested, investor-friendly way to do that is to make it entertaining...which means make it a freakshow. It's not fair, and it does a LOT to perpetuate negative preconceptions, but it's a natural byproduct of the competing needs to educate (secondary importance) and to entertain (primary importance).