Darkon

Last night I watched a documentary called Darkon. It's about a community of fantasy LARPers.

We've been blessed with a ton of really wonderful documentaries the past few years -- Some Kind of Monster, Grizzly Man, The King of Kong, An Inconvenient Truth, Supersize Me -- and I'd put this one up in that category.

Mostly because I saw a part of myself in some of these people. If I had taken a few different turns in life, I know I'd be out there beating people with padded swords instead of working in Hollywood. Whether you're role-playing in Darkon, playing World of Warcraft, rolling dice, reading a novel or writing a screenplay, I think you're exercising the same set of muscles, and scratching the same kinda itch.

For example: there's a scene where the very young son of one of the players spends five minutes beating the crap out of an imaginary army of undead. That was me. And, given that I've spent the last five years working on getting a movie made that's called The Un-Dead, you could say the kid still is me.

(Especially given the fact that I watched this movie after writing ten pages in a novel about a boy who hangs around with Frankenstein's Monster).

I say this because the movie not only follows the lives of the people who play this game, but also the in-game dramatic arc. It comes down to a massive combat between an evil empire and an alliance. The camera follows the leader of the alliance against evil.

In one version of this reality, the alliance leader is a stay-at-home dad playing a character named Brannon. In the other version, the leader is a professional actor playing a character named Aragorn. Both real men are playing similar characters, doing and saying similar things in a similar scenario. The only thing that's different is who they are in real life.

One of the themes of the doc is that these people have kinda hum-drum lives, and playing characters in a game offers a release and escape -- they feel they can't change who they really are, but they can easily change who their fantasy selves are.

But if you look at the Brannon/Aragorn example, we see the exact opposite. Meaning: the fantasy is the constant, whereas the reality is what changes. Thus you could say that reality is more mallable than the fantasy, and thus should be the true thing about themselves people should focus on changing.

I discovered this idea in Hagakure when I first read it, and this movie expands on the concept.

There's a moment when Brannon is plotting out his fantasy battle plan, while in the background an Army general on television is discussing the U.S.'s battle plan in Iraq. I thought: is the movie saying, look at this one guy role-play a fantasy fight for freedom while other people fight and die for real? Or is it saying: no matter who you are, it's within our natures to find wars to fight? The doc doesn't comment either way -- it gives the image and moves on.

But later, we meet a couple of Darkon players who actually have fought in Iraq. One guy is describing a dangerous situation he faced, and he remembers thinking -- to paraphrase -- damn, I have to be careful, this isn't Darkon, anymore.

A third player describes his team as small and scrappy and given to guerilla warfare. By way of comparison in their fight against the evil empire, he says they're like Al-Qaeda versus the massive United States. Again: are we giving shame-shame fingers to this guy for putting his fantasy war in context with a real war? (His girlfriend rolls her eyes when he says this). Or, again, are we saying the the same compulsions exist in us all, and these guys have just found a safe outlet? Despite the eye-rolling girlfriend, the doc doesn't comment either way.

Still later, we watch the different teams negotiate, double-deal and backstab. I was instantly reminded of Survivor, or any number of other "reality" shows that involve team strategies necessary to win. Again: who's more "real?" Who's more "cool?"

At the very end of the movie, Brannon gives us a monologue that's one of the most cogent sets of thoughts I've ever heard regarding the value of imagination in everyday life. His viewpoint could equally apply to fantasy role-playing and Hollywood.

But I'll let you watch Darkon and find out for yourself what he has to say...