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Abstract
The study is a qualitative film analysis. It seeks to determine the semiotic and cinematic structures that make gambling appealing in films based on analysis of 72 film scenes from 28 narrative fiction films made from 1922 to 2003 about gambling in North American and West European mainstream cinema. The main game types include card games, casino games, and slot machines. The theme of self-control and competence was identified as being central to gambling's appeal. These images are strongly defined by gender. The study was funded by ELOMEDIA, financed by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture as well as the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies. The limitations of the study are noted.
THE AUTHORS
Michael Egerer, Dr. Sos. Sc., is a researcher at the Department of Social Research and the Centre for Research on Addiction, Control and Governance CEACG (both University of Helsinki). The theme of his diploma thesis was the representation of alcoholism and bulimia in a German soap opera. He has defended his doctoral thesis on General practitioners' and social workers' conceptions of different addictions in 2014. In his research he concentrates on the institutional context of problem drinking, gambling, and eating in several European countries.
Varpu Rantala (MA) is Doctoral Candidate in Media Studies at University of Turku, Finland. Her forthcoming doctoral dissertation, funded by the Doctoral School of Audiovisual Media (Elomedia), analyses visualisation of addiction problems in cinema. Her previous articles about cultural images of addictive behaviors have appeared in, for example, Addiction Research & Theory, Rhizomes, and Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
GLOSSARY
Actants: actants are living (and non-living) actors in a story; there are different types of actants.
Aleatory: Caillois (1961) categorizes games into four types: (a) alea are games of chance, (b) agon are games of competition, (c) mimicry are games of simulation, and (d) ilinx are games of vertigo.
Exotactic: exotactic modalities actualized from outside the actant.
Endotactic: endotactic modalities actualized from within the actant.
Modality: an element of narrative analysis that assigns a positive or negative value to an actant's action in the story.
Notes
1 The Gambler, first published in 1867 (in Russian) by F. Dostoyevski, tells the story of the young tutor of a Russian aristocratic family, who becomes obsessed with gambling.
2 For a thorough survey and analysis of the basic cinematic techniques such as mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound, see CitationBordwell & Thompson (2010). For analysis of employing such cinematic techniques, and interpretations of their emotional effects in films on addiction problems, see CitationRantala (2013). For recent discussion on analyzing emotional aspects in cinema in more general sense, see Laine (2013).
3 Professional gamblers can indeed exploit occasional players, because of their greater experience and competence (Bjerg Citation2010; Walker, Citation1992). Experienced players, however, are prone to establish problem gambling behavior, which is harder to identify in terms of the commonly assessed financial losses (Bjerg, Citation2010).
4 By “affective” we refer to emotional (or pre-emotional) engagement discussed recently in media studies (see Paasonen, Citation2011) and sociology, as well as in studies on drug and alcohol use-related issues and addictive behaviors (Palomäki, Laakasuo, & Salmela, 2013). In this article, we understand “affect” broadly as engagement that results from being affected in both an emotional and intellectual sense by the perception of an occurrence.
5 The narrative is constructed of actants, which can be laid down in an actant model (Sulkunen and Törrönen 1997a, 1997b). This model involves a subject, a desirable objective, a sender who sets the narrative into motion, a receiver, who benefits from achieving the objective, a helper of the subject, and an opponent with his/her anti-helper. Fairy tales are a good example of this kind of structure, where the hero sets out on a mission ordered by the king, with the help of a magical sword, fighting against an evil wizard and his villains, and finally being married with the princess. Based on Greimas, Sulkunen and Törrönen (1997a, 1997b) developed the actant model towards a general model of narrative structures, which can be applied to all kinds of narratives. The Actor Network Approach (e.g. Høstaker 2005, Demant 2009) emphasizes that in addition to persons, all kinds of objects can be understood as actants in this model.
6 For the idea of focalization in narrative semiotics, see Sulkunen & Törrönen (1997b).
7 The German literary scholar Ernst Robert Curtius (1866–1956) was a pioneer in studying “topos” in the 1930s. See CitationHuhtamo (2011).