#Entertainment | Author William Fietzer

Posted on March 26, 2024May 2, 2024 by William Fietzer

Escape Rooms: Not for Faint of Heart

Fun and Fantasy of Escape Rooms

Most of us enjoy repeating pleasurable experiences. Whether they involve fishing in a favorite trout stream or reenacting a scene from a memortable movie, people enjoy imagining how they would act if they could single-handely land a giant tarpon or bring the fiendish Professor Moriarity to justice. Escape rooms offer a chance for engaging in such fantasies. At least, that’s what we thought when we signed up for one to celebrate my wife’s birthday. However, we discovered not everyone is comfortable with having the fantasticl come to life.

What Are Escape Rooms?

Before discussing our escape room experience, let’s examine the concept. Escape rooms are one or more rooms in which players engage in “live-action, team-based games [in which they] discover clues, solve puzles, and accomplish taskes.” Most often, the goal is, as the name implies, to escape the game site within a given time frame.

The themes of these games originate from popular culture such as the exploits of Sherlock Holmes or the writings of Edgar Alan Poe. These two luminaries formed two of the offerings in the escape room we contacted. However, because of my wife’s interests in medicinal herbs and J.R.R. Tolkien, we chose to escape from a magic apothecary’s shop, perhaps echoing the tribulations suffered by Charles Dickens‘ heroine Nell Trent in The Old Curiosity Shop.

History of Escape Rooms

Origins

Although escape rooms seem a relatively new concept, the idea of escaping from a room or situation occurred as early as the 1970s. The advent of point-and-click adventure games led to the development of interactive in-game objects. The earliest of these, Planet Mephius, came out in Japan in 1983. Its popularity led to the first interactive trapped-in-a-room scenario with John Wilson’s Behind Closed Doors in 1988.

From Video Game to Physical Reality

These and other virtual reality games prompted Takao Kato to wonder in 2007 “why interesting things didn’t happen in my life, like they do in books.” The result: the Real Escape Game, the first experiential entertaintment game created in 2007. From there, the number of real life escape rooms proliferated throughout Asia and Europe, reaching the United States in 2014. As of 2022, gaming experts estimate escape rooms number over 600 sites in the U.S. alone.

Escape Room Overview

As the name implies, the “rules” are (deceptively) simple. Find clues leading to escaping the room within the allotted time, usually 45-60 minutes. Anywhere from two to ten players participate at any one time, and the challenges are usually more mental than physical. Depending on the theme, different games require different skill sets although expert knowledge in any field is not required. Any information required to solve a puzzle should be provided within the room’s contents.

Since the overall goal of the experience is entertainment, well-designed rooms contain provisions to insure a successful escape. Hints in the form of written notes, audio clues, and video instructions help players along in their pursuit of escape. In our game, the gamemaster provided helpful suggestions through messages that appeared in a “magic mirror.” As our allotted time dwindled, these hints grew more and more direct. Fortunately, we managed to escape and win the game with a little under three minutes to spare.

Escape Room Strategies

Exiting an escape room requires the employment of several basic skills. problem-solving, lateral thinking (thinking outside the box), and teamwork. The group must direct its efforts to solve a sequence of challenges or puzzles to unlock the door and leave the room within the allotted time. Puzzles may include word games, cyphers, riddles, and basic mathematical problems. Physical activity may include searching for physical objects, navigating mazes, or assembling clues.

Escaping our room involved all of these skills and activities. The six adults broke up into pairs. One pair investigated and activated the alchemical and pharmaceutical equipment in the room, another pair assembled and interpreted clues, while a third monitored the time limit and hints provided by the dungeon master. None of this activity was planned or formally agreed upon beforehand; to our our relief and surpose it just happened.

Cautions and Controversies

Adult Impressions

Our reactions seemed to typify those following the adult escape room experience. No one coordinated our activities, but we surmounted the challenges and obstacles within the room and escaped. Despite the lack of direction and low-level anxiety, the adults employed teamwork and crisis management to solve the puzzles.

Reservations

Though the adults said they had fun and enjoyed the experience, some expressed qualms about deriving enjoyment from artificial entrapment. Granted our confinement was voluntary, but what if we had failed? In all likelihood, the gamemaster would have granted us extra time. But what if we were actually trapped? What if the door remained closed, the gamemaster had a stroke, and we remained sealed in the room like Boris Karlov in The Mummy?

Empathy

My August 2022 post on reading to one another seems relevant here. It mentions Neil Postman‘s 1984 prediction from his book Amusing Ourselves to Death. There he discusses how television’s sacrifice of quality information for corporate profit could become boring reality. Moreover, such entertainment desensitizes those who watch it. Similarly, interactive real-life games advances people’s detachment from the emotional information in physical reality one step further. If they derive enjoyment from physical entrapment, does escaping that reality desentitize them from the plights of people trapped in real-world predicaments? How empathetic can we be to the victims of human trafficking or enslavement, for example, when our escape is just minutes or a safeword away ?

One might argue that voluntary participation makes all the difference. Choosing one’s entrapment negates any guilt that might accrie about people stuck in real-life situations not of their choosing. However, the thrill one feels about being trapped in a situation seems cheap knowing one can escape at any time. Just say the safe word, and the catharsis derivied from achieving that objective diminishes as well.

Children’s Response

My grandsons’ reactions to the escape room experience seem instructive at this point. Aged seven and four, both boys went willingly into the apothecary room and explored the phials, bottles, and rudimentary pharmacy equipment within. But when the youngest spotted a small, hissing dragon painted in a corner of the room, he retreated to his mother’s arms for the rest of the hour. The older boy coped by hunching down in an out-of-way corner and played Mario Cart on his cellphone. After our escape, neither boy expressed enjoyment of the experience until the astute gamemaster rewarded with magic wands for their courage and perseverance.

Escape Room Takeaways

Caregiver Options

Critics might say the boys’ uneasiness could have been avoided if the adults had practiced due diligence in choosing the theme. Child-oriented versions of escape rooms do exist. However, the magic apothecary theme seemed least threatening among the choices available at this particular escape room.Other options include disignating one of the adults to stay with the boys, leaving them with a sitter, or having them stay home altogether. But since they too wanted to engage in their grandmother’s birthday celebration, that didn’t seem a viable alternative.

Silver Linings

On the other hand, the boys’ witnessed trusted adults coping as best they could in a mad scramble for clues to free themselves. They could regard this in years to come as a learning experience, enlightening if not enriching. Perhaps if more precautions had been taken, the youngsters’ apprehensions would have diminished. At the same time, it’s also true that their fears were more genuine than the adults’ satisfaction in achieving their make-believe goal. Given the proliferation of these establishments throughout the United States, caring parents and grandparents should review these establishments beforehand and ask questions. Some horror-themed escape rooms, for example, employ escaping from physical restraints like handcuffs or zip ties, so be careful. Make certain to keep the mental and emotional demands of the escape room experience age-appropriate. That applies to kids and adults alike.

Empathy

Regarding the desensitization aspect, how many kidnap victims seek to relive their experiences watching movies like Saw? Time and distance may lessen the psychological impact of what they felt, but reliving the experience, even in make-believe, dulls the emotional sensitivities of those who play such games and disrespects the legacies of those who endured, suffered, or died in real-life bondage.

What do you think? Write your thoughts and reactions in the Leave-A-Reply box below.

Posted on July 6, 2023July 6, 2023 by William Fietzer

Is Russia Trolling Walt Disney?

First Inkling

Indiana Jones 5 Like other film goers of the Boomer generation, I cut my movie-going teeth on adventure films like the Star Wars trilogy and (especially) Indiana Jones. Though they basically contain B-movie plots given A-list treatments, their over-the-top audacity and sheer enthusiasm made up for any shortcomings in probability or plot construction.

When Disney announced the premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (IJ5), I welcomed the fan reviews despite rumors of rewrites, production delays, and on-set ego conflicts. After all, what business endeavor, particularly an artistic ones, doesn’t have its share of creative differences?

However, the overwhelming negativity of many reviews, particularly those appearing on YouTube, surprised me. Titles like “How Could Indy Flop This Badly?” and “Indiana Jones Is a Total Disaster for Disney” hyperbolized the film’s failure while providing little basis for their declarations. Many reviewers’ analyses seemed totally specious. Some ascribed the movie’s failure to Phoebe Waller-Bridge‘s inadequate performance. Others blamed Harrison Ford as being too old for playing the role. A few perceived deeper, managerial forces at work which forced director James Mangold to reshoot scenes and alternative endings for various audiences.

Due Diligence

Due Diligence None of these criticisms made a lot of sense to me. If the film was this bad, mainstream media critics would roast it as well. However, most assessments tended to resemble the one provided by Inverse‘s Alex Welch which concluded the film “offers a surprisingly nuanced take on the power and utility of nostalgia.”

Reserving our judgments on that evaluation alone, my wife and I attended a Monday matinee performance and were enthralled the entire 142 minutes of run time. We left the theater shaking our heads. What gives?

Common Assessment

At first glance, It appears many of the film’s most negative critics have their own political and social axes to grind. Some, like Midnight’s Edge, berate Disney films in general for imposing a “forced diversity” component upon the audience. Others, like Ryan Kinel, creator of RK Outpost, go further, blasting Disney films for promoting what they consider “sjw (social justice warrior)/woke content.”

All of this type of negativity John Mangold and Quora commentator, Chris Walters, dismiss as part of a growing yet grudging fandom menace. Walters encapsulates the group’s feelings this way, “many who are unhappy with anything after the original three [Star Wars] movies, they don’t like Lucas tinkering with the original three movies. They don’t like the three prequel movies, although some of the dialog and Jar Jar Binks are terrible. And they definitely don’t like the three movies that Disney released to finish the Skywalker saga.”

Could It Be Something Else?

Russian Troll Farms But is this “fandom menace” comfined to Disney alone? Or is it more widespread and insidious? Finding reliable sources disscussing this topic is difficult. However, in one critical response toward The Last Jedi, researcher Morten Bay declared the backlash to that film should be regarded with more than a grain of salt. His study, “Weaponizing the Haters,” discovered 50.9 % of the negative reviews were “politically motivated or not even human.” In actuality, these fan base disagreements are “deliberate, organized political influence measures in disguise.” Their purpose–“increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society.”

Unfortunately, Morten is not so precise as to identify or give the number of Russian websites involved in such trolling activities. He also dismisses the total involvement by these trolls to no more than 21 per cent of the total online discussion. Still, provoking such dust-ups and amplifying discord through local and national media offers a tremendous return on sowing doubt and cultural uncertainty.

Conclusion

Given the rate of return, trolling a cultural icon like Disney by criticizing the movies they produce seems like a soft power weapon whose use is difficult to resist. As Vitaly Bespalov, a former operative for the St. Petersburg troll farm says, “Putin doesn’t see any conflict in such operations. He sees trolling of any kind as ‘an equivalent step to the so-called ‘negative actions’ that the West is doing against Russia.” Regarding the West’s reaction, he concludes “I think they are not used to these black games. They are more naive.”

What do you think? Let us know in the Leave a Reply section below.

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Posted on August 23, 2022 by William Fietzer

Revive an Old Entertainment Custom: Read to Each Other

Tired of the old TV shows? Exasperated by the new ones? Do reality programs, video-streaming, and subscription access leave you cold? Indifferent? Outraged? (All three?)

My wife and I feel that way, too. Aside from news about the latest headline-grabbing politician or an occasional PBS documentary, there’s little on evening television that keeps a mature couple amused and/or entertained between weekends. Cultural critic Neil Postman‘s 1984 prediction of television sacrificing the quality of information for the sake of advertising and corporate profit has become an all-too-established (and boring) reality.

What to do? We examined many differing forms of evening entertainment. Athletics and/or exercising seemed mistimed: it elevates our blood pressure right before bedtime. Movies are a more expensive form of television–action heroes fighting animatronics in front of green screens. And performance art of all kinds is reserved mostly for weekends which compounds our weekday problem.

Our solution? We went retro. How? By entertaining ourselves. Though both of us like music, neither of us is musically gifted. But we both like to read. So we decided to read selections fromour favorites to each other. Novel, short story, poetry: it doesn’t matter so long as it holds significance for one of us. Or both.

My wife says she has two selections in mind for our first session? As for my choice, since the date of our wedding anniversary happened earlier this month, I decided to resurrect a poem by John Ciardi I read for our marriage vows nearly a half-century ago. “Men Marry What They Need” appears below:

Men marry what they need. I marry you,
morning by morning, day by day, night by night,
and every marriage makes this marriage new.

In the broken name of heaven, in the light
that shatters granite, by the spitting shore,
in air that leaps and wobbles like a kite,

I marry you from time and a great door
is shut and stays shut against wind, sea, stone,
sunburst, and heavenfall. And home once more

inside our walls of skin and struts of bone,
man-woman, woman-man, and each the other,
I marry you by all dark and all dawn

and have my laugh at death.
Why should I bother the flies about me? Let them
buzz and do.
Men marry their queen, their daughter, or their mother

by hidden names, but that thin buzz whines through:
where reasons are no reason, cause is true.
Men marry what they need. I marry you.

Like it? Try dusting off an old poem or story you like and read it to your special one. You may not be Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning (we certainly aren’t), but who knows? Doing this could inspire me to write one myself for our next read-to-each-other evening.

I’ll keep you informed.