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Humiliation
Dec. 23rd, 2006 12:50 pmI think that it was in Martin Amis's Money that I first came across the game "Humiliation". It was a game where you named films or books that you had not seen or read, and you scored points according to how many other people had seen the film or read the book.
I vaguely recall that one character at the dinner party, a keen fan of one-upmanship, just couldn't get the hang of the game at all, and kept naming books that he had read and films that he had seen. The standard British talent for self-deprecation eluded him. Perhaps because he was an American.
That, however, is by-the-by. It's surprising how many people who play this game come up with books which they haven't read, but which they think everyone else has read, only to find that no-one else has read them either. Usually they mention "classics" like War And Peace and then look dumbfounded when the only member of the dinner party to raise his hand to admit reading it is the visiting professor of Russian Literature from Balliol, who apologises with the rider: "but I haven't read it in English".
With movies, I have three that spring immediately to mind, and two of them are usually fairly ace scorers, while the third, which people expect to be an ace scorer, often is not.
The winners, in order (none of which I have seen) are Star Wars, Jaws and The Wizard Of Oz.
And you would be surprised at the number of people who have not seen The Wizard Of Oz.
The sad thing is, the really high scorers, such as The Godfather, are films which I have seen. And it's worse with books.
The good thing about this game is that people who have seen absolutely nothing have less of an advantage than you might think, because they are often unaware of that which they have missed.
Christmas is often a time when I can scratch off the list one or two of my high-scorers, and 2006 is no exception, with Jaws appearing on TV very soon. Will I watchit, thus removing a high scorer from "Humiliation"? I dunno.
I vaguely recall that one character at the dinner party, a keen fan of one-upmanship, just couldn't get the hang of the game at all, and kept naming books that he had read and films that he had seen. The standard British talent for self-deprecation eluded him. Perhaps because he was an American.
That, however, is by-the-by. It's surprising how many people who play this game come up with books which they haven't read, but which they think everyone else has read, only to find that no-one else has read them either. Usually they mention "classics" like War And Peace and then look dumbfounded when the only member of the dinner party to raise his hand to admit reading it is the visiting professor of Russian Literature from Balliol, who apologises with the rider: "but I haven't read it in English".
With movies, I have three that spring immediately to mind, and two of them are usually fairly ace scorers, while the third, which people expect to be an ace scorer, often is not.
The winners, in order (none of which I have seen) are Star Wars, Jaws and The Wizard Of Oz.
And you would be surprised at the number of people who have not seen The Wizard Of Oz.
The sad thing is, the really high scorers, such as The Godfather, are films which I have seen. And it's worse with books.
The good thing about this game is that people who have seen absolutely nothing have less of an advantage than you might think, because they are often unaware of that which they have missed.
Christmas is often a time when I can scratch off the list one or two of my high-scorers, and 2006 is no exception, with Jaws appearing on TV very soon. Will I watchit, thus removing a high scorer from "Humiliation"? I dunno.
