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[Policing Protesters; Table-Top Game]Biblio.com
Jeu des Manifestants
1895réf. 1270431895. Paris: n.d. ca 1895. Original box 85 x 73 x 20 mm covered in gilt-patterned paper with mounted color illustrated title on outside lid and printed instructions slip on inside lid. With 8 printed rectangular card game pieces plus the rare color printed solution sheet 120 x 120 mm folded twice. Minor split to one edge of the lid a few small tears to the sheet otherwise a very good and complete example of this rare and fragile game. § A very early apparently the first issue of this French "game of protesters" in which the player takes on the part of a police officer attempting to prevent people from assembling at a demonstration. Not located in OCLC although other searches reveal copies in the Indiana Lilly Library in the Jerry Slocum Mechanical Puzzle Collection one within a "coffret de jeu" a boxed group of puzzles and games at the Musée du Jouet de Poissy and another a variant in which the game pieces are triangular at the Marseille Musée des Civilisations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée MUCEM. Later issues with varying artwork can also sometimes appear. The Marseille museum's copy featured in a forum held on February 5 2024: "Faut-il parler des violences policières" "Should we talk about police brutality". The curator Mireille Jacotin explained: "Jeu des manifestants is a game in which you are the hero that is to say the police officer and as the accompanying instructions explicitly state you are firmly positioned on the side of the public authority responsible for maintaining order. In reality the game consists of arranging a set of cardboard pieces-printed on a right-angled triangle-shaped board-in such a way as to ensure that no two red dots end up on the same line. The underlying concept is to simplify the police's task by ensuring that they do not face a mere undifferentiated crowd-and certainly not any organized lines requiring a tactical breach such as a battlefront during wartime. The game board features no specific characters; instead it presents a simple grid-comprising lines and sectors-that serves as a framework for devising and visualizing a strategic plan atop a generic cartographic representation of public space. The red dots in this scenario represent the demonstrators. On the lid of the box however is an urban scene: an overturned double-decker bus a urinal figures stirring in the distance and a policeman in the foreground." For the original French see https://www.davduf.net/le-jeu-des-manifestants-1895. It seems likely this game was inspired by the many protests that took place in Paris throughout the 1890s including the birth of the international May Day demonstrations. unknown
