Croquet In The Film Heathers

An early scene in the 1988 American black comedy film “Heathers” features a game of croquet between several of the main characters. One Heather asks another if she will use her two shots or take the opportunity to knock her competitor off the court. The response is given is rhetorical: “Did you eat a brain tumor for breakfast?”, as she takes a foot shot and sends her opponent’s ball sailing into the bushes, illustrating the stark realities of this backyard sport. It is the brutality of croquet that makes it useful for studying the interactions of states in anarchy. In general, the competitive nature of croquet makes a realist perspective most applicable. The relative simplicity of croquet makes the realism of Thomas Hobbes (who predated modern

Power in croquet resists definition, but the key element is the ability of players to establish their own path to victory, while also preventing their opponents from doing the same. This means that the number of wickets scored is a component of power, but far from the only, or even most important. The structure of croquet allows a last place player to do just as much to dislodge the leading player’s lead as the second place player can. After all, a well-executed foot shot does as much does damage to its victim whether the foot shot administering player has passed two wickets or six. This quality falls squarely in line with the state of equality of “the weakest to kill the strongest” that Hobbes describes. Hobbes’ later assertion that from the equality of strength comes the equality of ability to achieve goals also holds in croquet. The ability to gain multiple shots over the course of a turn allows players, through luck or skill, to make large gains toward victory very quickly, and small mistakes or attacks by other players can severely hold a leading team back. For instance, despite clearing wickets five, six, and seven well before anyone else, Orange team ending the game in a three-way tie, having been unable to stop the advance of the Green and Black teams. This contradicts Mearsheimer’s emphasis on hegemony. He claims after reaching dominance in a region or in the world, a state becomes a hegemon, and that it then becomes a “status-quo power.” In addition to the uncertainty of a leading position, the fact that the leader has no greater ability to punish a losing player than anyone else makes the idea useless for analyzing anarchy in croquet, instead of seeking to be hegemons, players should look for ways to use the equality of power to