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"Sui" Generis: Mock Violence in an 
Urban School Yard 
Ann Richman Beresin 

During a year's field work in an urban working class, racially 
integrated, public elementary school yard in Pennsylvania, a type of 
popular children's game emerged that had been underreported in the 
folk play literature. Mock violent games, among both boys and 
girls, appeared as hitting, pushing and slamming games, ranging in 
violence from the overt, although playful, to the covert. The non-
violent violent handball game of "Suicide" will be examined in 
detail in this paper, and it will be argued that the hybridity of the 
game reflects its paradoxical status as mixt genre and unique 
cultural marker. 

The genre of mock violent games includes a range of other 
classic folk game genres: wrestling games, tagging games, and 
handball games. One could argue, given the emotional charge of 
mock violent play, that any game from any genre could become 
mock violent. Genre here is, as Ben-Amos phrased it, a "conceptual 
category of communication, not classification" (1976). With this in 
mind, if we extend Sutton-Smith's notion of play fighting as custom 
and stylized communication, (1973, 1980), we can then examine the 
larger tensions in the play fighting and seek to understand its mixed 
messages within the school context. It will be argued that mock 
violent games, here seen as hybrid forms of varying complexity, 
need to be examined not only in terms of their mixed history, but in 
their overlapping physical locations. 

Games of the body, with the exception of clapping, tagging, 
and stepping games, have been virtually ignored in the cannons of 
American children's folklore (Bronner, 1988; Knapp and Knapp, 
1976; Newell, 1963; Jones and Lomax Hawes, 1972), and their 
absence reflects both a romanticism in many children's lore collec-
tions, and the limitations of orally-based field recording. This 
fieldwork was performed in the full 1991-1992 school year and 
involved extensive videotaping of children's spontaneous play in the 
recess school yard, and the presentation of these videotapes back to 
the participants for their native commentary. One hundred and four 
third, fourth, and fifth grade boys and girls were observed, 
audiotaped, and videotaped during recess. Forty-seven children 
served as native experts, including Tim, Paulo, Wahid and their 
friends. 

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Beresin 

Mock Violent Games as a Genre 

First it seems wise to clarify what we mean by "mock" violent games. The 
animal play literature of Aldis (1975) and Bertrand (1976), and the rough-
and-tumble literature of Blurton-Jones, and also Pellegrini, and Boulton and 
P.K. Smith have made the case for mock violence being clearly distinct from 
real violent action (Blurton-Jones, 1976; Pellegrini, 1987, 1988, 1989; 
Boulton and P.K. Smith, 1989; Hartup and Laursen, in press). In general 
when animals or humans are playing mock violently, the actors stay together 
after the bout is over, and as Goffman and Kendon have noted, the face is 
visible and in the mode of presentation (Goffman, 1963, 1967; Kendon, 
1990). In real violence, eye contact is brief, if at all; one actor retreats, and 
the participants separate. This is not to say that real bruises do not occur over 
mock violent play, but as my own observations have confirmed, the two are, 
in general, distinct and distinguishable. As Gregory Bateson framed it, "the 
nip connotes the bite, but not what the bite connotes" (Bateson, 1955). The 
distinction is necessary as adult perceptions of violence have been utilized 
for the control of children's play and the elimination of recess periods at this 
school in the 1990-1991, and 1992-1993 school years. 

Hybrid Forms 

A case will be made for the examination of mock violent games as 
constituting its own momentary hybrid genre. Two games that I will mention 
by way of introduction are "The Fighting Game" and "Slap Boxing." In this 
way we can begin to tease apart what is meant by hybridity and point out its 
utility in game analysis. 

"The Fighting Game" is a popular wrestling game, performed in a 
square of nine boxes, and the object for each of the two facing opponents is 
to push the other out of the square. Among some players at the school, when 
one person's foot was pushed outside the box, the other had won the round. 
Among others, especially third graders, you were still considered in the 
game as long as you hopped on one foot even if you were pushed "out." 
There is a simple hybridity here, but it is merely in the form. Although many 
wrestling forms use squares or rings as marked spaces, here the one place for 
the game was a space marked by nine boxes, and acknowledged by the 
children as created but not used for ball bouncing. The nine square ball box 
became synonymous with "The Fighting Game," and when "The Fighting 
Game" was asked about in indoor interview settings, inevitably a pretend 
nine square box was drawn. 

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"Sui" Generis 

Another example of a simple mixed form is visible in the game "Slap 
Boxing" where two players face each other and attempt to slap each other's 
face, while dancing like boxers, and often moving from one location to 
another. The first to slap or tap the face of the opponent five times is the 
winner. This was a favorite on line and in the hallways, and on the stairs, in 
transitional times and places. It was "tag" and it was "boxing." And like 
"The Fighting Game" it was confrontational, but playful, a mix of specific 
genres now forming a relatively new form, at least in this context. 

So far these examples merely show the extension of what Gary Allen 
Fine called Newell's Paradox, where William Wells Newell noted that 
children were both conservative and inventive with their games, and may 
reflect the lively slipperiness of performance centered folklore collection in 
general. Abraham's "The Complex Relations of Simple Forms," in Ben-
Amos's text Folklore Genres suggests that play forms are perhaps the most 
slippery in the range between what he called "conversational" and "fictive" 
genres (Abrahams, 1976). One might also wonder if people are more playful 
with their genres than earlier cannons would have us believe. 

But the most interesting and significant use of the hybrid image is in the 
study of mixed genres that indeed are two different languages, as Bakhtin 
has suggested, two different stories being told in the same game, 
simultaneously (Bakhtin, 1981). It is here that we turn to the puzzle of 
Suicide. 
"Sui" 

Sui, or Suicide, is a handball game, most beloved by fourth and fifth 
grade European American and African American boys in this one school. 
The object is to throw a tennis ball hard at the wall, and have it return and 
intentionally touch a player. If someone is touched by the ball, or if the ball 
is caught one handed as a fly ball, the touched must run to the designated 
wall or base and shout "Sui." If you do not, or do not get there fast enough, 
you are at risk of "beaning," or intentional slamming with the ball. As Tim, 
one sixth grader, told me during the first week of school, if you're collecting 
games, "you gotta have Sui." At the core of the discussion will be where the 
"suicide" is in a game that does not refer to any version of stylized death. Its 
mix of dramas within the game's form point to the utility of the examination 
of hybridity wherever pieces are missing from the tale. 

Details of Sui include the shouting of "Relay" or "No Relay" where, if 
the touched person is far from the one with the ball, the ball may be relayed 
to another player who can then bean him. I was told you were not allowed to 
play "Sui" in gym, "cause you'd get suspended," yet the occasional bruises 
and hollers of "Suicide" were far less violent than the blood shed over 

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Beresin 

territory in basketball or over turn taking in any other traditional game form 
when the bell rang. If one was hit by the ball three times, also known as 
having been "threed," one was to submit to the punishment of "the tunnel" 
where hitting was overt, although the players all mentioned that doing the 
tunnel was not done at school. Sui was clearly the most popular boy's game 
next to basketball and football, and mentioning Sui to any third through sixth 
grader was like mentioning a favorite dish from the old country to a group of 
expatriates. "Sui, Sui, we know Sui." "I'm the best at Suicide." 

There is a mystique to Sui, even to the adults who do not allow it in 
gym, in part due to the intentionality of trying to bean, or bruise someone, 
and in part, due to the power of the name. The child experts, male and 
female, were unable to explain the meaning of the game title, although one 
fifth grader offered that it is called that because if you play, "'you're Suicide." 
It was typically played by fourth and fifth grade boys in a secluded alley 
way, between the school buildings. Its simpler cousin Wall Ball, a straight 
ball bouncing game led by individuals was often found on the perpendicular 
wall, in the public space of the school yard. Joe, a fifth grader, said Wall Ball 
is "like the same thing, but you just don't, just don't hit nobody in Wall Ball." 
The fifth graders, clearly the experts in the handball variations, noted that the 
younger children played Wall Ball, and that Sui was for the older ones. 
Paulo, a fifth grader said, "our class, all of us made up all the games." 

Video Example: Suicide, May 11, 1992 

Alley courtyard between buildings. 5 players, mostly fifth and fourth 
grade boys. 

Diagram Time Action Voice 

W 
 a   

  
  

1 
1 

 
 

10:33:27 

10:33:31 B drops ball 
(it touched him, so 
he runs back to 
touch wall) 

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   "Sui" Generis 

 10:33:36 A picks up ball  

 10:33:41 A throws it at wall  
 10:31:47 C catches it/throws  
  it at wall  
 10:33:54 Fumbles, D throws it  
  at wall,  
 10:34:03 B catches it/throws it  
  at wall  
 10:34:06 E catches it  
 10:34: 11 E throws it at wall  
 10:34: 17 B catches it.  
  Throws it at wall  

 10:34:21 E catches it  

 10:34:26 Caught as fly ball,  

  boy goes to  
  touch wall  
 10:34:25 T catches it and  
  throws it high  
 10:34:32 E catches it as  
  fly ball.  
  T tries to hide  
  behind other  
  boy sneaks  
  to wall  
    

    

    
    

 10:34:36  "Bean Him!" 
  Throws it at T  
  misses him  
  hits wall  

 10:34:38 T runs to wall  

   "Sui!" 

 10:34:49 Throws it hard to  
  get C slam 
  Hits him  

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Beresin 

10:34:54 
10:34:56 

10:35:13 

w 
a 

  
  
  

 

1 
1 

10:35:16 

10:35:20 

10:35:26 

10:36:33 

D throws it at wall E 
goes after it, changes 
direction Returns to 
go get ball 

Camera follows little guy 
running out side door 
through alley way, out to 
main yard. Camera follows 
him and films perpendicular 
game of Wall Ball 

Ball is thrown high by one 
boy standing in front near 
wall, the crowd that is 
catching is out of view 

Boy who catches it in the 
crowd comes to first boy's 
place 
Boy stays there, throws 
again 
(no one has caught ball 
directly) 
Boy throws again 

When a group of fifth grade boys watched the first part of this clip in a 
small interview setting, the videotape was turned on and there was 
immediate laughter. 

(---  
---    

Laughter, laughter, laughter! 
Shhh.) 

30 



 

"Sui" Generis 

--- Hey, there go Big Joe, ya'll see Big Joe? 
- No 
--- Look at Big Joe. 
--- There's Brian, there's Brian 
- There go Brian. 
ARB   Is this Sui? 
- Yeah 
--- This all Sui. 
--- See Wahid missed the ball, see him running for the base? 
ARB  Yeah 
-- Now he got the ball 
---- There go Brian, he gonna throw it at him. 
ARB  Where' s the base? 
--- See? 
--- The base is the wall, you gotta call "Suicide" 
- You gotta say "Sui" 
--- See he ran to it after he touched the ball? 
- See Brian didn't touch the wall yet so he can still get hit.  
--- See Brian didn't touch the wall yet so he can still get hit. -

That's what I'm sayin' 
---- You hit it and you ran. Oh me? I hit it? 
--- You dropped it. 
---- Where am I ? 
--- You ain't on there; it's only Michael, Wahid, Paulo and Brian. 
- Yeah 
--- (giggles.) 

For the third graders who were watchers of Sui, but never participants, 
their game was the simpler Wall Ball, with its simple authoritarian individual 
turn taking. One is up front and bouncing the ball off the wall, and someone 
in the group catches it, and then it is their turn up front. This is in direct 
contrast with Sui's shifting format of the one with the ball having power in 
the back, and the one up in front, at risk of multiple negative attention from 
those in the back. 

This is not unlike the visible formats of third versus fifth grade 
classroom behavior in this one school, suggesting that Sui is in itself a 
parody of identification with adult authority, or perhaps of classroom 
participation itself. Although the "it" role is usually ambivalent, according to 
Gump and Sutton-Smith, here the "it" role is consistently negative (Gump 
and Sutton-Smith, 1971). No one brags about being it, or being hit in 
Suicide. The parallel drama in the classroom is also the ambivalence of being 
called on, or being 

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"it," having the classroom's eyes on you, especially if you are a fifth grade 
working class boy in this rather restrictive school. Here too, the power of 
peers to make you squirm or come to your aid is in a relayed, indirect form, 
from the back. 

Bourdieu and Passerson argue that symbolic violence is typically reflec-
tive of institutional violence (1990), and one could argue that the drama of 
mock violent play in Suicide is a direct reflection of the constructed 
emotional violence in the fifth grade classrooms. Turner in his marvelously 
entitled: From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, wrote of 
symbolic ritual as the expression of conflict (Turner, 1982). The drama of 
the game, I would argue, is such a symbolic ritual in this rather restrictive 
authoritarian place, where the last minutes of recess were called "the worst 
part of school." This is not unlike the parallelisms found in game forms and 
in cultural communication patterns, such as Farrer's study of the Mescalaro 
Apache tag, or studies of house and meals which can be said to be 
symbolically related to an entire ethos (Farrer, 1976). 

"Sui" as Historically Hybrid 

The puzzle of the name of Sui lends support to its being a game of 
indirect symbolic violence, yet the acceptance of such an explanation for the 
mock violent drama does not explain the name itself. It is here that the 
possibilities of historical hybridization enter. 

Handball's history, according to Tylor dates back to the fourteenth 
century where it was "particularly suited to soldiers shut up in castle yards" 
(Tylor 69). Although handball variations, including Wall Ball and Step Ball, 
which were also found at the school, were readily found in Ferretti's and also 
Dargan and Zeitlin's collections of urban play, no mention was made in any 
collection of such a mock violent version as Sui (Ferretti, 1975; Dargan and 
Zeitlin, 1990). 

In Brewster's 1953 text American Non-Singing Games, there is listed 
another Sui, S-o-o-e-y, the only other Sui I found in print. In "S-o-o-e-y," a 
stick and can game, one player is excluded and does not have his own can 
and all run to a designated base and yell "Sooey" very loudly and return and 
see who is the one excluded and left can-less. Referred to as an Eastern 
European game of "Sau Ball" or literally "Pig Ball," the initial drama had 
something to do with a farmer and a lost pig. The school is located in an area 
with a large Eastern European immigrant population, with Polish immigrants 
being perhaps the largest white ethnic group in the school. 

But like the two simple examples of The Fighting Game and Slap 
Boxing, questions of the game's origin are interesting but tell us little of the 

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"Sui" Generis 

current meanings of the "S-u-i-cide." It points to the significance of utilizing 
both the theoretical tool of historical hybridity and its Bakhtinian cousin 
reversal, along side the magnifying lens of physical contextual reflection. In 
a sense the fact that the children called it both "Sui" and "Suicide" marked 
its double status as a mixed genre, a "double voiced" form that is both ball 
game and a death drama, school yard game and institutional game. 

"Sui" Generis? 

In conclusion, we need to examine to what extent hybrid genres are, like 
mock violent games, Sui Generis, at least for the analytical moment, for the 
communications systems of the children and the teachers are in a dynamic 
unique to the context. Secondly, since the connection of games to similar 
genres, and an examination of their uniqueness is necessary if comparative 
work is to be possible, it requires us to play our own hybrid game of layered 
emic conceptual analysis and etic conceptual reevaluation. It can be said that 
the paradox that performance centered hybrid study has stumbled upon is the 
uniqueness of things generic. 

And lastly, the categorization of games layed out by the Opies, in 
Children's Games in Street and Playground, or by Caillois, in Man, Play 
and Games, must be challenged by each context, as we have shown, for 
mock violent games are one and many genres simultaneously. Many game 
collections simply avoid classification and return to the nineteenth-century 
alphabetized dictionary form initiated by Lady Gomme, or choose to 
organize by region, or whimsey, or both, in Schwartzman's classic, aptly 
named: Transformations: The Anthropology of Children 's Play. The hybrid 
genre thus not only teases us into examining the mixed messages within the 
place of study, a most useful pointer in understanding tension filled contexts, 
but also invites us to examine the messages encoded in our own sport of 
genre boxing. 

University of Pennsylvania 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

The author would like to thank the children of "The Mill School" and. The 
Spencer Foundation for their support during this project. 

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