The Time-Loop: Cycles of Play and Inequality

This video-essay analyses a selection of time-loop films, exploring how their unique puzzle structure evokes elements of play while highlighting racial disparities within this specific genre. The video-essay considers the playfulness of time-looping, beginning with an omniscient scene in Groundhog Day (1993) (a blueprint for time-loop films) and continuing with the more recent The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021). The repeated pattern of reliving the same day is compared to the trial-and-error processes of computer gaming, introducing play culture, which I argue is an integral part of time-loop films. Drawing on Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (1938) and Roger Caillois’s Man, Play and Games (1958), the video essay delves into the fundamental categories of play: chance, competition, simulation, and vertigo (explained further in the video-essay). These concepts are applied to different time-loop texts, often highlighting how white protagonists are placed in positions of power, setting the stage for the second part of the argument. In the time-loop genre, white protagonists typically overcome the loop through a combination of the aforementioned play categories. Films that follow the ‘Groundhog Day-Structure’ often depict characters engaging in self-competition, striving for personal improvement to escape the loop. In contrast, time-loop films featuring black protagonists, such as Naked (2017), Two Distant Strangers (2020), and Groundhog Day For a Black Man (2016), present the loop as a rigged game involving repeated suffering for these characters. Black protagonists face unjust and insurmountable challenges from adversaries and circumstances beyond their control. A dynamic that is seemingly foreshadowed in an early scene from The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, where a black character repeatedly dies in a video game. When asked by the white time-looping protagonist what he would do if he could relive the same day in reality, he responds, "other than this?" highlighting an allusion towards ongoing suffering. Unlike the playful omniscience granted to white time-loopers, black characters in the genre are often denied the opportunity to explore their world or experience any form of meaningful change. Instead, they endure a cycle of unfair play, in which they demonstrate resilience rather than omniscience. White characters, on the other hand, leverage their infinite knowledge for short-term indulgence or long-term spiritual fulfilment, which ultimately allows them to break free from the loop. These opportunities are often denied to black characters, revealing how the genre’s structure can be racially biased through an uneven distribution of rules and play, making us question whether the time-loop is a racist mechanism.