Play – as Huizinga defines it above – is ultimately generative. It creates an order that would not otherwise come into being: in the middle of the twentieth century we see a narrowing of horizons. They are not so much being allowed to play as they are being encouraged to engage in what might be called a kind of “socratic” play. The doll or the model car has a specific way that the user is encouraged to engage with it in, and to do otherwise is a kind of perversion.

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