There’s a woman at this party. Light and pretty, she was the granddaughter of a noble lord. She hid her jaw beneath a fan, smiling with sparkling power when invited to the card table. Her hands are always bad and her grasp of the rules seems difficult. Forget her knife-sharp smile, you drown in the smoke filled with alcohol. Only when the night is over will you count your cents, realize how much you’ve lost, and think back to that bright smile.
In its extensive survey of the French aristocracy, Card Shark allows players to explore cross-dressing and homosexuality. The game’s tangible relationship with history is playful, broad, and concrete (as i wrote before). Card Shark freely borrows scammers and cheaters throughout history but also demonstrates the unique class-matching function of playing cards over a specific period of time. Card Shark’s France is rife with class conflict, as a rising bourgeoisie gains increasing power but is also isolated from the vast wealth of the ruling aristocracy. Beneath it all, Romanian caravans avoid persecution and the revolution is underway. Player character Eugene and his mentor, the Comte de Saint Germain, will explore all of this through cheating in the aforementioned card games, accumulating wealth, and uncovering the mystery at the heart. of the French monarchy. Although the story told is largely fictional, a combination of the Three Musketeers and a satirical comedy of manners, the characters’ social backgrounds are based on material history. . That extends to Card Shark’s description of cross-dressing, gender-incongruent, and transgender.
Before we dive into Card Shark’s relationship with gender, I’d like to start with a brief note on pronouns and how to discuss transgender potentiality of historical figures. I will use the pronoun he/he and the name Eugene for the main character of Card Shark. This is by no means undermining his ability to understand he is gay. It is not always wrong to label historical figures as gay or lesbian or transgender. It should be emphasized, however, that these are relatively modern labels that are unevenly and sometimes unfairly layered across a multitude of individuals and identities. These labels are not unresolved truths that we can use today to explain history in a pure way. Instead, they broadly define social experiences and norms by which people of all types judge and understand themselves. I especially like Kit Heyam’s wording of the recent gender history title: “Before We Transgender.” The implication is that past non-conformers share a heritage and many identities with current transgender people, but the specific label of “transgender” is relatively new.
Importantly, this doesn’t mean that we can’t resonate or make sense of strange historical figures. Instead, we should understand that they, like us, exist within the constraints and language of the culture around them. Eugene could be transgender, or sure enough, the game has enough room for him to be seen as such. But labeling him as such uses a language he cannot reach, even in Card Shark’s exaggerated historical fiction. I both wanted to respect the reality he would live in, if he were real, and respect the identity he might hold.
What makes Card Shark’s relationship with gender so sharp and profound is that it always understands its historical and material context. Card Shark has a common interest in exploring the fringes of 18th-century France. The notoriously disguised and promiscuous opera singer. Julie d’Aubigny and outstanding French-African composer and fencing player Knight de Saint-Georges Both have many guests. SW Erdnase does not exist, named after the pseudonym of the author of The Expert and The Card, despite a distinct gender at each turn, in a way that allows them to enter different fields and cultures. A Romanian camp serves as Comte and Eugene’s base of operations and, in one of the game’s more modern episodes, the two can donate to their mutual aid fund.
The main way the game explores the underprivileged is through the protagonist. Eugene exists at many fringe points. He is disabled (he cannot speak), a poor and illiterate orphan (he learns to read and write during the game). Early in the game, Eugene takes on the role of a servant, learning to aid Comte in various schemes that revolve around cheating at cards. Many of the tricks involved him taking wine for Comte or peeking at other players’ hands as he wiped the table. But as he and Comte advanced in society, Eugene’s presence as a servant at the dinner table became less and less justified. Enter: crossdressing.
The performance of the sexes allowed Eugene and Comte to acquire deviant wealth and made Eugene a member of upper society. Eugene uses gender markers, such as fans or makeup boxes, to perform gambling tricks. For example, he uses a makeup case to see other people’s hands and then moves the fan in a specific way to signal cards to Comte. Because Eugene is presented as a woman, the men at the table believe that he is incapable of wrongdoing or deceit. He pulls through, when his gender representation is good enough, even when he falls short of their expectations. In a practical sense, Card Shark simulates the experience of social gender, requiring players to role-play in accordance with their roles, with dire consequences if they fail. Cheating is a social game, just as it is a game of ingenuity.
This is not to say that Eugene’s gender representation is dishonest. In the game’s brief but expressive selection moments, Eugene can show enthusiasm or fatigue, readiness or oblivion for the act of cross-dressing. Similarly, Eugene is a name given by Comte, a name that Eugene can ultimately accept or reject. These are less expressive moments, but they’re enough to leave tantalizing gaps in a seemingly plain male protagonist. Players can embrace Eugene’s femininity or leave it as a tool.
However, at the present time, Eugene cannot live simply “as a woman”. He is still caught up in the drama of the plot. The game focuses on this limited period of his life. Although we consider him an elder after the French Revolution in the game’s end, much of Eugene’s future life is up to imagination. Eugene is exactly the kind of character that has been forgotten by history – someone whose strangeness can be left in the memory of meager parties where a forgotten woman lived for a short time.
But that’s the thing: Most of us will be forgotten, too. Many transgender people are misrepresented about their deaths or die before they can discover themselves. Card Shark understands gender as flexible, culturally and socially dependent, but still being chosen or accepted. It evokes and highlights a marginalized past, but it also allows players to engage with it and in small ways define it for themselves. Because of its sharp and playful relationship with the past, it opens up opportunities for players to understand themselves as part of a vast queer history.
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