Life is Like an Arcade Game

[Year : 2019] [Title: Our world is like an arcade claw machine] [Medium:Acrylic painting on paper] [Size: 96cm x 60cm] For a small price, an arcade claw machine puts the player in full control over one’s situation and awards him/her with a sense of accomplishment when the claw successfully grabs the prize inside the glass box. For this rea- son, many people who feel that they are underachieving despite their effort find themselves drawn to the machine for easy compensation. The highly visible aspect of the machine triggers competitiveness in the player as well as the onlookers, resulting in an obsessive fervor for the prize. It is no longer just children who play these machines. In today’s society in which the correlation between hard work and successful life is becoming increasingly obscure, people often feel that their efforts are not yielding enough progress and become overly competitive. The arcade claw machine, in that sense, serves as a perfect metaphor of today’s society and its unhappy players.