March Madness and Agatha Christie

And then there was one!

Ten little Indians....68 teams march into a tournament with only one victor to emerge!

Ah, yes!  The great American elimination contest.  March Madness has begun!  We have our modern version of Roman Coliseum, only a little less bloody, and only symbolically final.

It is ingrained in us.  This desire to see many enter and one emerge victorious.  It permeates our sports.  It infects much of our literature.  And it is my guilty pleasure.  Reasonable or not, I love it.

Sweet Agatha Christie was a master at this.  Some of my favorite stage plays to do are based on her works. I will drop my plans and change whatever I'm doing to be in an Agatha Christie play.  I have twice been in The Mousetrap, and have been in Ten little Indians (and would LOVE to do it again).  Who is the killer as the characters are eliminated one by one.

The Hunger Games is a more updated version of this.  Twelve go into the contest, and only one emerges as the victor.  Many quest novels have as their focus a set of characters take up a journey but a vastly smaller subset emerge victorious.  The wave of horror movies in the 80s focused on this, especially the Friday the 13th  and Nightmare On Elm Street series.

Reality game shoes are often focused on this.  Survivor, American Idol, Top Chef, America's Next Top Model, The Bachelor and dozens more all feature the gradual whittling down of contestants.

So I guess it's hardly any wonder that the NCAA basketball tournament is so popular.  No extended multiple game playoffs, no second chances.  Win or you're gone!  And sometimes, once in awhile, an unexpected team will emerge from the pack, and defeat a team no one expects them to. Such as Oregon, a 12 seed upsetting Oklahoma State, a 5 seed, as happened yesterday.

We have a contest at work to pick winners, and I almost always lose, because I have an over attachment to underdogs and to the Big Ten.  I also tend to pick blue states over red states.  Unless it's Georgia - the home state rises above politics!

So get your brackets out, people!  It's going to be a bumpy, bouncy ride!