---
“'We are Legion': The Playful Politics of the Flash Mob”
Over the past decade flash mobs have risen as a global phenomena, temporarily transforming and transporting real spaces and people into a game-like space of “pretend,” and uniting communities across geopolitical boundaries through virtual media in the spirit of play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQLCZOG202k
This paper is built around three basic observations of the flash mob:
1) That flash mobs provide transient, suspended (playful) realities in otherwise socially, economically, and politically ‘landlocked’ spaces.
2) That flash mobs mobilize urban populations into these spaces via social media.
3) That social media is the mechanism for mobilization as well as viralization, communicating with global populations beyond the extent of the flash mob and activating new bases.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG24E0EbQ7E
Despite the playful departure from reality that flash mobs provide [1], they are also inherently locative, drawing the keen attention of the participants and the observers to the space of mobilization and the social, political, and economic context of the space that is both being engaged and ruptured by the flash mob’s act of play. As a result, flash mobs also offer an opportunity for populations to engage with their local identities, within the safety of a positive space that is temporarily disengaged from the socioeconomic and political ramifications of such discourse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7zvoM2Frko
Simultaneously, flash mobs also engage global citizenship at a viral level. As an organism, a flash mob is born within virtual media, as the mobilizing call ventures forth through Facebook or Twitter, and then later returns to the Internet via Youtube or other video sharing sites, fully developed and executed, where it then spawns, its footage posted and reposted hundreds or thousands of times, and inspires half a dozen more flash mobs across the globe. The memorial flash mobs for Michael Jackson demonstrate this point particularly, as one tribute video from the Netherlands surfaced on the internet, it inspired a new flash mob in Sweden, which inspired one in San Francisco, which inspired a massive one in Mexico, and so and so on to the point where the Cebu prison in the Philippines--famous for its prisoners’ Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ tribute several years before--produced its own MJ memorial tribute (with extremely high production values) a week later. To be a part of a flash mob is to claim both local and global citizenship, as the mobs coalesce around ideas and events that flow across boundaries through social media.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gHnZJTs8K4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7z8ZiRcQ9Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZC6JuTlOVM
As a result of the global-local engagement of flash mobs, the previous observations should be revised:
1) That flash mobs are not entirely removed from their social, political, and economic contexts, but rather create positive spaces through the invocation of play, which are not denuded of context but rendered harmless and safe within the transience of the space.
2) In offering this positive space, flash mobs provide populations the opportunity to engage with ideas of global-local identity as well as the social, economic, and political contexts of their spaces through the act of mobilization.
3) That flash mobs are inherently products of social media and global communication, thus flash mobs also offer crucial intersections for engaging global-local citizenship.
However, within all flash mobs there the tacit threat of “real” urban mobilization. Returning to the idea of flash mobs as play, Gregory Bateson theorizes that play and games are a type of metacommunication; what is demonstrated, acted out, or “played” with inside the playful space gestures towards another action or communication that exists in external reality (ex. “Battleship” guestures towards actual war games). In flash mobs, the underlying metacommunication is that of urban mobilization--a potential threat that is continually rendered harmless through the flash mob’s playfulness and transience. The current fascination with flash mobs has as much to do with the idealistic, “spaceship earth” mentality that they can engender as it does with their implicit dark side--every flash mob could easily become an angry mob. The Cebu prisoners’ Michael Jackson tribute is particularly haunting for this reason; though the intent is to invoke community and solidarity, a video of several hundred mobilized, almost fascistly atomized prison inmates shouting, “they don’t care about us” gestures a little too far towards the aggressive and destructive potential of the flash mob. When the bubble of suspended reality around flash mobs ‘pops’ the mobs become politicized, sometimes aggressive, and lingering. Such a threat is particularly pertinent at this moment, in the wake of the London riots as well as the ongoing evolution of both the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall St. movement. Each of these instances has relied upon the same social media resources to mobilize urban populations--some violently, some not--yet each of these is a flash mob after the “play” gets taken away; the people remain, still engaging with their global-local identities and their political, social, and economic realities, but the safety of a positive, playful space has disappeared.
[Note 1: Johan Huizinga and Roger Caillois both theorize that play is inherently “unproductive” and does not affect the reality external to the playful space.]
Over the past decade flash mobs have risen as a global phenomena, temporarily transforming and transporting real spaces and people into a game-like space of “pretend,” and uniting communities across geopolitical boundaries through virtual media in the spirit of play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQLCZOG202k
This paper is built around three basic observations of the flash mob:
1) That flash mobs provide transient, suspended (playful) realities in otherwise socially, economically, and politically ‘landlocked’ spaces.
2) That flash mobs mobilize urban populations into these spaces via social media.
3) That social media is the mechanism for mobilization as well as viralization, communicating with global populations beyond the extent of the flash mob and activating new bases.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG24E0EbQ7E
Despite the playful departure from reality that flash mobs provide [1], they are also inherently locative, drawing the keen attention of the participants and the observers to the space of mobilization and the social, political, and economic context of the space that is both being engaged and ruptured by the flash mob’s act of play. As a result, flash mobs also offer an opportunity for populations to engage with their local identities, within the safety of a positive space that is temporarily disengaged from the socioeconomic and political ramifications of such discourse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7zvoM2Frko
Simultaneously, flash mobs also engage global citizenship at a viral level. As an organism, a flash mob is born within virtual media, as the mobilizing call ventures forth through Facebook or Twitter, and then later returns to the Internet via Youtube or other video sharing sites, fully developed and executed, where it then spawns, its footage posted and reposted hundreds or thousands of times, and inspires half a dozen more flash mobs across the globe. The memorial flash mobs for Michael Jackson demonstrate this point particularly, as one tribute video from the Netherlands surfaced on the internet, it inspired a new flash mob in Sweden, which inspired one in San Francisco, which inspired a massive one in Mexico, and so and so on to the point where the Cebu prison in the Philippines--famous for its prisoners’ Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ tribute several years before--produced its own MJ memorial tribute (with extremely high production values) a week later. To be a part of a flash mob is to claim both local and global citizenship, as the mobs coalesce around ideas and events that flow across boundaries through social media.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gHnZJTs8K4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7z8ZiRcQ9Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZC6JuTlOVM
As a result of the global-local engagement of flash mobs, the previous observations should be revised:
1) That flash mobs are not entirely removed from their social, political, and economic contexts, but rather create positive spaces through the invocation of play, which are not denuded of context but rendered harmless and safe within the transience of the space.
2) In offering this positive space, flash mobs provide populations the opportunity to engage with ideas of global-local identity as well as the social, economic, and political contexts of their spaces through the act of mobilization.
3) That flash mobs are inherently products of social media and global communication, thus flash mobs also offer crucial intersections for engaging global-local citizenship.
However, within all flash mobs there the tacit threat of “real” urban mobilization. Returning to the idea of flash mobs as play, Gregory Bateson theorizes that play and games are a type of metacommunication; what is demonstrated, acted out, or “played” with inside the playful space gestures towards another action or communication that exists in external reality (ex. “Battleship” guestures towards actual war games). In flash mobs, the underlying metacommunication is that of urban mobilization--a potential threat that is continually rendered harmless through the flash mob’s playfulness and transience. The current fascination with flash mobs has as much to do with the idealistic, “spaceship earth” mentality that they can engender as it does with their implicit dark side--every flash mob could easily become an angry mob. The Cebu prisoners’ Michael Jackson tribute is particularly haunting for this reason; though the intent is to invoke community and solidarity, a video of several hundred mobilized, almost fascistly atomized prison inmates shouting, “they don’t care about us” gestures a little too far towards the aggressive and destructive potential of the flash mob. When the bubble of suspended reality around flash mobs ‘pops’ the mobs become politicized, sometimes aggressive, and lingering. Such a threat is particularly pertinent at this moment, in the wake of the London riots as well as the ongoing evolution of both the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall St. movement. Each of these instances has relied upon the same social media resources to mobilize urban populations--some violently, some not--yet each of these is a flash mob after the “play” gets taken away; the people remain, still engaging with their global-local identities and their political, social, and economic realities, but the safety of a positive, playful space has disappeared.
[Note 1: Johan Huizinga and Roger Caillois both theorize that play is inherently “unproductive” and does not affect the reality external to the playful space.]
No comments:
Post a Comment