The on-going progress of this paper. Constructive criticism welcome, as always.... ---- “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. Though flash mobs can be games, with clear rules and uncertain outcomes (such as in the ‘Humans vs. Zombies’ game at the recent Indiecade convention in Culver City), as a matter of definition flash mobs are not strictly gamic--more often then not, though there are clearly defined rules and roles for every participant, the outcome of a flash mob is certain and predefined (ex. through the completion of a dance routine or other prespecified action). Yet, to anyone who has ever participated in or observed a flash mob, there is also something undeniably playful and game-like about it. The following flash mob video demonstrates this as participants slowly join in the Antwerp Station ‘Do-Re-Mi’ mob:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQLCZOG202k
This essential playfulness that is so akin to the reality of social gaming lies in the flash mob’s ability to create the “Magic Circle”--a term first coined by game studies theorist Johan Huizinga. Flash mobs offer a particularly useful demonstration of this concept as onlookers inevitably form a circular perimeter around the play-space (as seen in the video above.) In “The Definition of Play,” Roger Caillois elucidates on Johan Huizinga conceptualization of this magic circle and further defines it as a playful space that lies outside the traditional contexts of everyday reality:
To this end, though flash mobs are not in essence games, their playfulness still invokes the transient, ‘pure space’ of the magic circle. It is on this basis that this paper moves forward to examine how flash mobs use the safety of the magic circle to engage with the contextual, geopolitical realities of their physically occupied spaces.
We begin first with three basic understandings of the flash mob:
1) That flash mobs provide transient, suspended (playful) realities in otherwise socially, economically, and politically ‘landlocked’ spaces. In the example of the flash mob provided above, the Antwerp Station is a specific locale with ever present cultural, political, and socioeconomic ties and connotations, which are only temporarily suspended by the flash mob’s invocation of the magic circle. (As seen in the survey of participants who appear to be from varied demographic backgrounds that might in other case be completely removed from each other within the station.)
2) That flash mobs mobilize urban populations into these spaces via social media--Facebook and Twitter, predominantly.
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.
Despite the playful departure from reality that flash mobs provide, 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-political ramifications of such discourse.
The following flash mob video from the 2011 Bayonne Festivals demonstrates this clearly as the chief organizer quickly describes the variables involved in creating a flash mob, with a particular emphasis on identity (as expressed through their chosen colors, which reflect both their identities within teams and nationalities) and space-placement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG24E0EbQ7E
This point becomes even clearer when considering flash mob videos--arguably the final evolution and maturation of this play form--from a semiotic perspective. Typically, the title of every flash mob video follows a generic formula: [song/content/activity] + [location] + [date]. Occasionally the date will be omitted, though its inclusion only further proves the ephemeral quality of the mob. Yet, the location is vital to its identification, as seen in the following flash mob video from the Piazza Duomo in Italy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7zvoM2Frko
A mob such as the one above inextricably links itself to the space it occupies, both in term of identity (as seen in the naming of videos) as well as engaging with it physically. In watching the above video, observers cannot help but associate the context of the Piazza Duomo--historically, politically, etc.--while watching the flash mob dancers. In doing so, flash mobs create a paradox within the magic circle; they create a positive, ‘pure space’, but at the same time still actively interrogate the contextual realities of the occupied space in which it occurs.
In terms of the broader picture, as a result of this space entanglement, flash mobs also engage with the concept of 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 Michael Jackson memorial tribute (with extremely high production values) weeks 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 and through social media.
San Francisco MJ Tribute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gHnZJTs8K4
Mexico MJ Tribute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7z8ZiRcQ9Q
Cebu Prison MJ Tribute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZC6JuTlOVM
As a result of this global-local engagement, the previous observations about flash mobs need to be revised:
1) Flash mobs are not entirely removed from their social, political, and economic contexts, but rather create positive, ‘pure spaces’ through the invocation of play, which are not denuded of context but rendered harmless and safe within the transience of their 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.
Yet, within all flash mobs there is the tacit threat of “real” urban mobilization--a threat that we have seen play out in real time increasingly over the past year. Returning to the idea of flash mobs as play, Gregory Bateson theorizes both play and games as forms 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. 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 holds the potential to 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 prison inmates shouting, “they don’t care about us” gestures a little too far towards the aggressive and destructive potential of the flash mob.
These videos of recent protests around the globe are the realities behind the threat of the flash mob:
Egypt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xWiBCIxjIk
London: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhmF5p2Z7Ec
California: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy6LQlpemiw
What is particularly noteworthy in each of these videos is that they all show the extreme ramifications of urban mobilization and assemblage within geopolitical contexts and without a pure space--in short: reactionary police and government action. When the bubble of suspended reality and positive space around the flash mob ‘pops’, the mob becomes 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 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.
Interestingly, though the safety of a play-space disappears with these mobs, many of them still gesture towards the playful spirit of flash mobs, as though to mitigate the tacit threat of urban mobilization. We saw this frequent in the (mostly) peaceful revolutions and protests across the Middle East and Africa in the past year as many participants in the non-violent protests often referred to their assembling in terms of a “flash mob,” despite their political motivations. More recently (and still on going), we see this in the Occupy movement across our country. Though some violence has erupted--predominantly around forced or poorly coordinate dconfrontations between police and demonstrators--the Occupiers have remained peaceful (if stubborn) and, more often then not, playful. We see this best in their picket signs:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/fjelstud/the-best-signs-from-occupy-wall-street
Most of them are ironic, some of them are outright angry, but many of them draw on a sense of humor and even a dark playfulness that gestures back towards the fun and toothlessness of the flash mobs and 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. Though flash mobs can be games, with clear rules and uncertain outcomes (such as in the ‘Humans vs. Zombies’ game at the recent Indiecade convention in Culver City), as a matter of definition flash mobs are not strictly gamic--more often then not, though there are clearly defined rules and roles for every participant, the outcome of a flash mob is certain and predefined (ex. through the completion of a dance routine or other prespecified action). Yet, to anyone who has ever participated in or observed a flash mob, there is also something undeniably playful and game-like about it. The following flash mob video demonstrates this as participants slowly join in the Antwerp Station ‘Do-Re-Mi’ mob:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQLCZOG202k
This essential playfulness that is so akin to the reality of social gaming lies in the flash mob’s ability to create the “Magic Circle”--a term first coined by game studies theorist Johan Huizinga. Flash mobs offer a particularly useful demonstration of this concept as onlookers inevitably form a circular perimeter around the play-space (as seen in the video above.) In “The Definition of Play,” Roger Caillois elucidates on Johan Huizinga conceptualization of this magic circle and further defines it as a playful space that lies outside the traditional contexts of everyday reality:
In effect, play is essentially a separate occupation, carefully isolated from the rest of life, and generally is engaged in with precise limits of time and place. There is place for play... nothing that takes place outside this ideal frontier is relevant... The same is true for time: the game starts and ends at a given signal... In every case, the game's domain is therefore a restricted, closed, protected universe: a pure space. (Caillois 125)
To this end, though flash mobs are not in essence games, their playfulness still invokes the transient, ‘pure space’ of the magic circle. It is on this basis that this paper moves forward to examine how flash mobs use the safety of the magic circle to engage with the contextual, geopolitical realities of their physically occupied spaces.
We begin first with three basic understandings of the flash mob:
1) That flash mobs provide transient, suspended (playful) realities in otherwise socially, economically, and politically ‘landlocked’ spaces. In the example of the flash mob provided above, the Antwerp Station is a specific locale with ever present cultural, political, and socioeconomic ties and connotations, which are only temporarily suspended by the flash mob’s invocation of the magic circle. (As seen in the survey of participants who appear to be from varied demographic backgrounds that might in other case be completely removed from each other within the station.)
2) That flash mobs mobilize urban populations into these spaces via social media--Facebook and Twitter, predominantly.
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.
Despite the playful departure from reality that flash mobs provide, 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-political ramifications of such discourse.
The following flash mob video from the 2011 Bayonne Festivals demonstrates this clearly as the chief organizer quickly describes the variables involved in creating a flash mob, with a particular emphasis on identity (as expressed through their chosen colors, which reflect both their identities within teams and nationalities) and space-placement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG24E0EbQ7E
This point becomes even clearer when considering flash mob videos--arguably the final evolution and maturation of this play form--from a semiotic perspective. Typically, the title of every flash mob video follows a generic formula: [song/content/activity] + [location] + [date]. Occasionally the date will be omitted, though its inclusion only further proves the ephemeral quality of the mob. Yet, the location is vital to its identification, as seen in the following flash mob video from the Piazza Duomo in Italy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7zvoM2Frko
A mob such as the one above inextricably links itself to the space it occupies, both in term of identity (as seen in the naming of videos) as well as engaging with it physically. In watching the above video, observers cannot help but associate the context of the Piazza Duomo--historically, politically, etc.--while watching the flash mob dancers. In doing so, flash mobs create a paradox within the magic circle; they create a positive, ‘pure space’, but at the same time still actively interrogate the contextual realities of the occupied space in which it occurs.
In terms of the broader picture, as a result of this space entanglement, flash mobs also engage with the concept of 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 Michael Jackson memorial tribute (with extremely high production values) weeks 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 and through social media.
San Francisco MJ Tribute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gHnZJTs8K4
Mexico MJ Tribute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7z8ZiRcQ9Q
Cebu Prison MJ Tribute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZC6JuTlOVM
As a result of this global-local engagement, the previous observations about flash mobs need to be revised:
1) Flash mobs are not entirely removed from their social, political, and economic contexts, but rather create positive, ‘pure spaces’ through the invocation of play, which are not denuded of context but rendered harmless and safe within the transience of their 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.
Yet, within all flash mobs there is the tacit threat of “real” urban mobilization--a threat that we have seen play out in real time increasingly over the past year. Returning to the idea of flash mobs as play, Gregory Bateson theorizes both play and games as forms 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. 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 holds the potential to 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 prison inmates shouting, “they don’t care about us” gestures a little too far towards the aggressive and destructive potential of the flash mob.
These videos of recent protests around the globe are the realities behind the threat of the flash mob:
Egypt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xWiBCIxjIk
London: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhmF5p2Z7Ec
California: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy6LQlpemiw
What is particularly noteworthy in each of these videos is that they all show the extreme ramifications of urban mobilization and assemblage within geopolitical contexts and without a pure space--in short: reactionary police and government action. When the bubble of suspended reality and positive space around the flash mob ‘pops’, the mob becomes 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 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.
Interestingly, though the safety of a play-space disappears with these mobs, many of them still gesture towards the playful spirit of flash mobs, as though to mitigate the tacit threat of urban mobilization. We saw this frequent in the (mostly) peaceful revolutions and protests across the Middle East and Africa in the past year as many participants in the non-violent protests often referred to their assembling in terms of a “flash mob,” despite their political motivations. More recently (and still on going), we see this in the Occupy movement across our country. Though some violence has erupted--predominantly around forced or poorly coordinate dconfrontations between police and demonstrators--the Occupiers have remained peaceful (if stubborn) and, more often then not, playful. We see this best in their picket signs:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/fjelstud/the-best-signs-from-occupy-wall-street
Most of them are ironic, some of them are outright angry, but many of them draw on a sense of humor and even a dark playfulness that gestures back towards the fun and toothlessness of the flash mobs and the playful space.
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