You’re on the bus heading to work, reading in silence. Suddenly a man shoves a cookie in your mouth. He grabs you by the jaws and forces you to chew. It is, actually, a pretty good cookie. Even as you struggle with the man (in vain, the dude is huge) you notice that the chef used tons of real butter and even two different kinds of chocolate. Still, it’s sort of annoying the way it’s going down.
Or imagine you have lunch in a food court with a close friend when bam! An English professor appears—in disguise! Haha! You thought he was a lowly janitor! He launches into Edgar Allen Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart, reciting in an intense, half-crazy, spot-on Virginia drawl. It’s good—exceptionally good. But your friend was just telling you about her brother now stationed in a remote town in Afghanistan. She’s scared out of her mind for him and this is the first time she has opened up to you, so it’s not really the best time for an impromptu recitation.
Or imagine you lay on a park bench on a warm summer night just staring at the stars. Head on your backpack, feet crossed over your bike helmet, alone with your thoughts for the first time in days… Just then two men hold a framed canvas between you and the firmament. “ADMIRE IT!” the man on the left hisses. “It’s Vincent Van Gogh’s masterwork Starry Night! This is a classic! APPRECIATE THE BRUSHWORK, ASSHOLE.”
My guess is you’d be pretty pissed off if any of these things happened to you. These actions would be forms of graffiti, which is the act of an artist inflicting creativity onto an unwilling or uninvited audience in a shared public space. Even if the cookie was the best you ever had, even if the recitation of Poe was pitch-perfect, and even if the painting really was removed from the Museum of Modern Art for the sole purpose of being shoved in your own personal face, in each case you’d be well within your rights to say, “Get the hell away from me, you psycho.”
This is why I dislike flash mobs. A flash mob is theater as graffiti, theater as self-promotion, or theater as advertising—often all three.
Lots of people disagree with me. As of 7:56 AM Central Time, January 12, 2011, a video of people singing Handel’s Messiah in a food court in Ontario has 29,944,100 views. Population-wise, that’s 6.7 Irelands. Or, to hit closer to home, that’s 493.82 Sandusky, Ohios. Yeah. It’s got 62,198 Likes and a mere 1,319 Dislikes. That’s gotta be, like, 20-to-1 or something.
The video is horrific: regular people just like you and me, only Canadian, are eating lunch, talking with friends, and just taking a moment to get their shit together, when suddenly a bunch of nerds start sing-shouting at them. One after another, a food court patron or employee stands up and screams. Eventually around 80% of the people turn out to be not regular harmless Canadians, but trained singers guerrilla marketing for their theater and the mall.
What bugs me most about this video is not simply that people were tricked into watching a performance. It’s that the intended audience was not even the people in the food court. They were just pawns in a bigger game. They only needed to kinda like it. The real goal was for the video to go viral. The intended audience lay far away from Welland Seaway Mall, wherever that is. The intended audience is us, the 29,000,000 people around the world, sitting at home or at work, blowing off a few minutes. We have the opportunity to pause the video, wait for a more convenient time to watch it, or skip to the end once we get the gist. We can even click away entirely and groan, “Oy, another flash mob.” The performers are far more interested in impressing us. The hundred or so random mall customers? Pfff. They’re not worth the effort. The poor bastards chowing Panda Express or whatever Canadians use as pseudo-Chinese food have to sit still, watch the show, and think, “Oh, that old couple is singing now. I guess they aren’t just-folks. And now that security guard isn’t a security guard. So how long does this go on before I can finish breaking up with this guy? Uh-oh. There are cameras everywhere. I guess I will have to be nice and applaud or I’ll go viral as the bitch-who-did-not-applaud-Handel’s-Messiah.”
Art is best when it is merely offered. Encourage me to watch, coax me into listening, convince me to read—make it worth my while to buy your basket, as Thoreau said. Art is not a prank. It is not foisted, forced, or inflicted on an audience. The audience is invited to enjoy it—and free not to.
There is, further, a pretense in these sorts of creative flash mobs, that they are adding beauty to a daily routine that lacks it—as if the random-ass people in their blast range don’t already seek out and appreciate beauty on their own. Sure, many do not—but don’t just assume that the other people in this food court, train station, or bus are now better off thanks to your graffiti. Don't assume you gave them a gift they needed or wanted.
This is my very unpopular view far removed from such stunts. I’ve never been on a bus when people started singing "Happy Birthday" to the driver. I’ve never been in a train station when people broke out in a choreographed dance. I’ve never seen Improv Everywhere {sic} not wear pants on an subway (now that’s motherfucking CRAZY, yo!) in person. Maybe if I did it would make my day, shake me out of my mindless middle class life, and finally get me to really live, Jack. But I doubt it. [OK, fine: maybe it would warm my ice-cold heart and make me smile. Maybe.]
Eh, what can you do? I can dislike it all I want, but this sort of entertainment is unstoppable. It is now 8:55 AM. I just refreshed the Youtube page of the Handel chorus. Likes have surged from 62,198 to 62,205. The verdict is in: seven more people can’t be wrong.
Or imagine you lay on a park bench on a warm summer night just staring at the stars. Head on your backpack, feet crossed over your bike helmet, alone with your thoughts for the first time in days… Just then two men hold a framed canvas between you and the firmament. “ADMIRE IT!” the man on the left hisses. “It’s Vincent Van Gogh’s masterwork Starry Night! This is a classic! APPRECIATE THE BRUSHWORK, ASSHOLE.”
My guess is you’d be pretty pissed off if any of these things happened to you. These actions would be forms of graffiti, which is the act of an artist inflicting creativity onto an unwilling or uninvited audience in a shared public space. Even if the cookie was the best you ever had, even if the recitation of Poe was pitch-perfect, and even if the painting really was removed from the Museum of Modern Art for the sole purpose of being shoved in your own personal face, in each case you’d be well within your rights to say, “Get the hell away from me, you psycho.”
This is why I dislike flash mobs. A flash mob is theater as graffiti, theater as self-promotion, or theater as advertising—often all three.
Lots of people disagree with me. As of 7:56 AM Central Time, January 12, 2011, a video of people singing Handel’s Messiah in a food court in Ontario has 29,944,100 views. Population-wise, that’s 6.7 Irelands. Or, to hit closer to home, that’s 493.82 Sandusky, Ohios. Yeah. It’s got 62,198 Likes and a mere 1,319 Dislikes. That’s gotta be, like, 20-to-1 or something.
The video is horrific: regular people just like you and me, only Canadian, are eating lunch, talking with friends, and just taking a moment to get their shit together, when suddenly a bunch of nerds start sing-shouting at them. One after another, a food court patron or employee stands up and screams. Eventually around 80% of the people turn out to be not regular harmless Canadians, but trained singers guerrilla marketing for their theater and the mall.
What bugs me most about this video is not simply that people were tricked into watching a performance. It’s that the intended audience was not even the people in the food court. They were just pawns in a bigger game. They only needed to kinda like it. The real goal was for the video to go viral. The intended audience lay far away from Welland Seaway Mall, wherever that is. The intended audience is us, the 29,000,000 people around the world, sitting at home or at work, blowing off a few minutes. We have the opportunity to pause the video, wait for a more convenient time to watch it, or skip to the end once we get the gist. We can even click away entirely and groan, “Oy, another flash mob.” The performers are far more interested in impressing us. The hundred or so random mall customers? Pfff. They’re not worth the effort. The poor bastards chowing Panda Express or whatever Canadians use as pseudo-Chinese food have to sit still, watch the show, and think, “Oh, that old couple is singing now. I guess they aren’t just-folks. And now that security guard isn’t a security guard. So how long does this go on before I can finish breaking up with this guy? Uh-oh. There are cameras everywhere. I guess I will have to be nice and applaud or I’ll go viral as the bitch-who-did-not-applaud-Handel’s-Messiah.”
Art is best when it is merely offered. Encourage me to watch, coax me into listening, convince me to read—make it worth my while to buy your basket, as Thoreau said. Art is not a prank. It is not foisted, forced, or inflicted on an audience. The audience is invited to enjoy it—and free not to.
There is, further, a pretense in these sorts of creative flash mobs, that they are adding beauty to a daily routine that lacks it—as if the random-ass people in their blast range don’t already seek out and appreciate beauty on their own. Sure, many do not—but don’t just assume that the other people in this food court, train station, or bus are now better off thanks to your graffiti. Don't assume you gave them a gift they needed or wanted.
This is my very unpopular view far removed from such stunts. I’ve never been on a bus when people started singing "Happy Birthday" to the driver. I’ve never been in a train station when people broke out in a choreographed dance. I’ve never seen Improv Everywhere {sic} not wear pants on an subway (now that’s motherfucking CRAZY, yo!) in person. Maybe if I did it would make my day, shake me out of my mindless middle class life, and finally get me to really live, Jack. But I doubt it. [OK, fine: maybe it would warm my ice-cold heart and make me smile. Maybe.]
Eh, what can you do? I can dislike it all I want, but this sort of entertainment is unstoppable. It is now 8:55 AM. I just refreshed the Youtube page of the Handel chorus. Likes have surged from 62,198 to 62,205. The verdict is in: seven more people can’t be wrong.
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