Disrupting the Norm: Flash Mobs

What is a flash mob? Wikipedia defines it as a group of people who assemble

suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and sometimes seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then disperse. Flash mobs are organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails (Wikipedia.com). The perturbation, or flash mob, that I would like to discuss happened at Vancouver International Airport on Christmas Eve of 2010. This situation began as any other normal, defined by the Engaging Minds textbook as typical (Davis, Sumara & Luce-Kapler, 2008, p.48), day at the airport might. The checking in passengers and their families are going about their business, lining up, checking their luggage, and saying goodbye to their loved ones. All flights appear to be on schedule, you see flight attendants and pilots checking-in, and people are making their way through security. This situation is normal because as far as the people at the airport are concerned nothing out of the ordinary is happening. Davis et al. (2008) note that human perception is largely oriented to difference (p.41). Therefore, if nothing is different than it was in the previous minute, hour, day, then it must qualify as typical a.k.a. normal. The first thing that happens to disrupt the norm is a group of men, dress to look like they work at the airport, begin to set up their instruments. The passengers might not notice this happening or think of it as abnormal until a man dressed as a security guard approaches and begins to yell at them. The next minute the man is up on the platform with the other men and they all begin to play and sing along to Santa Claus is Coming to Town and continue with other Christmas songs. Suddenly, a group of people wearing Santa hats, ranging in age, race and gender, who before appeared as if they were simply getting ready to check-in, begin to dance along with the music. This perturbation disrupts the norm because people stop and watch what they

surmise to be a spontaneous performance of both dancing and singing. Everyone looks perplexed and confused while they try to sort out what they think is going on, as more and more people being to dance and others stop what they are doing to watch, the confusion seems turn into amusement. Some of the people who are not participating in the mob take out their cell phones or cameras and begin filming or taking pictures of what they are watching, others begin to dance on the spot or sing along with the singers. The whole event lasts about 5 minutes, when the singing ends and they wish everyone a Merry Christmas, the dancers quickly disperse. The perturbation of the flash mob at the airport affected the norm many different ways. First, through the planning and production of the flash mob itself, in lecture Brent talked about how knowing is networked. The participants of this flash mob were brought together through social networking and other media. Flint (2011) explains how literacy practices are expanding to include multimodal texts (p.42). To understand the concept of a flash mob and be able to get the message about the time and date of the event, one must have a strong understanding of multimodal literacies. The people watching must also have a network of knowing. Brent explains that humans are analytical creatures and that we think associatively though images, metaphors and analogies, those witnessing the performance must think through a network of ideas to understand what is happening right in front of their eyes. The second way that the flash mob disrupted the norm is that when it was over and the crowd of dancers dispersed, caught their plane or simply left the airport, the crowd of people was still left standing around thinking about what they just saw. Davis et al. (2008) discuss deconstruction as the approach to investigating habits of association, focusing on the usually-not-noticed aspects of languages, images, ideas, and practices that orient, shape, and enable perception and conception (p. 39). The

idea of deconstruction is important when thinking about disrupting the norm and in particular with flash mobs because the viewers of the event have to deconstruct what they saw and somehow mould it into what they already know. This idea is similar to that of Piagets about assimilation and accommodation. The people who were watching the flash mobs could either assimilate what they saw deal with a new event in a way that is consistent with an existing scheme (such as already having knowledge about flash mobs but maybe this being the first theyve seen live). Or they could accommodate what they saw deal with a new event by either modifying an existing scheme or forming a new one (such as incorporating dancing and singing into what they believe to be a flash mob or creating a new scheme for flash mobs in general), (Ormrod, Saklofske, Schwean, Andrews & Shore, 2010, p.17). The third way the perturbation of the flash mob affected the norm was what meanings the witnesses of the mob gave to it or took away from it. Davis et al. (2008) state that people interpret the average as the norm, that is, as absolute prescriptions rather than context-specific, constantly shifting indicators (p.43). If the norm was viewed as constantly changing, then even something like a flash mob would be considered normal. However, people view normal to be what happens daily on average, and as flash mobs are not a common occurrence they are not average and thus are not normal. If the people who watched the performance thought that dancing and singing in public was an everyday common thing then the meaning that they take away from it would be significantly different then someone who thinks an airport is a very bizarre place for such activities to take place. A simple meaning that could be derived from this flash mob was that Air Canada wanted to wish its customers a Merry Christmas. However, others may associate flash mob with commercial advertising, protest, or publicity stunts, and therefore may take a

negative meaning away from the event. Every person who participated or watched the flash mob will give or take different meaning from it, therefore, not only does this event disrupt the norm on a social and physical level but there is no average meaning that can be associated with it, so it also disrupts the norm on a cognitive level. A flash mob on a different level contextually, metaphorically speaking could resemble a flash mob taking place at the same time, with the same songs and dances preformed, at every major airport across the country. If a flash mob was to occur at the same time across the country that wouldnt only attract attention from maybe the local news, like a small flash mob might, but potentially it would attract international recognition. Therefore, not only those who witnessed the event live at each airport would be affected but also those who watched from their computer or televisions and not just in Canada, but something of this scale could reach people all over the world. Such an event would cause perturbation on a large scale, because people would want to know for what purpose such an event took place. Like mentioned before, flash mobs have been used for many different purposes, some for protest, advertisements, charities, and social experiments to name a few. I believe that if a flash mob were to happen on a national scale the world would be screaming to understand why such an event happened in the first place. I think that perhaps a small, one airport flash mob like I described above could be called a centralized network. Where the event is at the center and the people who saw it and their thoughts about it flowing from the middle. However, if there were numerous flash mobs happening at the same time across the nation then I think it would represent more of a decentralized network. Where there is no central hub and the country and potentially the worlds thoughts would be streaming from whatever hub(s) they happen to be seeing (Davis et al, 2008, p.56).

Reference List:

Air Canada Flashmob. (September 30, 2011). <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28ef_r4mqo>

Davis,B., Sumara, D., & Luce-Kapler, R. (2008). Engaging Minds: Changing Teaching in Complex Times. New York: Routledge.

Flash Mob. (September 30, 2011). <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_mob> Flint, A.S. (2008). Literate Lives: Teaching Reading and Writing. Hoboken NJ: Wiley. Ormrod, J.E., Saklofske, D.H., Schwean, V.L., Andrews, J.W., & Shore, B.M. (2010). Principles of Pearson. Educational Psychology 2nd Canadian Edition. Toronto: