Shawyer dissertation May 2008 final version - The University of ...

The Yippies’ revolutionary action-theater and the flash mob are not identical phenomena.However, the flash mob echoes many of the elements of revolutionary action-theater,“ghosting” the ludic public displays of the Yippies. Like the Happening, the flash mobbegan as an apolitical performance, emphasizing form over content. Despite its lack ofpolitical message, the flash mob mirrors the Yippies’ performances in both structure andform. Flash mobs offer a sense of what contemporary revolutionary action-theater mightlook like: crowds of actors organized by social networking, and, like the nomination ofPigasus or the Grand Central Station Yip-In, an emphasis on fun and uninhibitedbehavior.Wasik was particularly concerned with deindividuation in what he calls the“hipster” generation, the “hundreds of thousands of educated young urbanites withstrikingly similar tastes” who pride themselves on always being on the cutting edge oftrends in music, literature, technology, and fashion (56). Wasik’s hipsters are not the Beatpoets of the 1950s or the hippie generation who emulated them in the 1960s, yet theyshare with their namesakes and the Yippies a distain for mainstream culture. Accordingto Wasik, this “mercurial” generation moves from trend to trend with a mob mentality,never pausing to critique their own unanimity of taste. The flash mob was intended as acritique of contemporary hipster culture: Wasik was curious to see how many peoplewould show up for an event forwarded from an anonymous email but promising “tons ofother people are doing it” (57). He also wanted to see if people would act in public in amanner that required the abandonment of social restrictions. Even if it required them toact in a way that seemed silly and uninhibited, would the hipsters participate if they211