Paige's Final

Paige Wold
Professor Conway
Comm 405
02 December 2009

Spoiling & Plunking with Improv Everywhere

In this paper, I will describe and analyze Improv Everywhere (IE) as a media artifact. I will examine IE in relation to the writings of Henry Jenkins in his book, Convergence Culture and DeeDee Halleck in her essay, “Plunk Your Magic Twanger: Community Control of Technology.” IE is a comedic performance arts group based in New York City with a slogan: We Cause Scenes. The group carries out non-threatening pranks, which they call “missions” in public places. The stated goal of these missions is to cause scenes of “chaos and joy.” IE was started in 2001 by actor Charlie Todd after playing a prank in a Manhattan bar with friends that involved posing as musician Ben Folds and band mates.

Later that year, Todd started taking classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City where he met most of his “senior agents.” While these agents and other long-time members of IE participate in most missions, many are open to the general public. To date, IE has executed over one-hundred missions involving tens of thousands of undercover agents. Some of their most notable missions include: having agents pose as Best Buy workers, performing a synchronized swimming routine in Washington Square Park fountain, a “No Pants” subway ride, and a time freeze in New York’s Grand Central Terminal.

In a constantly changing world it’s important to study projects such as IE because of the significance they have in the realm of media studies and communication. It’s socially significant for two reasons. First, IE is relatively new and exciting, having only been around for eight years. Therefore, very little academic analysis has been done in looking at the impact of such a venture. The second reason IE is worthy of scholarly attention is because of its potential position as a model for future media success. In advancing IE, founder Charlie Todd has really utilized horizontal integration.

Horizontal integration is defined as the ownership of many different media products in order to better market or promote a single concept. As it is with so many new and emerging technologies, IE’s popularity started through YouTube. After participants and on-site viewers posted video of “missions” online—IE became an overnight sensation. Currently, their YouTube page is the 64th most subscribed channel and the videos have been viewed over 78 million times. This led to countless interviews for Todd—everyone from The Today Show to the New York Times and Maxim Magazine wanted to speak to him about his project.

IE has released three DVDs featuring not simply past missions but also previously unreleased material, commentary tracks, and special features. In 2007 IE made a pilot for NBC but it it wasn’t picked up. More recently, in 2009, Todd wrote and released a book entitled Causing Scenes: Extraordinary Pranks in Ordinary Places. This book essentially acts as a how-to for wannabe pranksters and admirers of IE’s work. IE also remains an active presence through their Facebook and Twitter accounts, along with the official website and Todd’s Urban Prankster blog. The IE website also acts as a source for Improv Everywhere products such as the DVDs, book, and t-shirts. In looking at the future of media, it seems that those who establish a horizontal presence in many different markets and products (like IE has done) are the most successful.

Looking at Jenkin’s Convergence Culture, I examined the chapter on Spoiling Survivor to analyze IE; specifically, his theories on spoiling itself and civic participation. When discussing knowledge cultures, Jenkin’s describes the significance of brain trusts.

“The brain trust represents the return of hierarchy to the knowledge culture, the attempt to create an elite that has access to information not available to the group as a whole and that demands to be trusted as arbitrators of what it is appropriate to share with the collective” (Jenkins 39).

In the case of IE, this brain trust would consist of the “senior agents.” As I’ve already mentioned, most of these senior agents are members of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and coworkers of Todd himself (he is currently a professor of improve at the UCB). Therefore, this select group is privy to information and details that the general public doesn’t have access to.

Also in the Spoiling Survivor chapter, Jenkins details the efforts of a specific segment of Big Brother fans called the Media Jammers. Jenkins says, “In the first season these fans pushed further, seeking to alter the outcome of events in the house by breaking through the wall of silence that separated contestants from the outside world” (52). IE takes this concept a step further. Through their missions, agents started breaking down the wall between staged events and reality. It’s this boundary between real and staged that creates much of the humor. In videos of past missions, it’s the reactions of passerby that really grab the viewer’s attention and make them laugh.

The second theorist I looked at in analyzing IE was DeeDee Halleck and her thoughts on community control and corporate-free television. In “Plunk Your Magic Twanger,” Halleck emphasizes the need for a more democratic communication outlet stating, “The product was never the goal. It’s the process, of course…” (7). At its core, IE is about the process and having fun. Their website says as much.

“We’re big believers in ‘organized fun.’ We get satisfaction from coming up with an awesome idea and making it come to life. In the process we bring excitement to otherwise unexciting locales and give strangers a story they can tell for the rest of their lives” (Todd).

Both Halleck and Todd emphasize the process; the process and the work that goes into any media, whether it is a television station or a staged mission. Both authors harness the power of everyday people in shaping content.

In her essay, Halleck cites the popularity of America’s Funniest Home Videos in emphasizing the need for a more democratic television. “They [audiences] await a flash of recognition of humanity on a box that daily denies it. The public hungers for something more authentic, more in touch with the everyday lives of people” (Halleck 10). On their website, Todd emphasizes that IE isn’t at all motivated by advertising or promotion from corporate influence. They do not stage official IE missions that advertise a brand.

IE also parallels Halleck when it comes to her concept of “plunking the magic twanger to turn the world upside down” (Halleck 9). Halleck uses this analogy to emphasize her belief in the need to rethink the current television system and move toward a commercial-and-corporate free model. IE also “plunks the magic twanger,” but in their case it’s the rethinking of pranks.

“We’re out to prove a prank doesn’t have to involve humiliation or embarrassment; it can simply be about making someone laugh, smile, or stop to notice the world around them” (Todd).

Ultimately, Todd and Halleck are both out to change the way their viewers see the world.

While there are many parallels that can be drawn between the writings of Jenkins and Halleck in relation to IE, there are also some key differences. The first obvious example stems from the title of the chapter I evaluated in Convergence Culture, Spoiling Survivor. Jenkins describes spoiling, “They [hard-core fans] know Survivor inside out, and they are determined to figure it out—together—before the producers reveals what happened” (25). IE is, in essence, a form of spoiling but with some a distinctions.

Jenkins is describing a divide between real life fans and televised events. Spoilers see the process of figuring out the plot as both a challenge a game. IE is also a game—but in this case the line is drawn between participants and non-participants, both intermingling in real life. In the case of IE, “agents” are to stay in character at all costs and interact with the public. Therefore, they would occupy the position of “producer” that Jenkins describes in that they know what is about to happen while the others do not. There is no script beyond the mission. The excitement comes from the fact that participants have no idea how the non-participants will react.

The second key difference I noted was IE’s position in relation to Halleck’s strong anti-corporate stance. Here again another significant difference emerges in that Halleck is evaluating only the medium of television. IE is distributed through YouTube, live enactments, etc. But it’s Halleck’s corporate stance that contradicts with IE’s. She states, “We need a commercial-and-corporate free television, not a medium designed to make a profit from constructing needs in an already needy world” (9). Meanwhile, IE has a much more casual attitude in terms of corporate influence. The IE website says,

“We do take on sponsorship from time to time. If a company wants to hire us to do a mission we already want to do (with their brand having nothing to do with the content) we would consider a sponsorship. We see it as no different than a television show being supported by commercials. So long as our content is not influenced by the sponsor, we think it is a smart way to fund our work” (Todd).

IE also does not stage missions to draw attention to particular causes. The website states, “We are focused on creating comedy for comedy’s sake and staging missions for no explicit reasons behind them, other than spreading joy and chaos throughout the world” (Todd). This is another significant difference between Halleck and IE. Halleck’s work centers on the need for civic engagement and organized, purposeful action while IE focuses on silliness and commotion.

This leads to the over-arching question: What conclusions does this give about the “social implications of an information society?” In evaluating IE, I came up with three general findings illustrating social implications. First, I think it’s essential to define exactly what an “information society” is. An information society is,

“A society characterized by information technology (IT) transforming every aspect of cultural, political, and social life. There’s also a pervasive influence of IT on home, work, and recreational aspects of individuals’ daily routine” (Information).

Based on this definition, the United States is without a doubt an information society.

This brings us to the social implications of IE on our information society. The first implication I touched on already; that is how IE is mixing between participants and non-participants and therefore blurring the separation between producers and fans. We see this in the way that IE allows anyone to be involved in missions. It’s as simple as joining their mailing list. The second implication involves technology itself. In the case of IE, there is a difference between witnessing their “missions” on-site vs. seeing a clip of it later on YouTube. Obviously, technology is evolving and as it does we’re seeing the emergence of technology as art itself.

My third and final implication regards the global village. Many media scholars have researched and analyzed the concept of the global village. This term is credited to scholar Marshall McLuhan and is used to describe the ever-shrinking world by means of different media types (especially the World Wide Web); making communication across states, countries, and continents easier. IE founder, Charlie Todd has taken this global village concept and run with it. Through the official IE website, Todd has created a national and global network for would-be pranksters wanting to begin their own branch and/or recreate missions. Along with the New York mailing list for those wanting to participate in future missions; Todd has recently added a global mailing list for upcoming global events.

Looking at IE through the works of Jenkins and Halleck has revealed an up-and-coming media form that is changing the landscape of what media is, why it’s made, and how we study it. Media will continue to shape our society and the way we process information. But even with its serious impact, it’s easy to believe that IE will never take itself seriously.

Works Cited

Halleck, DeeDee. “Plunk Your Magic Twanger: Community Control of Technology.” Communications and Media Studies 2.5 (2002): 6-10. Print.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Print.

“Information Society.” BusinessDictionary.com. BusinessDictionary, n.d. Web. 01 December
2009.

Todd, Charlie. Improv Everywhere. WordPress. Web. 15 November 2009.