The Flexible Spectator-Player Relationship. Part II

September 27th, 2007 Posted in Unit Act, Encounter, Asymmetrical Relationship

The Spectator-Player model covers a broad range of experience. There are three tests for inclusion in this class:

(1) Two actors in an encounter-relationship. (Note that the type of actor is not fixed; it can be one person or a group or an organization),

(2) The relationship is asymmetrical (the two sides use different types of acts),

(3) The player is involved in a demonstration (either physical or verbal) which the spectator sees and hears.

When we get beyond the simple dyad of two-persons we have the prior question of the gathering of the actors. In formal games this coming together is scheduled, but it can be a thing-of-the-moment and whoever is present may be called-up or caught-up. In a street incident–say a man and a woman in a very loud and verbally distressing argument–a crowd gathers to watch. Embarrassed by the attention the couple may calm down and wander off as will the group of spectators. But if it escalates to physical violence members of the watching circle might intervene to separate the pair while others will call the police. Or maybe not. From start to finish a spontaneous encounter.

Even after assembling the spectator grouping can dissolve as a social entity if two conditions are not met:

(1) A basic security in the integrity and inviolability of the self. This depends on an acceptance of a rule of non-intrusion, a mutual respect for the privacy of the other, that we follow on the public roadway and on public transportation. Without this a self-consciousness and defensiveness blocks off the group formation.

(2) The spectators must in large part share a common focus, the object that unifies them. The unbound spectator exits, turns to local companions for a chat, wanders off to other projects and concerns. During a failing lecture the students begin to fidget, whisper and gossip, and either trickle out or (most unusually) decamp in a body.

The amount of overt and focused attention the player side pays its interlocutor varies. From indifferent as in a private game of tennis to an intense concern to teach or motivate as in the lecture or the political rally.

But you know all of this. It is just a matter of calling to consciousness one’s own experiences.

What happens in these encounters-meetings is a constant process of definition and construction that we tend to see as fixed. But this fixity, while important and real for us, is an illusion. There are tendencies pushing us in other directions and analytically these reside within the elements of the unit act that, at the same time, define what is holding us together.

We have suggested this in mentioning the fragility of the spectator grouping. In the practical world we have cheerleaders and half-time extravaganzas– circus tricks to keep us occupied and unified and in place.

But the transformations and changes do occur and then we need a way of describing what has happened. Traditionally and practically we see these flex points as problems, unless they have a favorable result for us. So a hurricane that floods a unique city, an earthquake that destroys roads and bridges and disrupts a championship baseball game, a fan who runs on the field and tackles the man with the ball, the audience at a dada theatrical production that riots–these incidents are serious problems for some or all of us. They also lead to (or are) other forms of social order and pattern. They are real and are social or have social implications and, in this sense, are valid for study in their own right. Studying to solve a problem and studying to understand are not necessarily the same.

The fan runs on the field during the game. At that moment the game stops and a new social order arises. The spectator grouping now expands to include the players and the new demonstration of the disrupter being chased down by the police defines the new player. This new regime holds for a few minutes until he is escorted off field and the game, along with the original and conventional social order, resumes. In the other direction, a player riled by insults from the fans attacks the spectators. Now the new player is the attacker and his victims while the new spectator is the remaining players, the TV audience, and those spectators far enough away to escape the aggressor’s attention.

The theater is most famous for its experiments with the spectator-player form–stretching it considerably: Actors emerging from the audience; watchers recruited into the act; changes in the seating arrangement (circle in the square, runway); actors stepping out of character to address the audience. Beside the entertainment value these displays offer a lesson in sociology in action.

But currently there is mounting attention to virtual relationships where one side of the encounter, the player making the demonstration, is an illusion. It is an image that represents an action. Physically what is happening–electronic agitation. moving film before a light, impulses in wires or through the air–is not the same as the action projected, or even close. Let’s talk about this in our next post.

Check the blogroll for links to websites discussing the virtual experience.

So long, cha cha cha.