Variations on the Spectator-Player Relationship. Part III

September 29th, 2007 Posted in Concepts, Encounter, Asymmetrical Relationship

Come on in. Expect to be startled and provoked. You have started down a yellow brick road to brains, brawn and love. Oz or bust.

We’ve been on our way for several weeks, a rag-tag band of, as far as I can tell, Americans and Canadians with a sprinkling from Outback, Blighty, EU, Pacific Rim and All Points. We’re so advanced we’re ready to levitate an SUV. Holding pattern a little to get you new visitors on board and then watch-out.

Were constructing a sociology central, something to carry around like a cell phone or a pen knife or a credit card. An accoutrement for the urban camper. Another tool ready for action.

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So to the encounter, that everyday experience, two actors (individuals, groups, social formations) meet and interact. We are following a particular kind, the watcher and doer combo.

Start to understand any encounter by describing the three parts within which it forms–the environment (ecology), values and social organization (culture), and the rolling out of the interaction sequence. This model of the unit act matches well what happens during any game in professional sports. And it tracks with some success the more elusive encounters of ordinary life–a street incident or a lecture or a commercial transaction or even meeting a supposed enemy in a trackless night.

Some encounters are built around a mediating object. I think of it as an intrusion of a screen. Quite common yet it introduces a level of complexity.

The puppet show, say Punch and Judy. A booth, the player behind a curtain, the puppets on stage and in motion with the player’s voice projecting the dialog for each part. From the audience side the player appears to be the puppets, that is where the meaning is even if it is not its source. The person, the mechanic in a way, behind the background, is blocked from our attention. The reality, what is actually happening–the real player’s acts and the demonstration the audience sees are as though split. To catch the totality of the process the audience has to attend both the author and the message, the construction and the object. Only then do we notice that the screen, at once an illusion and a reality, diverts, and on occasion breaks, the possibility of interaction so transparent in the direct, face-to-face meeting.

We have a mediated relationship that has a socio-physical side (how it is made and the ordering of how it is viewed) and a socio-conceptual side (the signs and codes that carry its meanings). Issues follow: (1) the loss or the hiding (limited distribution) of the code–the concern of archeology and cryptography (2) the loss or the hiding (limited distribution) of knowledge of the socio-physical making–the concern of the sociologist and the critic; (3) the kinds of social interaction that can surmount the block to it presented by the screen.

These screened encounters are numerous. I have merely to name them and the fit will be obvious to you. I am sure you can drag up more from your own social adventures. First the actual player, then his special screen.

Artist: Painting Sculpture

Author: Writing

Architect: Building

Director: Movie

Designer: Landscape

Trainer: Obstacle Course

Master: Puppet

Editor: News, Radio, TV.

Musician: Record, DVD

Ventriloquist: Dummy

Museum Curator: Display

Electronic Engineer: Video Game

In some situations the spectators seem to become the center of the action–running an obstacle course and the artist–designed happening, walking the formal garden and the museum display. But I would argue that the pattern of action is set by the player-maker and that the spectators while in energetic motion become both screen and audience. The prescription of what they do is similar to the newly set ritual

But in any case, the spectators’ actions are within the initial social ordering of the encounter–they conform to what is presented and do not move into a new form of social organization. The original social order is only broken when events and actions negate it.

The suppression of the direct interaction by the screen suggests that we may be at the limit of our model so seeking another way to describe the event might be useful. Still elements of interaction are visible. The players frequently make themselves available for questions and discussion about the circumstances and meanings of their works–for the publicity value and for the value to themselves of the other’s comment. (Stage actors complain about this loss of contact with the audience when they film movies.)

The audience members talk among themselves about the experience of the screened action. It is a substitute for the direct response and it avoids the painful silence of the echo alone. These ruminations are frequently guided and enlivened by experts and critics whose commentary can increase the value and richness of the thing itself. When the player dies and is totally unavailable, if the recollection and display of the screen/block are still there this social reflection can continue on for centuries.

In all screened settings many of the players are aware of the anomaly of their situation. The audience is frequently alerted. Movies about making movies, plays about backstage., images of architects at their drawing boards and on the construction site. A lot of it is out there in plain sight.

The commercial and political control of these various screens can become conflict fronts. The way things are can depend on limits to the consideration of alternate ways. What is and what is not–a valid sociological question and task. I am not implying decision, only the job of investigation and analysis.

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You will note that this blog is a screen behind which I am hidden. But the means for interaction are in place. We are organized to accept comments either through the website or e-mail. The monitoring is not meant to be onerous or self-centered. I will attempt to summarize or report directly on all sensible contributions. We are still evolving what we are about so what you offer might make a considerable difference.

While past posts do not make a totally progressive narrative–what we say now does not depend excessively upon what we said before–there is some accumulation of ideas. Visitors coming in later might feel the need to catch up. So if you know anyone who shares our interest and would enjoy, benefit from, be energized or otherwise happily engaged by what we are attempting give a hoot and a holler and invite him or her in quickly. Not for empty numbers; looking for the audience of ordinary sociologists is all.

Later.