Mob Step It Up Art of the Word Mob

How Nosotros Got the Mob

Zach Campbell

Like the word mob, the collective noun audition threatens to erase differences by collapsing distinct individuals into a single entity.

– John H. Muse (one)

i. John H. Muse, 'Flash Mobs and the Improvidence of Audition', Theater, Vol. forty No. 3 (2010), p. 15.

Attention, Please

Spectatorship is the corollary of operation. In films explicitly about performance, information virtually spectatorial attention, reaction and interaction often seems to sideslip nether the radar. What happens to the figures in the story-world who witness the performance every bit it unfolds before them (and us) over time? There are many possible ways to convey attention being requested, captured, granted, stolen or resisted. A film might focus heavily on what has been dubbed the 'Spielberg face'. (ii) Or information technology could shift registers and then that a diegetic address to the audition comes to feel uncomfortably close to breaching the fourth wall – equally in Maureen O'Hara's powerful harangue at the climax of Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner, 1940). This sole topic could inspire a life's critical work. What I seek to practise here is more modest.

The Step Up franchise, as it progresses from the first installment in 2006 to the fourth in 2012 (with a 5th announced for 2014), demonstrates a problem that volition continue to press e'er more insistently upon future considerations of the politics in and of popular movie house. It is a problem of the attention of crowds, of spectatorship and spectacle. The most recent release in the series and also the most ostensibly 'political', Step Upwards Revolution (2012), produces an incidental treatise on the multitudinous mob as a kind of audience. The movie follows a crew, the Mob, who orient a roughly hip-hop trip the light fantastic/performance aesthetic toward the looming political menace of big-money land redevelopment. Thus, I read the symptoms on display every bit an index of changing circumstances in and outside of pop film aesthetics.

2. Come across Matt Patches, 'The Spielberg Face up: A Legacy', Ugo.com, December. 14, 2011 and Kevin B. Lee, 'Esssential Viewing: The Spielberg Face', Fandor, December. thirteen, 2011 . For a prescient general discussion of the representation of spectatorship, see Philip Brophy [1987], 'The Audition You Want: The Audition in Rock and Popular Video Clips'.

But it will not practise to care for Footstep Up either equally a low-genre, masscult whipping male child, or to elevate – in a 'poptimist' polemic – the serial' pleasures above all else. The purpose of my undertaking hither is not to disrupt the myriad pleasures Step Upwards might provide, merely to look askance – critically, philosophically, politically – at their conditions.

Situating Footstep Up

The first Pace Upwards inaugurated a loosely continued sequence of films about immature hip-hop dancers. It is a rather daunting intertext to describe briefly, just the intertexuality is yet another part of the pleasure. (iii) The offset 2 entries are set in Baltimore, Maryland. Channing Tatum plays the initial protagonist, Tyler Gage, before handing over the story to his young friend and protégé, Andie (Briana Evigan), at the beginning of Stride Up 2: The Streets (2008). Tyler and Andie respectively play working class hip-hop dance kids given chances to learn and dance through the middle-class institutional framework of the fictional Maryland School of the Arts (MSA). The tertiary film, Step Up 3D (2010), follows a supporting character from the second, Moose (Adam One thousand. Sevani), every bit he begins his freshman year at New York Academy. He is meant to report engineering only his want instead to dance, dance, dance lands him in an elite street dance crew, the Pirates. Step Up Revolution features an entirely new setting (Miami) and begins with mainly new characters, salvage for one, very minor person in the Mob crew who calls in reinforcements from the previous films, i.eastward., members of the MSA Crew and the Pirates from Stride Up 2 and Step Upward 3D.

A table for the uninitiated; a nautical chart for the unrefreshed; a guide for the perplexed:

three. This has more to do with characters than narrative continuity from entry to entry; seeing the films out of sequence will result in no difficulty in following each, individual one.

TITLE	Yr	SETTING	LINKS WITH PREVIOUS	GROUP
Step Upwards (Anne Fletcher)	2006	Baltimore, Maryland	N/A	Northward/A
Pace Upwards 2: The Streets (Jon M. Chu)	2008	Baltimore, Maryland	Protagonist Andie (Briana Evigan) introduced as longtime friend/protégé of Tyler (Channing Tatum).	MSA Crew
Step Up 3D (Jon 1000. Chu)	2010	New York, New York	New protagonist-of-sorts, Moose (Adam K. Sevani), was a supporting character in Step Upward ii. Others from the second film roll up in this ane to join the NY dance coiffure, the Pirates. Strangely, Moose'due south best friend Camille is played past Alyson Stoner, who earlier played a minor function as Tyler'due south foster sis Camille in Step Upwardly. Same grapheme? No mention in the Step Up intertext is made of this fact.	The Pirates
Pace Up: Revolution (Scott Speer) [Besides released in 3D]	2012	Miami, Florida	A minor grapheme in the Miami crew, who was likewise a minor character in Step Upwardly 3'due south dance crew, the Pirates. This graphic symbol supplies the connection which – in the final act – brings Moose, et al, down to Miami help the Mob make their large argument.	The Mob

The starting time shots of the first moving-picture show fade dorsum and forth in a crosscutting pattern. Hip-hop dancers in a dark warehouse alternating with ballet dancers in a crepuscular studio. Immediately, nosotros are introduced to a dynamic at play throughout all the films. In that location is always an official, privileged group or institution and an informal, underprivileged grouping of characters who fight for recognition. The modes in which this binary opposition play out are open to a corking deal of finessing and reinvention. Parallel storylines and side-plots complicate matters. In terms of overall address, the films gradually focus less on demonstrating the value of street or hip-hop dance, and more on the importance of harnessing attention.

Of all the films, Step Up centres the to the lowest degree effectually dance fix pieces; information technology focuses on romance and incorporates elements of gritty 'urban' crime drama. (iv) Nowhere in the rest of the Stride Up canon exercise elements similar these re-emerge. In the film, Tyler learns that his dance talents might lead him to a better life should he apply himself. It is a hackneyed lesson, and probably a fairly conservative 'bootstrap' ane at that. But its socioeconomic perspective is not steeped in privilege; that is the point. Furthermore, as romantic narrative, Tyler and Nora (Jenna Dewan) must come up to terms with each other'due south course status and habitus. (Again: this is fairly conventional 'wrong side of the tracks' romance territory.) Just the fact of class difference plays out in a much richer and more explicit manner in Footstep Upwards than in whatsoever of its sequels. It informs the moving-picture show in subtle ways, and theme interacts with style. Consider these contrary-bending long-shots in Footstep Up, when Nora commencement spies Tyler dancing abreast his friends outside. Previously, he had shown upward to the MSA for courtroom-mandated, janitorial service; his torso language underlined his discomfort in an surround of emotive, eye-class, over-achieving peers. Simply he is back in his easy-going chemical element exterior the school walls, as he dances jokingly for his friends.

iv. 'Urban' is, of class, an American (Anglophone?) euphemism for inner-city, non-white communities, particularly black or Latino. Non-white individuals are just non office of the Pace Up stable of protagonists to date.

Early on, Tyler'south cocky-expression through dance is an stop unto itself. It makes him no money and opens no doors for him (save, mayhap, picking up young women in clubs). Dance is not a careerist vocation in Tyler's world. Nora'due south problem is a more respectable, heart-class i. Her mother is apprehensive of her long-term prospects as a professional dancer, even with the institutional backing of the MSA. Then it is a thing of a secure path toward a respectable and worthwhile career, or a less secure 1 through artistic modes. But the series gradually naturalises Nora's conservative career-path dilemma, and abandons representation of working-course characters who, like Tyler, practise not even think in terms of trip the light fantastic toe as a feasible vocation. (5)

In subsequent Footstep Up films, the characters evince unshakeable confidence near the wisdom and legitimacy of their choices as future creative professionals. They accept only impatience for friends or relatives who question their practicality. Far be it from us to criticise determination and confidence in youth! However, we should note that the effect this has on the films is that the characters' struggles to realise dreams become easier. The dramatic core begins to point elsewhere. (6)

Staging Spectatorship

Generically, trip the light fantastic toe films often operate like musicals. The trip the light fantastic sequences in Step Up practise not typically stretch the boundaries of verisimilitude too far. So, trip the light fantastic numbers occur in a shared time and space with the spectators earlier them – whether that amounts to a single voyeur or a large crowd at a trip the light fantastic contest. These spectators in Step Upward Revolution form the focal point of my analysis. It is an aesthetic of spectatorship that the serial builds up to, precisely because of its disengagement from such representational matters as class or race.

Before looking at Revolution, let us apace examine some established ways of staging attending. Somewhat arbitrarily, let us showtime with Vincente Minnelli's The Band Wagon (1953).

5. In Step Upward 2: The Streets, Andie ultimately decides that ane'due south street credibility substantially comes from inside, as she speaks from her discourse equally an art school kid to the presumably working form/urban crowd that hosts the eponymous Streets dance competition. Past the 3rd and fourth films, the master kind of friction about trip the light fantastic or any creative attempt seems to be whether one should or should non care for it as a career path.

vi. By no means is the first Footstep Upward an organic expression of working class feel or mentality. It does seem, I think, a more forthright stab at representing such a thing.

The 'Polish on Your Shoes' number presents a crowd of people who cast admiring glances at Fred Astaire as he performs. But this public is transitory. They take other things to attend to, other things to which they will grant their attention. The people can elect to watch the performance, but there is no need for Astaire'southward character to secure their gaze and their time. This is a free-grade and casual way of styling spectatorship within the context of an impromptu, diegetic performance.

Observe the blonde male child with a bored expression as he chews gum when Astaire enters the photo booth to show off his shoes. Past this point in the shot, he is looking by Astaire, although the two older boys backside him are still paying attention. This not-engaged extra is organic to the overall aesthetic of crowds, space and attending. Equally people come and go in the scene, or only stand right earlier this performance, it is alright if non anybody is having the same, unified experience.

Sometimes, of course, an attentive intra-cinematic audience, blocked just so, is dramatically advisable. At that place are conventions of staging which underline this kind of diegetic performance. Let us expect at the staging from another Minnelli film, Meet Me in St Louis (1944). The cake walk scene is, like most of Stride Upwardly's numbers, a diegetically motivated performance. Nosotros understand why the party guests expect on, just as we know why attendees of a dance boxing or a conservatory audition expect on with polite attention and, if they like, active encouragement. Social context dictates what is expected for the spectating crowd. Esther and Tootie, like the Stride Upward dancers most of the fourth dimension, remain within the boundaries of diegetic verisimilitude.

Annotation the long shots and the moderate limerick in depth. The arrangement of people on i side of the profilmic infinite respects the 4th wall or the camera-eye; it is a convention inherited from the stage, but with a history of skillful utilize by many filmmakers and styles. Contrast this with an instance of frontal staging in Step Upwardly Revolution:

The utensil sculpture spells out 'the MOB', although the awkward blocking indicates that the onlookers are reading it backwards. Of course, we encompass stylisation in a film similar Stride Up Revolution. The problem is why something might be stylised in the detail manner it is. This sticks in the craw here, because of the friction between the unpredictability of wink mob performance in general, and the depressing orderliness of this audience. The distinction of flash mobs in real life is that they (appear to) emerge spontaneously and organically from out of a public crowd. They capitalise on the fact that there are no conventions of looking and listening, as there are at a planned performance. (7) From their get-go, flash mobs take also been linked to neo-liberal, backer strategies of branding. (8) Instead of disrupting or emancipating social infinite, they may further restrict it.

In these sequences, the inserted reaction shots grow more insistent. Individuals watch in general admiration, mouths agape, grin. They e'er apace stand back to afford the functioning its space. Many individuals use their smartphones to capture pictures and video. The soundtrack even mixes 'oohs' and 'aahs' into the music and sound effects. These easy transitions feel eerily like commercials. Thus, the stylistic choices practise not reflect the way bodies move and feel, fifty-fifty when one is a mere spectator of performance. If popular can be liberating, why must the representation of its enjoyment rest upon such constrictive contrivances? This is instead a way of depicting how a spectacle can and should be consumed.

One of Step Upwardly Revolution's flash mobs takes place in an art gallery. Galleries are places for looking but, typically, this is an autonomous course of the action: individuals and groups can view the displays as they please. But, in its reaction shots, and its deviations from any supposed realism, this gallery sequence depicts a rapt audience which gain to follow a sequential process through the space. And, of course, information technology reacts approvingly. (9)

7. 'If yous ask the mobsters themselves, the most essential audition of the flash mob is the public they surprise into stupefaction'. Muse, p. xv.

eight. See Paul Grainge, 'A Song and Dance: Branded Entertainment and Mobile Promotion', International Periodical of Cultural Studies, Vol. 15 No. 2 (2011), pp. 165-180.

ix. Of form, gallery space itself is neither blank nor neutral; see Brian O'Doherty'southward archetype Within the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Infinite, Expanded Edition (Berkeley: University of California, 2000); the essays outset appeared in Artforum in 1976. But the point is that visitors to a gallery can choose how long to wait, what to concentrate on the nigh, and – to a caste – in what order they await at things. Whereas, in this scene from Step Up Revolution, they just follow invisible cues.

Emily has come up to the gallery at Sean'southward ambiguous bidding, wearing something nice. Observe the colourful painting in the background.

At Sean'due south prompting, Emily looks more closely at the painting; a disguised Mob dancer reveals himself. A review of the prior shots shows that he was previously absent-minded. This moment elides the motion picture'south already established rules of verisimilitude, as a ways of showcasing the 3D technology, and providing a narrative platform for a sense of wonder.

Every bit the dancer detaches from the painting, the crowd looks on in astonishment.

Emily every bit a key spectatorial proxy, standing in a posture of anaesthesia.

Emily equally spectatorial proxy.

Clearly, art is much more fun when dancers take over.

What is humanity in the digital age, afterwards all?

Emily as spectatorial proxy, again.

The gallery patrons exit the edifice after the Mob makes its getaway and leaves its signature.

The fine art gallery Mob sequence unfolds in numerous rooms, but it is all mysteriously synchronised. With each new intervention in the space of the gallery, Emily leads the fashion to expect at the new thing that seems to attract, as if by magic, the attention of those nearby. It is as if she embodies the leadership role that sociologist Gustave Le Bon argued was a natural characteristic of crowds: 'As soon as a certain number of living beings are gathered together, whether they be animals or men, they place themselves instinctively nether the authority of a chief'. (x) At ane point, the gallery curator gently restrains a security guard who is about to put a stop to this, presumably on the grounds of the slang maxim real recognise real. This curator, though she may well be a fleck of an ivory tower prosecco snob, is pleased past this intervention. When the result ends, the visitors all seem to go out the gallery at once. Show over. And even so, do nosotros non have a thinly veiled assumption here that crowds want whatever is dictated to them, by those who have grabbed their attention most insistently?

The onlookers in the corporate protest number respond the aforementioned way, equally do diners at a chic eating house. The aforementioned facial expressions and postures re-announced. It is but a template. 1 could near rubber-stamp the Step Upwards Revolution diegetic spectator.

x. Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Pop Listen (London: Batoche Books, Kitchener, ON, 1896 [2001]), p. 68. Encounter also Elias Canetti (trans. Carol Stewart), Crowds and Ability (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984).

Thus crowds in Step Upwards – specially Revolution – are usually obedient audiences. (11) When the flash mobs end, the crowds congregate on cue around the message or signature (or brand ) of the Mob. Why are these crowds then docile? Does it non occur to whatsoever of these spectators that, in fact, they might interact with the mobbers? Speak back to them in some mode? Join them? Or simply ignore them? What has happened to the full general distrust of the ivory tower, which we saw in Step Up inscribed into Channing Tatum's very trunk language upon his first (legal) arrival at the Baltimore arts school where he did not belong? This apprehension seems to take been replaced with a circuit of cultural production wherein art galleries, middle form stage kids, and mainstream liberal politics all 'empathise' ane some other. What does the franchise sacrifice along the way? I would say that it is the willingness to attempt to depict something approximating working form feel, or radical homo departure, more broadly. And, as a event, this stylistic style hamstrings the potential of pop cinema.

Spectacular Optimism

Step Up Revolution arrived in the wake of Occupy movements the world over. This was a commercial pop film from a frivolous, depression-genre franchise that nevertheless promised (and, yes, even advertised) sure general features of Occupy's rhetoric and iconography. The Mob is a street dance and operation fine art crew which becomes increasingly politicised over the course of Revolution. Some of its members work for the hotel owned by the land developer (Peter Gallagher) who seeks to purchase up and evacuate what the working form customs the Mob, and many others, call their home. Such fabric, obviously, is non ever very visible in multiplexes; the film won over some shrewd commentators upon its release. I want to highlight two reviews of Stride Upward Revolution, both written by sharp and observant chroniclers of pop culture.

First, a representative excerpt from a brief review by Anne Helen Peterson on the blog The Hairpin:

11. It is telling that Revolution'due south least obedient crowd appears in the sequence in which some rogue Mob members terrorize a gala function. Information technology is uncharacteristically aggressive, wielding smoke bombs, and serves a moralising purpose in the story – equally a demonstration of when protest 'goes too far'. As one of the primary Revolution characters says: 'It's non OK to make art for fun anymore, and it's non OK to make problem either'. What exactly is protest art that forbids itself from making whatsoever trouble? Thus, the sequence links the fear and discomfort of wealthy people with criminal violence and ethical behavior. It is hard to imagine a dramatic scenario about progressive protest that tries harder to delegitimise whatever kind of militant forcefulness.

In that location's a genuine Marxist, agit-prop commentary at the heart of the motion-picture show. Granted, this commentary gets muddled with a few of the developments at the end, merely the idea of art as a way for the invisible working form to make themselves visible – a notion actually articulated past the hottie protagonist – is startlingly perceptive, not to mention progressive. The underclass uses their bodies, their millennial-tech skills, and social media savvy to make the bourgeoisie wake the fuck up. (12)

12. Anne Helen Peterson, 'Step Upwards: Revolution: More than Than the Sum of Its Trip the light fantastic toe-Movie Parts', The Hairpin, xxx July 2012.

Second, Trevor Link writes for Spectrum: 'This is the politics of spectacle: there is a lot of injustice in the world, just if you get plenty eyes on something, you might brainstorm to alter it'. (13)

Peterson'south rave notes the 'startlingly perceptive' and 'progressive' sentiment of fine art's visibility, although I would counter that such strategies work both ways. For instance, the hottie protagonist's battle plan is already entering into spectacular notions of the attention economy. If information technology is perceptive for him to engage in a scrap of Occupy(ish) street tactics and protestation art, is it not similarly perceptive for Summit, Offspring and Lionsgate to put out a film that appropriates these populist sentiments? These companies have profited from their cribbing of international mass protests against banks, trade policy, austerity measures and war. Or, in the story-world itself, is it not perceptive for Nike to come in equally a saviour, hip to youth civilization, and offer to sponsor the Mob? 'What do I call up? Where do I sign!?', says one character at the terminate of Pace Upwards Revolution, when a Nike representative offers them a lucrative deal. The oversupply cheers.

13. Trevor Link, review, Pace Up: Revolution, Spectrum, 26 July 2012.

I agree with Link in his overall sentiment: trip the light fantastic films may indeed have assumed some of the role that musicals one time did in American movie theatre, and non all critics are willing to entertain this notion. Link has also written a very thoughtful defense of the liberating potential of popular, and I admittedly endorse him on two crucial points. (14) Kickoff, that there is 'something disturbing about the time we live in when pleasures must be intellectualised in club to purify them sufficiently before consumption'. Second, I acknowledge the insistence (building off Richard Dyer) that backer cultural production is and must be contradictory, and that its use matters greatly. It often means petty to discuss an artwork equally, e.g., progressive or racist or inherently neo-liberal, if nosotros do not bother to attend, as well, to the ways in which people use this work. So I apply Link'due south writing, and his critical philosophy, as a springboard, primarily to clarify the stakes in addressing the contradictory aspects of cultural material that feels (and thus in some sense is) liberating. In other words, maybe we tin can respect pleasance without turning it into a trump card. For the same reason, we should not presume that aesthetics is redemptive of non-aesthetic realms of life, like politics or ideals.

fourteen. Trevor Link, 'Pop Utopianism: A Manifesto / We Demand to Talk Well-nigh 1000-Pop: A Mix', Occupied Territories, 17 January 2012.

Alhough the corporate satire flash mob in Revolution mocks suit-and-tie conformity through dance, the fact that information technology pictorialises reception through its template of spectators united by beholden spectatorship unbalances the entire pop-political ethos at work. Every bit I take attempted to show through this essay so far, it is the infinite of intra-cinematic operation that produces the off-space of spectatorship. So, what does it mean that the Mob parodies standardization, if the shots of spectating crowds are every bit glumly standardised equally annihilation Fritz Lang e'er imagined? And does this not gloss over, likewise quickly, the strategies employed by Step Upwards Revolution, and indeed the whole series, to connect the personal and the political in the most conventional ways, e.yard., through chastely heterosexual romances? (15)

The aesthetics of difference at play here are always partial, and it is worth looking at what they might unite, supplementally. Equally noted in the epigraph which opens this essay: collective nouns like mob audience comprise inside them the threat to erase difference. Thus, even equally Pace Up Revolution revels in its joint of individualism and some measure out of cultural divergence, information technology also produces a fictive unity. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, in their seminal 1985 piece of work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, delineated the logics of difference and equivalence at work in politics. The logic of divergence, borrowed from structuralist linguistics, is the process whereby meaning is produced. A concatenation of equivalence might exist produced among sociopolitical blocs that unite disparate elements in their shared antagonism toward another bloc. Laclau and Mouffe write:

fifteen. Step Up 3D also ends with Moose kissing his best friend Camille, athough any depiction of romantic tension or sexual feeling between them, until that point, was virtually non-real. But the narrative automobile must proceed, and the guy and daughter take to finish up together, right?

The more unstable the social relations, the less successful volition exist any definite organisation of differences and the more than the points of antagonism volition proliferate. This proliferation will make more difficult the construction of whatsoever centrality and, consequently, the establishment of unified chains of equivalence. (16)

16. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, 2^nd ed. (London, NY: Verso, 1985 [2001]), p. 131.

On the level of political theory, at least, this might begin to explain why the aesthetics of the afterward, mail-recession Step Up films, and of Revolution in particular, stammer upon abandoning a more traditional, working form, representational milieu. The trouble is not that these films have failed to maintain strict loyalty to the expert old days of class struggle, above all else. Instead, information technology is a trouble of straining also far the metaphorical connection between teenage dancers and national, sociopolitical antagonisms. Footstep Up Revolution, similar the other films in the series, articulates divergence largely through the trappings of clothing and way. Characters reiterate certain hip-hop values and slogans, simply these are ofttimes depoliticised and whitewashed. Annotation that nonwhite protagonists are alien to the Step Up universe, every bit are interracial romances. Race is simply buried and forgotten in these films as a thematic event. (Footstep Up Revolution's Miami lacks latinidad, too.) The many points of differentiation which Step Up'southward dramaturgy produces are, effectively, a smokescreen against a paternalistic authorization who has means, and a filial insubordinate who asks/demands to partake in the same means. The logic of difference informing Step Up'southward political aesthetic promises to mask a logic of equivalence which dissolves these very differences in the cardinal necessity of the attending economic system. This contradiction of cultural product proceeds quite naturally, if we trace back to Link and Dyer, and venture a fully supplemental reading of the politics of Step Upward'south aesthetics.

Simply there is too promise. Step Up 3D features a dance filmed in a single long tracking shot – accompanying a modern, remix version of the Fred Astaire song, "I Won't Dance" (originally from Roberta, 1935). Information technology takes place at the end of a scene in which Moose and Camille reconcile afterward a fight. Information technology is breezy, svelte and mannerly. As a long take, the number stands apart from other Step Up dance numbers. Unlike Stride Upwards Revolution, there is, of course, no progressive, manifest content. Information technology explicitly concerns two friends, and only them. And yet I take comfort in how information technology stages the world around Moose and Camille. The people on this Manhattan street are going virtually their own business. They are moving apartments, watering flowers, and buying ice cream. Some of them chide the dancing pair equally nuisances. This impromptu performance is too Moose and Camille'south shared, private reverie. For this observer, at least, information technology is meaningful that the people who share space with them are not represented as mere spectatorial automata. Merely – even at this moment of supreme, carefree pleasure – the moving picture demonstrates a earth that is larger than the performers and, in this largeness, represents divergence.