Sample Model Paper for Turnitin
• Video
Flash Mobs
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Have you ever seen one?
What would your reaction be?
Why do you think people do them?
How would you define “flash mob?”
• http://www.parade.com/news/2011/10/7best-flash-mobs.html
Article
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Buffalo witnesses the evolution of the flash mob
Colin DabkowskiBuffalo News
07-31-2011
Buffalo witnesses the evolution of the flash mob
Byline: Colin Dabkowski
Edition: Final
Section: Gusto Extra
Type: Commentary
On a hazy Thursday afternoon in Allentown, Buffalo's de facto headquarters for weirdness, a small group of women dressed in what looked to be homemade straitjackets assembled in
the parking lot of an Allen Street bar.
At the appointed moment, a portable amplifier began blasting "They're Coming to Take Me Away" by the German synth pop band Neuroticfish, and the half-dozen white-clad women
started marching in place to the beat.
They made their way out onto the sidewalk and into the street, occasionally pausing to perform a sort of circular dance movement that might have been an exaggerated re-enactment of
sea-sickness. They then marched back into the parking lot and took a bow, to the polite applause of a couple of dozen onlookers.
As flash mobs go, this one was unusually demure. It was a relatively spur-of-the-moment affair organized by dancers Leslie Fineberg and Bonnie Jean Taylor and meant to kick off
Buffalo's annual Infringement Festival, which is now raging in Allentown and across the city.
The flash mob phenomenon, which cropped up around 2003 and made its way to these parts in the way of the standard Buffalo style- lag about four years later, is going strong locally and
continues to manifest itself in various forms.
But increasingly, the flash mob is moving away from its absurdist roots, in which agenda-free participants simply perform some brief, unexpected action en masse and then go about their
business. In 2007, Canisius College professor Jeffrey J. McConnell described local flash mobsters to The News as "people who want to point out the absurdity of the world by doing these
absurd things."
Now, most of the flash mobs we hear about are essentially creative advertisements, which certainly have their place, but don't quite hold the wholeheartedly goofy, why-on-earthwould- someone-do-that appeal of the form's most successful incarnations.
For instance: An opera-based flash mob recently interrupted a speech at the Chautauqua Institution by National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman, who looked mildly
uncomfortable as members of the Chautauqua Opera playfully assaulted him with snippets of Mozart and Verdi.
And late last year, a group of about 100 people gathered in the Galleria Mall to sing a song from "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" in the very worthy support of the advocacy group
Empower Arts Buffalo.
Not that the absurdity-fueled flash mob is dead: YouTube is littered with examples of apparently less agenda-driven local mobs, like a group of girls dancing to Lady Gaga's "Edge of
Glory" at this year's Taste of Buffalo festival and University at Buffalo students in costumes sweeping the Student Union with brooms to the music from "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."
One of my favorite flash mob-esque activities is the periodic Zombie Walk, which, though it does raise money for charity, retains that sense of bizarre for the sake of bizarre. Seeing the
surprised faces of diners in the Towne Restaurant in Allentown as the zombies walk past is priceless.
And that is the point of the flash mob at its best -- pure, unadulterated surprise unmitigated by messaging. However worthy the cause, the appeal of the flash mob invariably weakens
when it is used as a promotional tool for some specific organization or agenda.
There are also logistical matters. Too small, and the phenomenon seems cheesy. Too big, as in a famous Oprah-approved flash mob held in Chicago's Millennium Park to the strains of the
Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling," and it takes on a disconcerting sense of conformity, of the sort we witnessed during the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics.
And that's nothing to get too down about. It's not that the phenomenon has jumped the shark, exactly. It's just that -- like so many other cultural phenomena that began in the province
of art and eventually found their way into the language of commerce -- the flash mob has simply evolved.
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Chicago Tribune
(Chicago, IL)
Jun 9, 2011, p. 3
Copyright © 2011 Chicago Tribune. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Cops and Mobbers
Flash mob supporters say term is being unfairly maligned
By Rex W Huppke
It has been a rough string of days for fans of flash mobs. The largely innocuous, secretly organized events in which fun-loving people gather en masse to dance or say the same thing at
once or engage in pillow fights have been unwittingly lumped in with a series of violent crimes in Chicago involving large groups of young attackers.
A Google search of "Chicago flash mob" now brings up an array of stories about these crimes, in which people have been robbed and beaten.
"A flash mob's purpose is to create joy through surprise," said Staci Lawrence, co-founder of the Los Angeles-based company Flash Mob America, which organizes flash mob events
across the country.
Yet the term has been co-opted. In February, Loyola University Chicago warned its Water Tower campus students about "flash mob offenders" coming off the CTA Red Line at Chicago
Avenue.
Then attacks by roving gangs of teens over the weekend propelled the term into the local news media. Blogs, radio and TV stations, and newspapers -- including the Tribune at times -have associated "flash mob" with the violent acts, though police have said no texting or social media were used to organize the attacks.
Chicago Police Department spokesman Daniel O'Brien said Wednesday that the official description officers will use is "multiple offender incidents." He also said there is no indication
these crimes were coordinated using social media, which is a hallmark of actual flash mobs.
Jen Smith, 26, of Chicago, took part in an actual flash mob last week at the Tribune's Printers Row Lit Fest. When she began reading media reports about criminal "flash mobs" she swiftly
got on Twitter and suggested -- nicely -- that people knock it off.
"A few people on Twitter were misusing it right off the bat, and I tried to bring it up in a nonconfrontational way," Smith said. "Flash mobs are positive things. A lot of people at the Lit
Fest didn't know it was going to happen and were really surprised. The whole thing was to promote literacy."
According to various news reports, the first flash mob was held in New York City in 2003. The concept swiftly went global. A Time magazine article that same year describes similar events
in England, calling them "inexplicable mobs."
Lawrence, the flash mob organizer, said the idea is similar to acts of performance art from the 1960s and 1970s.
"It's something that has really been happening for decades," she said.
And she hopes it can proceed, free of unwarranted criminal connotations
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Your assignment
• Write a short essay in which you
– Define a flash mob
– Explain current controversies
– Express your comments, observations, or
reactions about flash mobs
– Remember an expanded definition includes
examples