Tactical frivolity
Encyclopedia
Tactical frivolity is a form of public protest
involving humour, often including peaceful non-compliance with authorities, carnival and whimsical antics. Humour has played a role in political protests at least as far back as the Classical period
in ancient Greece. Yet it is only since the 1990s that the term tactical frivolity has gained common currency for describing the use of humour in opposing perceived political injustice. There is no universally agreed definition as to which sorts of humorous protest count as tactical frivolity. Generally the term is used for a whimsical, non confrontational approach rather than aggressive mocking or cutting jokes.
by Mikhail Bakhtin
, a Russian scholar considered by some to be the most important thinker of the 20th century. The work discusses the life and times of the writer and satirist François Rabelais
with emphases on what the author considers to be the powerful role of humour in medieval and early times. Carnivals, Satire
and the French folk custom of Charivari
were discussed as mediums that allowed the lower classes to use humour to highlight unjust behaviour by the upper classes. These humorous protests were generally tolerated by the ruling authorities. Examples of the use of humour for political protest even from Classical times such as Lysistrata
by ancient Greek dramatist Aristophanes
have been described as "Rabeleisan protest".
Studies of hunter gather tribes thought to have systems of social organisation that have changed little since prehistoric times, have found that ridicule or anger is used by many tribes to oppose any individual who tries to assume authority in a way that violates the tribes egalitarian norms. Tribes observed to show this behaviour include the !Kung, Mbuti
, Naskapi
and Hazda.
An example of a political protest making extensive use of humour in early modern times is the 17th century British movement the Levellers
.
There is much more extensive literature covering the use of humour by the protest movements which emerged in the 20th century.
In the United States, Abbie Hoffman
is a well-known user of frivolous tactics, active in the 1960s and 70s, his actions included dropping money on the New York Stock Exchange, and the Levitation of the Pentagon. One of the earliest protest groups whose use of humour has been specifically described as "tactical frivolity" is Orange Alternative
, a movement that emerged in Poland during the early 1980s as a part of the broader Solidarity campaign. They made exstensive use of visual jokes and theatrical stunts to protest against oppression by the authorities, a common theme was to dress up as elves (sometimes translated dwarves or gnomes). Orange Alternative have been described as the most "influential of the solidarity factions", who were central to enabling the overall movement to prevail, partly due to the success their comedic "happenings" enjoyed in attracting the attention of the worlds media.
A protest movement described as partly responsible for popularising the contemporary use of "Tactical Frivolity" is Reclaim the Streets
(RTS). They formed in 1991 in Great Britain inspired in part by the anti road protests of the previous decades and in part by the Situationists. As the 1990s advanced, RTS inspired splinter groups in other countries across the world, and they were heavily involved in organising the international Carnival against Capitalism
, an anti capitalism event held in many cities simultaneously on June 18, 1999. Carnival against Capitalism, frequently known as J18, is sometimes credited as being the first of the major international anti capitalist protest. RTS have reported that many of their organisers were inspired by independently reading the work of Bakhtin.
Large scale International anti-capitalist protests
are widely seen as dawning between 1998 and 2000 with events such as the protests at the Birmingham 1998 G8
, J18, the Seattle 1999 WTO protests and the Prague 2000 IMF protests
.
The 1999 Seattle demonstrations saw extensive violent clashes with the police. For the 2000 protest in Prague
, demonstrators divided themselves into three broad groupings based in part on the way they wished to engage with the authorities. There was a "Yellow march" for traditional non violent protest, a "Blue march" for those who were up for physically taking on the police, and a "Silver and Pink" group which is described as employing "tactical frivolity" and also in being the most successful in terms of penetrating the security cordon around the IMF meeting. Attending Prague was also a small group specifically calling itself "Tactical Frivolity", which consisted of a Samba band plus thirteen women from Yorkshire
dressed as pink fairies.
Ten months later, a group of protesters dressed in carnival outfits and again calling themselves the Pink and Silver bloc, or Pink Fairies, used the term "tactical frivolity" to describe their own methods when protesting at the 27th G8 summit
in Genoa
. These included waving "magic fairy wands" at the police and training "radical cheerleaders," as well as the deployment of a "revolutionary spaghetti catapult" designed to "splatter the leaders with pasta". The device failed to hit any leaders with spaghetti, but according to journalist Johann Hari
the Pink Fairies did succeed in causing mass laughter among the crowds.
At the 2005 G8 summit
in Scotland, tactical frivolity was again used by protesters such as the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army
a group whose theatrical and carnival like performances succeeded in attracting considerable media attention and were funded by Arts Council England
.
The large scale use of tactical frivolity at the 2001 and 2005 G8 protests failed to deliver any tangible change in policy. But the method continued to be used, for example at protests held concerning air travel at Heathrow , England, during 2007.
Protest
A protest is an expression of objection, by words or by actions, to particular events, policies or situations. Protests can take many different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations...
involving humour, often including peaceful non-compliance with authorities, carnival and whimsical antics. Humour has played a role in political protests at least as far back as the Classical period
Classical Greece
Classical Greece was a 200 year period in Greek culture lasting from the 5th through 4th centuries BC. This classical period had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and greatly influenced the foundation of Western civilizations. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought, such as...
in ancient Greece. Yet it is only since the 1990s that the term tactical frivolity has gained common currency for describing the use of humour in opposing perceived political injustice. There is no universally agreed definition as to which sorts of humorous protest count as tactical frivolity. Generally the term is used for a whimsical, non confrontational approach rather than aggressive mocking or cutting jokes.
History of the role of humour in political protest
The study of humour by social historians did not become popular until the early 1980s and the literature on this subject studying periods before the 20th century is relatively sparse. An exception is the frequently cited Rabelais and His WorldRabelais and His World
During World War II Mikhail Bakhtin submitted a dissertation on the French Renaissance writer François Rabelais which was not defended until some years later. The controversial ideas discussed within the work caused much disagreement, and it was consequently decided that Bakhtin be denied his...
by Mikhail Bakhtin
Mikhail Bakhtin
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic, semiotician and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language...
, a Russian scholar considered by some to be the most important thinker of the 20th century. The work discusses the life and times of the writer and satirist François Rabelais
François Rabelais
François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
with emphases on what the author considers to be the powerful role of humour in medieval and early times. Carnivals, Satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
and the French folk custom of Charivari
Charivari
Charivari is the term for a French folk custom in which the community gave a noisy, discordant mock serenade, also pounding on pots and pans, at the home of newlyweds. The loud, public ritual evolved to a form of social coercion, for instance, to force an as-yet-unmarried couple to wed...
were discussed as mediums that allowed the lower classes to use humour to highlight unjust behaviour by the upper classes. These humorous protests were generally tolerated by the ruling authorities. Examples of the use of humour for political protest even from Classical times such as Lysistrata
Lysistrata
Lysistrata is one of eleven surviving plays written by Aristophanes. Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC, it is a comic account of one woman's extraordinary mission to end The Peloponnesian War...
by ancient Greek dramatist Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
have been described as "Rabeleisan protest".
Studies of hunter gather tribes thought to have systems of social organisation that have changed little since prehistoric times, have found that ridicule or anger is used by many tribes to oppose any individual who tries to assume authority in a way that violates the tribes egalitarian norms. Tribes observed to show this behaviour include the !Kung, Mbuti
Mbuti
Mbuti or Bambuti are one of several indigenous pygmy groups in the Congo region of Africa. Their languages belong to the Central Sudanic and also to Bantu languages.-Overview:...
, Naskapi
Naskapi
The Naskapi are the indigenous Innu inhabitants of an area they refer to as Nitassinan, which comprises most of what other Canadians refer to as eastern Quebec and Labrador, Canada....
and Hazda.
An example of a political protest making extensive use of humour in early modern times is the 17th century British movement the Levellers
Levellers
The Levellers were a political movement during the English Civil Wars which emphasised popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law, and religious tolerance, all of which were expressed in the manifesto "Agreement of the People". They came to prominence at the end of the First...
.
There is much more extensive literature covering the use of humour by the protest movements which emerged in the 20th century.
In the United States, Abbie Hoffman
Abbie Hoffman
Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was a political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ....
is a well-known user of frivolous tactics, active in the 1960s and 70s, his actions included dropping money on the New York Stock Exchange, and the Levitation of the Pentagon. One of the earliest protest groups whose use of humour has been specifically described as "tactical frivolity" is Orange Alternative
Orange Alternative
Orange Alternative is a name for an underground protest movement which was started in Wrocław, a town in south-west Poland and led by Waldemar Fydrych , commonly known as Major in the 1980s...
, a movement that emerged in Poland during the early 1980s as a part of the broader Solidarity campaign. They made exstensive use of visual jokes and theatrical stunts to protest against oppression by the authorities, a common theme was to dress up as elves (sometimes translated dwarves or gnomes). Orange Alternative have been described as the most "influential of the solidarity factions", who were central to enabling the overall movement to prevail, partly due to the success their comedic "happenings" enjoyed in attracting the attention of the worlds media.
A protest movement described as partly responsible for popularising the contemporary use of "Tactical Frivolity" is Reclaim the Streets
Reclaim the Streets
Reclaim The Streets is a collective with a shared ideal of community ownership of public spaces. Participants characterize the collective as a resistance movement opposed to the dominance of corporate forces in globalization, and to the car as the dominant mode of transport.-Protests:Reclaim The...
(RTS). They formed in 1991 in Great Britain inspired in part by the anti road protests of the previous decades and in part by the Situationists. As the 1990s advanced, RTS inspired splinter groups in other countries across the world, and they were heavily involved in organising the international Carnival against Capitalism
Carnival Against Capitalism
The Global Carnival Against Capital took place on Friday, 18th June, 1999. It was an international day of protest timed to coincide with the 25th G8 Summit in Cologne, Germany. The carnival was inspired by the 1980s Stop the City protests and the Global Street Party, which happened at the same time...
, an anti capitalism event held in many cities simultaneously on June 18, 1999. Carnival against Capitalism, frequently known as J18, is sometimes credited as being the first of the major international anti capitalist protest. RTS have reported that many of their organisers were inspired by independently reading the work of Bakhtin.
Role in international anti-capitalist protests
Anti-globalization movement
The anti-globalization movement, or counter-globalisation movement, is critical of the globalization of corporate capitalism. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist movement, anti-corporate globalization movement, or...
are widely seen as dawning between 1998 and 2000 with events such as the protests at the Birmingham 1998 G8
24th G8 summit
The 24th G8 Summit was held at Birmingham, England, United Kingdom between May 15 to 17 1998. The venue for this summit meeting was the Birmingham International Convention Centre....
, J18, the Seattle 1999 WTO protests and the Prague 2000 IMF protests
Anti-globalization Protests in Prague
Anti-capitalist Protests in Prague during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank summit in September 2000 in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic....
.
The 1999 Seattle demonstrations saw extensive violent clashes with the police. For the 2000 protest in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, demonstrators divided themselves into three broad groupings based in part on the way they wished to engage with the authorities. There was a "Yellow march" for traditional non violent protest, a "Blue march" for those who were up for physically taking on the police, and a "Silver and Pink" group which is described as employing "tactical frivolity" and also in being the most successful in terms of penetrating the security cordon around the IMF meeting. Attending Prague was also a small group specifically calling itself "Tactical Frivolity", which consisted of a Samba band plus thirteen women from Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
dressed as pink fairies.
Ten months later, a group of protesters dressed in carnival outfits and again calling themselves the Pink and Silver bloc, or Pink Fairies, used the term "tactical frivolity" to describe their own methods when protesting at the 27th G8 summit
27th G8 summit
-Overview:The Group of Seven was an unofficial forum which brought together the heads of the richest industrialized countries: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada starting in 1976. The G8, meeting for the first time in 1997, was formed with the addition...
in Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
. These included waving "magic fairy wands" at the police and training "radical cheerleaders," as well as the deployment of a "revolutionary spaghetti catapult" designed to "splatter the leaders with pasta". The device failed to hit any leaders with spaghetti, but according to journalist Johann Hari
Johann Hari
Johann Hari is an award winning British journalist who has been a columnist at The Independent, the The Huffington Post, and contributed to several other publications. In 2011, Hari was accused of plagiarism; he subsequently was suspended from The Independent and surrendered his 2008 Orwell Prize...
the Pink Fairies did succeed in causing mass laughter among the crowds.
At the 2005 G8 summit
31st G8 summit
The 31st G8 summit was held from July 6 to July 8, 2005 at the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, Scotland, United Kingdom and hosted by British Prime Minister Tony Blair...
in Scotland, tactical frivolity was again used by protesters such as the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army
Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army
The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army is a United Kingdom-based anti-authoritarian left-wing activist group that uses clowning and non-violent tactics to act against corporate globalisation, war, and on other issues....
a group whose theatrical and carnival like performances succeeded in attracting considerable media attention and were funded by Arts Council England
Arts Council England
Arts Council England was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. It is a non-departmental public body of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport...
.
The large scale use of tactical frivolity at the 2001 and 2005 G8 protests failed to deliver any tangible change in policy. But the method continued to be used, for example at protests held concerning air travel at Heathrow , England, during 2007.
See also
- Anarchism and violenceAnarchism and violenceAnarchism and violence have become closely connected in popular thought, in part because of a concept of "propaganda of the deed". Propaganda of the deed, or attentát, was espoused by a number of leading anarchists in the late nineteenth century, and was associated with a number of incidents of...
- Pink Chaddi Campaign
- Rhythms of resistanceRhythms of resistanceRhythms of Resistance, sometimes abbreviated to RoR, is a network of percussion bands that play at demonstrations and direct actions that fall within the broad definition of 'anti-capitalist'...
- The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
- Fathers for Justice
- Front Deutscher ÄpfelFront Deutscher ÄpfelThe Front Deutscher Äpfel , also called Apfelfront is a satirical organisation, founded in Leipzig in 2004. It satirizes right extremist parties, especially the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands...
- Glitter bombingGlitter bombingGlitter bombing is an emerging act of civil disobedience in the United States in which activists throw glitter on people at public events. Glitter bombers have frequently been motivated by their target's anti-gay beliefs. Glitter bombing is "technically assault and battery" according to Mark R...
External links
- Tactical frivolity described by Rhythms of Resistance
- Pink Silver Group in Genoa report
- Tactical Frivolity + Rhythms of Resistance" , video by Nuria Vila and Marcelo Expósito (2007)
- Tactical frivolity at the Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...