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Viral Narrative

Earlier this year, prankster group Improv Everywhere staged
an event called "Frozen Grand Central," in which the participants
synchronized their watches, and at a prearranged moment they all froze in place
in the middle of Grand Central's Main Concourse, mystifying observers. Exactly
five minutes later, everyone resumed normal motion. In an April 30 sweeps-week episode,
the television show Law & Order: SVU made Robin Williams the leader of a
similar public action group, and restaged the event for use in their own murder
story. This convergence of on-the-edge viral action and popular TV crime fiction
provokes some thoughts on how natural it is for humans to construct a narrative.

Stories are how we understand the world -- even if we don't
really know what's going on, we'll make something up. The original event
presented a mystery to its audience – "Why are so many people frozen? Has
something dangerous happened? What will happen next?" And each frozen
individual acted as an invitation to travelers close by to construct a story
around them – "Who is this girl with a banana? If I poke her, will she
react? Where are those frozen people looking at the map trying to get to? Do
these three guys near the dropped papers know each other?" Even though the
event appeared to be nonsensical, the audience recognized a story, so much so
that when motion resumed, everyone applauded.

The SVU episode, on the other hand, presents a fully-formed
story to its audience, with characters and plot clearly laid out. There's a
mystery, but we find out all the answers by the time the show's over. However,
despite having its own story to tell, the episode duplicated several of the
individuals from Improv Everywhere's event: a woman eating yogurt, a guy tying
his shoe, a man holding a train schedule. These tiny random moments had enough narrative
resonance that the show's writers thought it worthwhile to keep them in.

The purposes behind the presentations of these two groups are widely divergent. Improv Everywhere says its only mission is "the goal of spreading chaos and joy throughout the world," though they do carry advertising on their website. SVU exists primarily to make money for its network by drawing attention to its advertisers, though I'm sure many of those working on the show care about creating a quality dramatic product. But both groups use the same tool to accomplish their goals: telling a good story. The stories they construct attract a loyal following who look for the next event or episode, which in turn makes it worthwhile to continue producing stories. Most interesting of all, the original event inspired a TV writer or producer to recreate it in the television show, and now people who will probably never find themselves walking across Grand Central Station are familiar with the frozen girl eating yogurt. Narrative itself is viral, whatever the medium.