In Dash Shaw’s Body World, an alien drug
which allows the user access to the thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations of
others, serves as a metaphor for online social networks. On such sites people
reveal intimate details about themselves because of the illusion that they are
communicating with friends. Professor Paulie Panther is symbolically an ambassador
from the global village to a town that is sheltered from the outside world in a
society that has not fully progressed from the type of print culture that we
are emerging from now (McLuhan, 67). There, Panther discovers the telepathic
drug and introduces it to the collective consciousness of the town’s
population. However, when a society of non-interactive individuals merges their
minds into one super organism, the result is not a collective intelligence, but
rather a groupthink (McCluhan, 157) (Shaw, Chapter 10, Panel 15).
Social interactivity on the Internet is a type
of artificial psychic communication. Anonymity on the Web, or the illusion of
such, allows users to reveal thoughts they would never vocalize. This creates
an interconnectivity based on mutual mind reading. Comment threads responding
to posted information online, or entered on instant messaging sites, have a
tendency to merge the thoughts of many into one repeated idea. For the life of
a given thread then, the clients involved with its creation effectively merge
into one mind. Online social networking services create the illusion of social
acceptance by drawing people into friendships or circles, which allow them to
be overtly intimate without knowing each other. The way that messages are
posted on Twitter, for example, closely resemble the fragmented shape and size
of our random thought processes. Every day one can read news reports of public
figures who, beyond all reason, jeopardize their public image by “tweeting”
thoughts that they would never voice in public because they know that saying
such things would be offensive. If indeed there is something about Twitter that
compels people to mind-write, then it is more than just a metaphor to conclude
that the readers of such tweets are in fact mind readers. In Body World,
the citizens of Bony Borough inadvertently become part of a truly telepathic
version of such an online meeting place, after Professor Panther smokes the
strange plant from the local woods and gains access to the mental status
updates, visceral video galleries and psychic instant messages of the minds of
those nearby. His consciousness is then extended into the multi-sensory medium
of online interaction. Initially this communication is a positive experience,
but with each new psyche that becomes part of the network, the exchanges become
more and more complex because each new member shares all of the negative
memories they retain of everyone else. Panther realizes in the end that the
final result of such a merging of minds will not be interactive, but rather
“some kind of hive mind.”(Shaw, Chapter 11, Panel 21)
“Bony” Borough is the skeleton around which Body
World is constructed. The “body” of Body World is the highly
specialized social structure that is supported by that skeleton. Unlike the
fully wired tribal world outside, the town is symbolically still part of the
Gutenberg Galaxy where textbooks compel students to conform, and where sport is
the only form of art accessible to many minds (McLuhan, 241). The local celebrities
are the athletes, whose drug of choice is Diegunk (Shaw, Chapter 2, Between
Panels 81-82). This glue like substance, in contrast to the alien plant that
expands each user’s awareness to include that of others, produces instead a
more individualistic experience. It serves to confine the user’s awareness to
the body, thus resulting in the impairment of mental functioning, as the
Diegunk user begins to feel pieces missing from his brain ( Shaw, Chapter 8,
Panel 231). Diegunk reflects more the general character of Bony Borough, which
is a “body world”, rather than a “bodymind” world like the world outside.
Later, when the telepathic social network deteriorates into a groupthink, it is
the person who has lost the most pieces of his brain who controls the action of
that entity.
The designer of the rationalized conformity
conceived to oppose the social network is the science teacher, Jem Jewel.
Although the people of Bony Borough are not strangers to social networking or
the Internet, the town’s attitude to such things is reflected symbolically in
Miss Jewel, who is Professor Panther’s official contact there. She tells him “I don’t have a blog, I like to
keep my secrets”. (Shaw, Chapter 1, Panel 66) It is, however, when Panther
suddenly finds himself privy to Jem’s secrets that he first realizes that
smoking the otherworldly drug has given him the ability to read minds. He
receives the negative thoughts that Jewel posts about him on her consciousness,
but thinks that they are his own mental reactions to her. Panther and Jewel
have entered into a psychic social network, a collective intelligence. Jewel
has been willing, up until this point, to spend the night with Panther despite
her secret disgust for him. Yet when she hears him speak aloud the exact same
repulsion for her that she has for him, she is offended. She leaves, as she
does not want to be part of a social network that exposes her own internal
dialogue (Shaw, Chapter 3, Panel 354). Beyond, however, the simple offence of
exposure, Jewel harbours an even deeper hatred for online communication. She is
haunted by the memory of the Internet having betrayed her when, as an
adolescent, she was lured by social networking into an abusive situation (Shaw,
Chapter 10, Panel 135). This experience colours her belief that the World Wide
Web draws its users into being part of a super organism, a collective world
intelligence that would unhinge the harmonious society of Bony Borough. Jewel
does not want to live in a tribal society in which, as people draw closer to
one another they become increasingly more savage toward their neighbours. She
opts to oppose this invasion by participating in a groupthink alternative,
which is ironically enhanced by the very drug that brings about the telepathic
social networking experience. This hive mind decision on the part of the entire
town is to put to death the carrier of the social networking disease, Paulie
Panther. As the time of purging approaches, Jewel plays the role of mind guard
to prepare the members of the groupthink for their moment of truth by making
sure they are not swayed by dissenting information (Shaw, Chapter 10, Panel
15). She, for example, makes sure that Billy Borg knows that Paulie Panther had
sex with Borg’s girlfriend, thereby ensuring that Billy’s anger will trigger
the groupthink’s execution of Panther (Shaw, Chapter 6, Panel 146).
In Body World there is an analogy
between the anti-social Paulie Panther’s desire to enter into group
consciousness, and the way that otherwise non-social people reveal their
darkest secrets on social networking sites. Because of his non-conformism and
prickly personality, Panther does not have a vibrant social life. He is
somewhat of an outcast from his own electronically tribalized society.
According to Marshall McLuhan, tribalism forces people closer together and when
this happens “they become more and more savage.” (YouTube, 2012) Because
Panther is a loner, his savagery tends to be one by which he inflicts pain and
the threat of death only upon himself (Shaw, Chapter 1, Panel 59). He is an
endangered loner like his feline namesake, and yet he finds ways to connect
with others. As a medicine man from the tribal society of the global village,
Panther is always willing to help people chemically free their body mind from
the material plane (Shaw, Chapter 3, Panel 36). Panther’s motto is “Go in to
get out”, which is mirrored in the phrase “Turn on, tune in, drop out”, made
famous by another medicine man of the Global Village, Timothy Leary, but which
was authored by Marshall McLuhan (Shaw, Chapter 8, Panel 98)(Strauss, 337). The
meaning of Panther’s motto is that an exploration of one’s own consciousness
leads to freedom. However, in the case of the collective consciousness of Bony
Borough, and of the town itself, once Panther goes in, he can’t get out. His
electronic connection to his tribe is severed and he is cut off from the
rituals of his social group after smoking the last of his tribal cigarettes
(Shaw, Chapter 1, Panel 184). Trapped in Bony Borough, Panther realizes that
his efforts to free the minds of the citizens of the town have failed. Instead
he has inadvertently introduced the town to the hive mind that he
philosophically opposes. In a further twist of irony, Panther, succumbing to
his own self-inflicted savagery, finally enters into agreement with the
groupthink of Bony Borough in regard to his own execution Shaw, Chapter 11,
Panel 230).
Body World is not an anti-digital story, but
rather a cautionary tale concerning interactive digital media. Although the
Internet is a useful tool for such non-interactive forms of mass communication
as cheaply publishing a graphic novel, or for emailing questions to its author,
Dash Shaw, through the story, advises users of social networks to tread
carefully in the more interactive online domains. Perhaps everyone is not ready
to know everything about everybody else. It is possible that there is a limit
to how far one’s consciousness can expand by entering the minds of others. Such
an outward spread may ultimately result in a feeling of identity loss that
compels the minds of web surfers to align themselves with those of the lowest
common denominator of online society.
An echo to the moral of the story of Body
World can be found in Dash Shaw’s choice not to provide an interactive
forum for readers of the web comic on his web site. Because instant messaging
is an extension of the psyche, such a message board would encourage the same
kind of mind melding among commenters as occurs for the characters in Body
World. The overall result of such interaction would be for contributors to
respond most often to the lowest common denominator of the collective
intelligence of any given comment thread. Shaw instead provides a link to
email, which, unlike a message forum, is an extension of writing. Not being interactive,
this medium allows time for a thought process to take place between each
comment and response. Although the web comic, like the online comment forum, is
an interactive medium, rather than extending the psyche, it is an extension of
the sense of touch (McLuhan, 164). The spaces between panels in comic art
compel the reader to interact with them by filling in the passage of time
between them. The message of a web comic then, is very different than that of
an online message board. The latter medium, in placing so many minds in close
proximity, compels them to react savagely out of fear of losing their
identities in the mix.
Works Cited
McLuhan, Marshall.
The Medium is the Massage. Corte Madera. Gingko Press. 2001
McLuhan, Marshall.
Understanding Media. New York.
McGraw-Hill. 1965
Shaw, Dash. Body World. http://www.dashshaw.com/prelude.html 10 Nov 2012.
Strauss, Neil. Everyone Loves You When
You're Dead. New York. HarperCollins. 2011.
tvochannel. Marshall McLuhan in Conversation.
YouTube.com.Web. 25 Nov 2012.