Hey everybody! For this appetizer presentation I wanted to look at sports mascots and how the grotesque goes into mascot design and how these characters embody the grotesque and carnivalesque. The main function of a mascot is to represent the brand/company that they are a part of, and sports mascots particularly are present at sporting events and keep the crowd excited and engaged.
I think it’s super interesting how mascots are able to appeal to fans of all ages. Mascots play a big role in making the fan experience and they really are a combination of a lot of the concepts we’ve been discussing throughout the semester. Through this course I’ve come to realize that a lot of what makes a mascot successful and iconic comes down to their grotesque features and what attributes the designer of the mascot chooses to emphasize and exaggerate.
I’ve included a folder of a couple different mascots. I’m mainly familiar with baseball, so it’s mostly MLB mascots (one minor league baseball mascot because those tend to be a whole other kind of weird) and of course I had to include Gritty. Here’s the folder link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n8JIKJcIKQE17yaImnSfTG8byTDgoTWO/view?usp=sharing. Take a look at these pictures and then consider the following questions!
Questions:
- What aspects of the grotesque/carnivalesque can you see in the mascots? What about them stands out?
- What are your reactions? Are there some you like and some that weird you out?
- What do you think makes a mascot successful? What makes one unsuccessful?
UPDATE: I fixed the link and it should link you to the whole folder now!
(I think you may have linked only to one picture in the folder! That our I’m only taken to one picture in the folder.)
I think something that stands out to me is how much non-human mascots are less… terrible? To me. Terrible feels like the wrong word, but human mascots are so ghoulish vs. a character like Gritty’s lovable charm, which is strange considering one is familiar while the other is alien. Big fuzzy creatures instinctively seem like they would be *more* scary than the more ‘realistic,’ but their departure from reality is comforting compared to the grim mask of death of Michigan State’s Spartan (for me, at least). Maybe it’s because the verisimilitude is just too close for comfort, but then I’m reminded of ancient theater costume– shouldn’t the exaggerated human form be the most grotesque of all? That’s the ‘point’ of Pantagruel, and maybe the closest we get to actual human giants is human sports mascots. I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has any thoughts on the human/non-human mascot issue.
I think that one of the things that makes mascots Carnivalesque is that they are meant be universal figures, representative of the whole team and meant to appeal to all fans equally, which to me is a sort of dissolution of hierarchy. In high school, we had a guy visit us for one of those anti-bullying assemblies, and he was a former mascot. He kept repeating that the most important rule of being a mascot was to never lose your head, because it would reveal that you are only one person and ruin the perception that you are a larger representative of the whole team/fanbase. This might be one of the reasons why, as Helena mentioned, the less human mascots appeal more to some people, because mascots representing a specific person or group are too specific for a fanbase to identify with as a universal figure. For example, only a small group of people can directly identify with the Swinging Friar, whereas Gritty appeals to everyone the same amount because he is completely alien to everyone.
I think this is a really insightful comment, particularly about how the more alien mascots are equally alien to everyone. Regarding the last question, I think that the universality and equal accessibility of the mascot is important, but that may have as much to do with design as it has to do with performance, which I think is what make mascots so beloved– I wouldn’t care about Gritty at all (I’d probably *dislike* Gritty) if not for his wonderful sense of humor. (He was live tweeting the new Bachelor show just this week– now that’s a monster I can befriend.) I didn’t grow up around many mascot-ed sports– do soccer team mascots ever go to the World Cup?– except for the Stanford Tree, which is literally just a tree that dances around (Stanford doesn’t have an official mascot). The only times I ever looked at the tree during a game was when things were close and it (they?) was (were?) hyping up the audience. By being visible and drawing attention from everybody, the Tree was able to, although it was already happening to a certain degree, unite the spectators rooting for one team. In that sense, that the Tree is so inoffensive probably works to its universalizing favor. From this perspective, I can see not being so offput by a person in a human-suit– the performance may be half the battle.
I just realized I never pressed post comment on my last post in this discussion (whoops), but the gist of it was that I agree with you guys and I think that a mascot’s success really depends on their appearance––especially whether they are human or non-human. The universal appeal of something like Gritty is undeniable because he is so bizarre that you can’t help but be curious about him and therefore the team he represents. Human mascots, on the other hand, tend to be a little bit scary in my opinion because of their exaggerated features and odd proportions. When I was younger, I was definitely more afraid of someone in a human suit than an animal.
Hey everybody! Thank you so much for your responses! I really like the point about how non-human mascots are more successful because they are able to appeal to a wider group of people than more human looking mascots. This universality allows mascots to be adored beyond just the fanbase of the team they represent. For example, there are plenty of people who love Gritty who aren’t from Philly and who aren’t hockey fans.
I always thought that the human-looking mascots were kind of creepy but y’all’s comments really made me examine more of why this was. I really like Helena’s comment comparing humanesque mascots to ancient theater masks. It’s kind of interesting because the point of Pantagruel is that he has a lot of exaggerated human features and a part of that makes him relatable to a lot of people, but the exaggerated human mascots don’t have the same impact. Next, I wanted to look at how mascots invoke the carnivalesque by blurring the line between spectator and participant. An example I found is the Presidents’ Race that the Washington Nationals do, and the “Beat the Freeze” race that the Atlanta Braves do. I put two videos below:
Presidents Race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rTE3Za7VKQ
Beat the Freeze:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UzW1aJXRUw
How do the mascots engage fans in these two events? Is the “Beat the Freeze” more successful because a fan actually takes part rather than just watching? Would you consider the Freeze a mascot, even though he’s just a person in a morphsuit?
I definitely think there is something more exciting about the fan participation in Beat the Freeze, which does remove the footlights a little bit. But I still find the Presidents Race to have a generally more Carnivalesque vibe despite this? I think that the silliness of seeing these exaggerated figures of people we all are familiar with running and falling over is much easier to laugh at than Beat the Freeze, and laughter to me seems like the number 1 criterion for the Carnivalesque. So even though the footlights are removed in Beat the Freeze with crowd participation, I didn’t find myself wanting to laugh at it (except for when that guy fell over, low-key), so I think that the laughter and silliness of the Presidents Race was more Carnivalesque to me for that reason.
I think the Presidents Race is, like you said, more obviously carnivalesque, especially with an eye to the degradation of the serious– big costume versions of past leaders definitely fits the bill in that regard. I think the Beat the Freeze video suffers from having a weird, slow, synthy song instead of the actual sounds of the stadium, but I still think I enjoyed it a little better because there was tension as to who would win, and watching that guy run and just EAT SPEED was very entertaining– I can’t attribute that to carnivalism, though, since there’s pretty much no tension in carnival that we’ve seen, at least in Rabelais. I think audience participation is a really interesting point to bring up in relation to footlights, but something about it seems a little off to me in a carnivalesque context. My touchstone for sporting festivities is basketball, and audience participation in basketball is a lot of “make this shot and we’ll give you something” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA1U1wcieFI), but it’s always just one person chosen from the multitude, and that feels like it atomizes instead of universalizes. In the same way, Beat the Freeze, although there’s a member of the audience, doesn’t feel like it totally removes the footlights because it’s only *one* member of the audience. I’m sure for that one person something very fun/exciting has happened, but within a Bakhtinian framework I’m not sure if carnival has been actualized. I think audience participation as audience participation, like chants and organizing to hold up signs, might come a little closer in that regard.
I really like your point about how the music in the video impacts how Carnivalesque it is. That was definitely part of the reason that I found Beat the Freeze to be less Carnivalesque, but I wasn’t really conscious of it until you mentioned it. We’ve talked a lot in class about how sound factors into carnival, and the replacement of audience cheering with kind of intense music definitely makes it seem like the crowd is less a part of the event. For me, the music in the Beat the Freeze video made me focus more on the intensity and impressiveness of the race than the actual goofy fun parts of it. So I think you’re right that the sounds of the crowd as a whole are a more important contributor to the Carnivalesque in this case than just choosing one person from the crowd to participate. There’s also the issue that the Freeze isn’t necessarily a mascot in my view, and doesn’t represent the team or bring the fans together in any particular way, so the crowd isn’t all rooting for the same thing.
For me, your comment raises the question of the mascots role in the sporting event– while we aren’t rooting for the Freeze, just entertained by his skill, we aren’t rooting for the Presidents either, unless we’re rooting for Teddy to get it together. In these little gimmicks, then, maybe we’re just entertained and not necessarily brought together, except by the fact of our collective entertainment. Like in my original comment, I wonder if mascots are employing the truly carnivalesque element of universality and lack of footlights if we’re ‘consuming’ their performance without necessarily participating as one common body.
I really loved reading everyone’s thoughts on this appetizer. Obviously I’m a pretty big baseball fan and I’ve been pretty interested for awhile in thinking about what all goes into creating the fan experience at a game, because it’s so much more than just the team on the field. Especially from taking this class I’ve become interested in how the carnivalesque and grotesque play into sporting events and this is especially prominent in mascots.
I had never really thought about why non-human mascots appealed more than humanesque mascots, beyond just that their design was more fun. It was really interesting to think about how non-human mascots are appealing because they’re equally alien to everyone. Humanesque mascots have exaggerated human features, but it doesn’t accomplish the goal of bringing people together and appealing broadly. The question that I found most interesting and really liked reading people’s thoughts about was how successful mascots are in removing the footlights and breaking down the barrier between the fans and the team. I found it interesting how even though mascots make an effort to bridge the gap, fans can never be fully involved- instead they consume the mascot’s performance. Even moments of fan participation, like Beat the Freeze, only bring in one fan and it’s not a universalizing experience. I also liked the point about how laughter is a mascot’s most important tool when it comes to invoking the carnivalesque and eliminating the gap between the fans and the performer.