Author: Elwyn Pratt
Students rallied around the Gilman Fountain noon last Tuesday to participate in the filming of a newly popular internet sensation known as the Harlem Shake. The Office of Student Life and CatAList TV sponsored the event, which was announced the previous week on Facebook.
The video joined the 4,000 plus videos on YouTube that feature musical artist Baauer’s dance single of the same name. Each video starts with one dancer on his or her own among seemingly oblivious bystanders. The lead dancer then appears suddenly in the middle of a frenzied dance party complete with outrageous costumes. Groups ranging from corporate offices to sports teams have offered their interpretations of the new media craze.
Biology major Jason Li (senior) donned the head piece of Oswald the Tiger to lead the 30-second dance video. However, CatAList decided to make a few changes to the typical Harlem Shake formula. Filmmaker and editor Ryan Bartecki (senior) recorded the video with a fisheye lens, making the shot look uniquely distorted. Also unlike other Harlem Shake videos, footage from a handheld camera positioned within the crowd was intercut into the final video.
“CatAList did a great job filming and editing,” American Studies major Ben Poor (sophomore) said. Poor, who works in the Office of Student Life, had the original idea for filming an Occidental version of the viral meme. “I would love to see more weird events like the Harlem Shake go down at Oxy.“
As with most internet phenomenons, timing is key. The first Harlem Shake video appeared as early as Feb. 2.
“I wish we had planned it sooner,” CatAList Programming and Marketing Director Jake Kahane (sophomore) said. “These memes come and go very quickly. People are just trying to stay relevant, and our goal was to obtain that relevance. Unfortunately, I think we just got the very end of it. Now it’s kind of run its course.”
Bartecki also speculated that the Harlem Shake would have a short life.
“It’s an internet trend, so it has to be understood as such,” Bartecki said in an email. “It started as a dorm room video that went viral and took off because it’s short, easily understood and funny in multiple situations. I think it’s entertaining, but like so many things that go viral, we’ll have largely forgotten about it in a couple of months.”
The Occidental College Harlem Shake was posted on YouTube last Wednesday. After getting over 2,000 views in less than one day, CatAList took down the video from YouTube and moved it to their Vimeo account, partly because CatAList content has traditionally been put on Vimeo in order to connect with the CatAList.tv website. CatAList editor and Urban/Environmental Policy major Dylan Sittig (senior) commented further on the decision in an email.
“The move from YouTube to Vimeo also allowed us to edit out the cut to the student in a feather headdress,” Sittig said. “CatAList would like to sincerely apologize to the campus community for the initial edit of the Harlem Shake video with the image of a student wearing a feather headress. While certainly not an intentional act of hate by the editing staff, the inclusion of the image was nonetheless a thoughtless and offensive error. CatAList aims to entertain, inform, support and represent all students at Oxy. The legacy of cultural appropriation and racism is certainly not something we aim to perpetuate.”
Other costumes in the video ranged from skin-tight leotards to sleeping bags (someone dressed as Thor even makes an appearance.) Despite the energy of the crowd, Poor and Kahane commented on the low turnout for the event. 268 students RSVP’d as going to the event on Facebook, but only about 50 students actually attended the shoot.
“We may not have had the numbers of the videos done by schools like [University of Colorado at] Boulder or a large state school, but we made a distinctly Oxy Harlem Shake, and I think that’s pretty great,” Bartecki said. “Each time you go back and watch the video, you notice a different person getting crazy in their own unique way, and I think that’s the best part about it. Definitely better than spending my lunch hour at the marketplace.”
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