Outside of Regis Hall, a masked student stands on top of a snow-covered awning, basked in the glow of the lights behind him.
The track “Harlem Shake” by Baauer, the stage name of New York producer Harry Rodrigues, starts playing and the student begins thrusting his pelvis to the repetitious beat.
At the drop of the bass, all kinds of crazy hit the fan. One student tries to ride a miniature stuffed horse. Others flail their arms around. A group dances behind the staircase glass windows.
The Harlem Shake meme, a multimedia trend that spreads throughout the internet, started with an upload from YouTube vlogger and comic Filthy Frank, and the dance responses flooded in after that. The usual video opens up with a masked individual dancing to “Harlem Shake” while other people are oblivious or paying no attention to what’s happening. Then the video jumps to the mayhem that occurs after the bass drops.
One of the responses included the Fairfield University video, which was directed by freshmen Mikhyle Stein and Rozlyn Templeton.
Templeton had heard about the Harlem Shake when she saw her friends Meg Coppola ‘15 and Karly Laliberte ‘15 watching the YouTube videos. They originally planned to film in a dorm room with 10 to 15 people, but not a lot of people showed up.
Then Stein, a film major, had the idea of getting all of Regis Hall involved. Communicating through texts and word of mouth, they were able to gather around 60 participants in a matter of 15 minutes. Like other Harlem Shake videos, Fairfield students found whatever weird objects and costumes that were nearby — tutus, chicken masks, life-sized horse stuffed animals — and used them in funny, sometimes inappropriate, ways.
Everything was filmed in about 10 minutes, and the uploaded YouTube video with the caption “Let’s go procrastination!” It received over 300 likes within the first hour and a half. As of Feb. 19, the video had almost 7,000 views.
“It was such a spontaneous event, and the amount of people who were down to let their freak flag fly and be a part of something like this made it so much better,” said Templeton.
Baauer told The Daily Beast in an interview that he used a sample from Philadelphia rapper Plastic Little’s “Miller Time.” He also disputes reports that say he was trying to pay homage to the hip hop dance popular in the early 1980s.
The track hit No. 1 on iTunes’ download list on Feb. 14, beating boy band One Direction’s “One Way or Another,” Rihanna’s “Stay” and hip hop artists Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ “Thrift Shop.”
As of Monday, Regis Hall joined over 12,000 Harlem Shake YouTube videos posted between the start of the month and the present. Universities have been doing it. Television shows like “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” have been doing it. The University of Georgia men’s swimming team has gotten over 18 million views. Harlem Shake videos have been viewed a total of approximately 44 million times.
Only time will tell if the Harlem Shake meme will reach the status of Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” the music video that became the first YouTube video to garner one billion views.
THE REAL HARLEM SHAKE
Others might not know it, but “Harlem Shake” is also the name of a hip hop dance popular in the early 1980s. Under one of the many Harlem Shake meme videos, YouTube user SharrellF commented, “Isn’t the Harlem shake an old dance? Why is everyone acting like it’s new?”
The current Harlem Shake trend refers to an eccentric, unorganized dance to the song “Harlem Shake,” which does not have any connection with the hip hop dance Harlem Shake – save for the name.
The Harlem Shake dance is attributed to a man from Harlem, N.Y., who used to dance at the Entertainer’s Basketball Classic at Rucker Park. In an interview with InsideHoops, he mentioned that his dance was so popular that some called it “albee,” after his name Al B.
Al B said, “It’s a drunken shake anyway, it’s an alcoholic shake, but it’s fantastic, everybody loves it and everybody appreciates it.”
The dance was also prominent in hip hop videos of the 80s and 90s and became more mainstream in 2001 by American rapper G. Dep who showed the Harlem shake in his music video “Let’s Get It.”
Will this phenomenon go down in history? Most likely not.
The Los Angeles Times is already saying that the Harlem Shake has reached its peak. According to the writers, the impromptu, small crowd and simplistic get up of the video is becoming too “extravagant,” when users start over-editing or extending the clip past the 30 second mark.
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