The Case of the Techno Viking, Essay Example

The Technoviking Internet meme originated from the handheld camera footage shot by the Austrian experimental filmmaker Matthias Frisch of an outdoors techno party-parade held in Berlin, Germany in 2000. The four minute video, spread initially on youtube.com and reaching 40,000,000 views,[1] features the actions of an unidentified man wearing Viking pagan attire during the parade. The so-called “Technoviking” initially appears in the frame of the clip defending a woman dancing to the techno music from an intoxicated or drugged attendant of the parade. The Technoviking, characterized by the aforementioned Viking look and a large muscular physique, intervenes, telling the aggressor to desist; the latter obliges to the command of the Technoviking that is accompanied with an almost cartoonish or film-like pointing of his finger. After this initial skirmish, the video then chronicles the Technoviking dancing to the music, as the parade float moves along the Berlin streets. The protagonist is handed a bottle of water and a flyer during this period, all the while dancing.

The video’s subsequent status as a meme can be traced back to the bizarre and almost surreal nature of the footage. The narrative is especially absurd, insofar as the juxtaposition between the conflict at the beginning of the clip and the dancing that closes the clip suggests the scenario for a B-movie film as opposed to a real event. The Technoviking himself, however, is the clear source for the meme’s popularity. His pagan image resembles an action film star, as does his conduct at the outset of the clip. The subsequent dance moves exhibited by the protagonist carries the narrative into overtly humorous territory. The almost other-worldliness of the scene would suggest its general non-authenticity and thus merely a staged performance. But the fact that the video has now been unavailable on youtube.com for over two years as a result of legal action carried out by the Technoviking suggests a case in which individuals are confronted with the negative side of Internet technology, as the difficult psychological effects of becoming a meme entail a form of social stigmatism and embarrassment. The video is nonetheless readily available on other sites, such as at http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/1051979/

The filmmaker Matthias Fritsch’s website “The Techno Viking Archiv” chronicles the spread of the meme his footage has created. Fritsch’s site is dedicated to “researching the internet history of his video” (Fritsch), such that the site itself is a detailed study of how memes spread and the various forms such memes take. Fritsch is above all interested in the aspect of the transformation of memes. These subsequent memes have taken various shapes, from remixes of the original footage and music to reenactments of the entire sequence of events themselves, emanating from various countries around the world. Fritsch’s website further explains the reasoning behind the suspension of the video’s availability on youtube.com, which lends further insight into the story. Namely, the events of the meme appear not to be staged, and furthermore the “video’s protagonist send (sic) a lawyer to the filmmaker in order to stop all further publication of the clip. After not being able to find a compromise outside court the filmmaker is still waiting for the trial to come. The personality rights claim resulted in a temporary…block of the original video on YouTube and within the Technoviking archive to a limitation of an only internal and offline use of images that show the protagonist.” (Fritsch) Since the financial gains for Fritsch from the success of the meme are minimal or non-existent, insofar as the clip has been successful both because of its own content and its inspiration in providing re-creations of the events in a diverse number of forms, this suggests that the “protagonist” is above all concerned with the usage of his image in a manner that he considers exploitative and demeaning. This furthermore implies the authenticity of the meme. If the Technoviking video were a staged sequence of events, the “protagonist” would not be shocked by the video’s popularity, but rather embrace it as a realization of the initial vision he had with Fritsch.

The success of the meme is most likely traceable to the aforementioned protagonist and the narrative structure of the sequence. The Technoviking video demarcates a rupture and a break with the everyday. It is something that is thoroughly unrealistic, yet nevertheless real. It can thus be argued that memes are fundamentally linked to a notion of absurdity and hyperbole, since the content of a video such as the Technoviking’s transgresses the limits of everyday life. At the same time, the success of such a meme can be viewed as a symptom of the very confined and restricted culture of supposed liberal Western democracy, according to which everyone is apparently free to do as they choose. The compartmentalized and regimented ideology of the West is demonstrated in the spread of these memes, which provide views into an absurd logic that contradicts the main narratives and dominant discourses of our times. Humor and the absurd thus combine together in the Technoviking video, as the meme creates its own form of mythology, one which is thoroughly at odds with the strict normativities of everyday life and thus engenders an alternative fantasy space in the process.

Works Cited

Fritsch, Matthias. “The Technoviking Arhiv.»KNEECAM No. 1 – The Original Techno Viking Tape from 2000« Accessed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1nzEFMjkI4

[1] »KNEECAM No. 1 – The Original Techno Viking Tape from 2000 «http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1nzEFMjkI4