YouTube
The Problem with Christians Doing the 'Harlem Shake'
Who knows why such weird, borderline-incomprehensible setups go viral, but here we are, weeks into the age of the "Harlem Shake," watching Christian college students and church members don wacky costumes and dance like crazy. The videos:
Christian organizations have joined companies, sports teams, firefighters, friends, and seemingly the rest of America in the latest YouTube meme, which now numbers more than 12,000 videos and 44 million views. In each version, a 30-second clip of the electronic dance music song "Harlem Shake" plays as a single dancer in a headpiece gets down in front of a group of people, then suddenly, the whole crowd joins him. Hilarity.
As far as anyone can tell, the point is there is no point, so no need to raise questions. It's fun seeing a bunch of Christian folks having a good time and participating in the latest trend, so I hate to be a party pooper and ask—should we think a little deeper before jumping into the latest dance craze?
Even as the meme takes off and gets mainstream exposure on outlets including the Today show, most of us still know nothing about the music, artist, or song behind the "Harlem Shake."
The "Harlem Shake," like most memes, has become a commodity, so easily replicated that we use it for our own ends and move on. We happily hijack the setup, then post our versions on YouTube for views, laughs, and "relevancy." We have no real engagement with the phenomenon outside of copying and clicking.
This commodification of culture—an impulse discussed by Vincent Miller in his book Consuming Religion—allows us to ignore the context where things originally gained meaning. As we dance the "Harlem Shake," we don't need to know how to do the hip-hop dance move of the same name. We don't need to know anything about Baauer, the musician who created this song-heard-round-the-Internet. We don't need to understand this underground genre of music called "trap." We don't even need to think about the lyrics of the short song, which proclaim "Con los terroristas!" (With the terrorists!) through the skittish beats.
No longer embedded in its cult music context but dragged into our own, the dance loses any of its original significance to become a vehicle for our silliness. "With commodities in general, the more they are associated with their particular origins, the less susceptible they are to abstraction and shallow engagement," Miller said. "Tradition stabilizes the meaning of cultural objects, preventing them from sliding into weightless postmodern signifiers."
The Seminary Gender Gap
RSS
Twitter
Facebook
Pinterest
Comments
Displaying 1–10 of 43 comments
See all comments
Elizabeth Austin
Kate, Your article, although rife with references almost reverberates with familiarity from the '70's folk services and modern music. Yikes! are we conforming way too much? Are we not separate enough? How then shall we live? (F. Shaffer). Theologically speaking, to me, it reflects a boring faith or Christian life as compared to how unexpectedly alive Christianity can be. Also, this phenom and reviewing the varied submissions has opened a fun opportunity for conversation and comic relief between my teen and I. Should we be cautious, yes, but should we condemn full on-not me. Like the wise scribes stated, trends come and go, if it is of God, it will last. I listen to rock, do the Harlem shake, and am confident of my salvation and testimony. We can agree to disagree on this one. THANKYOU for a stimulating commentary. Liz Austin
Kristi Sullivan
I wonder if the comments saying their is nothing wrong with Christians engaging in this song, actually read the article. The author specifically states that one of the lyrics are "'Con los terroristas!' (With the terrorists!)" . I think Christians should stay away but even Americans in general. Thank you for the article!
Jeremiah Parker
I agree that we should be thinking about what we are doing and why. I came to the conclusion that the Harlem Shake doesn't belong in church. I think many Christians (even those who are making these videos) would agree if they took the time to pause and reflect. http://jeremiahparker.blogspot.com/2013/03/whats-wrong-with-harlem-shake-in -church.html
Erica Lamb
@Susie Jones - for what it's worth, I think the video that you saw with the pentagram on the floor was the cast of Supernatural (a TV show on the CW network) and that was one of their sets. I'm not sure that makes a difference with respect to your point, I just wanted to add a footnote that that particular video wasn't just a group of kids making light of something. With respect to the topic at hand, I don't think the Harlem Shake is anything to get hung up on. I think it has as much significance and cultural longevity as seeing how many college kids can fit into a phone booth.
Shirley Fontaine
Speaking of culture, how is it that we embrace for centuries the pagan rituals of Christmas and Easter, yet condemn the passing fads? Putting a Christian spin on these memes is small potatoes compared to copying a pagan ritual of celebrating a ruler's birthday, on a pagan festival day, and holding it sacred in the church. It sounds like we're a bit hypocritical, doesn't it? Don't get me wrong; I love, love, love the Christmas holiday season with it's traditions and decorations and joyous message of the nativity. I know that stuff has all been added over the years, layer by layer, with the intention of making pagan traditions "holy." I am just as hypocritical as the next Christian. I'm just saying, there are bigger issues of cultural copying we need to recognize and address for what it truly is.
Christofer Tamulevich
I don't know if you allow links - but our Bible Study group was actually moved to do our own version of the Harlem Shake - but its NOTHING like the other versions out there. As a result, our video has been under attack for the last two days as God haters have been sharing it through their networks and making it a target - any Christians out there who want to help us fend off the attacks with love are welcomed! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1lAbXFwK9U
susie jones
We all are under different levels of knowledge. As the Bible tells us, for lack of knowledge God's people parish. I saw one of this videos that is trading today, several kids are given their opinion on it several are very honest about how they think this dance is ridiculous. I noticed very clearly on one of the videos a pentagram drawing on the floor where people were dancing. We are to be holy so my opinion is that we as Christians, we don't have any business dancing this pagan dances. I can go on and on but is not my job to be pleasing to God for you. I can only do it for my self. We're to be responsible for our own actions. Wish you all the best in learning what is pleasing to our father God. Ask God to give you the Holy Spirit to be your counselor. READ YOUR BIBLE Have a beautiful, blessed day!
Brittany bennett
I think it's sad how bent out of shape people are getting based off her commentary. If you don't agree, then simply don't take it personally. However, I don't feel like she's being "judgmental" at all. What she's saying is that we can be so blind sometimes, like the world, by doing whatever we see "trending" in our society, without putting any real thought into why we're actually doing it (besides "having fun"). That can be extremely dangerous if you don't even know the origins behind the trends we find ourselves following. I, myself have done the same thing, as most of us, without seeing any real problem with things, or thinking they are simply harmless. But we'd be truly silly not to think that sometimes there are consequences to being blindly led by the world, and by not "waking up" and thinking for ourselves (with God's spiritual guidance). The message I think she's trying to send out is to simply think before we act or "follow" yet another trend. Living blindly saves no one.
Adam Denevic
I find all of the comments here very interesting. Most comments deal with calling the author judgmental - but isn't that statement alone judgmental. I think the gist of what the author was getting at is that contemporary evangelicalism is desperately trying to be "relevant" and imitate the world. As I read down the comments I can almost hear the "clicking" in the background of people looking up "harlem shake" to see if it is bad. Isn't that the problem the author is getting at? We as Christians have much freedom in Christ. There is nothing "inherently sinful" with the harlem shake - but did anyone bother to make sure that was true before doing it? The author was using a simple example to make a much larger point - most Christians have absolutely no confidence that what we engage in is sinful or not - we simply hope it is okay. Good thing the secular world doesn't try to trap Christians...oh wait...
CINDI KIRBY
It seems to me that if the author thought the meme was wrong she would not have included links to three of the videos. You who pass judgement, do you do the same things?
*