Harlem shake.

This has been a hot topic around my school. Which I do not appreciate. Harlem Shake.

What is ‘Harlem Shake’? As stated here, Harlem Shake is a dance that began at Harlem, New York, in 1981. It has quite a long history, judging from the year. At first it was called “Albee”, but it later became popular by the name “Harlem Shake”.

Al B is quoted saying that the dance is “a drunken shake anyway, it’s an alcoholic shake, but it’s fantastic, everybody appreciates it.”

As stated above, it is just a drunk shake, without any means of art or choreography (although the people originated from Harlem said otherwise–I will get to this below).

Different religions have different views on alcohol and alcoholic beverages. Muslims, or Islam, strictly prohibit alcohol, whilst for Christians, they have different, lots of views about this (if you have an input, please do so by commenting); The Bible is ambivalent toward alcohol, considering it both a blessing from God that brings merriment and a potential danger that can be unwisely and sinfully abused.

The Harlem Shake is a nearly perfect internet meme because it almost perfectly erases its origins. If every imitation of “Gangnam Style” inevitably leads you back to the deceptively subtle, near-perfect original, the Harlem Shake does the opposite. Every imitation leads you to another imitation, the lower its fidelity the better. (Source)

Enough with the meaning thingies.

Next,

I’m talking about my school here. It is a religious school, in fact, it is a branch to the biggest religious organization in this country. Now, why, why, for god’s sake, do our student record themselves doing Harlem Shake?

The seniors already recorded about nine videos. The juniors have four videos. The freshmen? I do not know for sure, however, they surely have more than one video.

One of the teachers saw the freshmen preparing for the recording of ‘their’ Harlem Shake. One of them even brought a tripod and a special video camera just for the sake of recording this.

And believe it or not, few of them also brought costumes. Super Woman costume, and other superheroes and the likes.

I cannot bring myself to believe this, but this is the fact.

Now, I’m going to bring up a few points.

1) What is so appealing about the Harlem Shake / Why are people doing it?

The ‘Harlem Shake’ starts off as fun and games, until the original dance became distorted, and people continuing uploading videos of ‘their own style’.

This is the first point. For people out there (mostly uneducated in moral, probably, but I digress), Harlem Shake may be a form of entertainment, or a fun way to express themselves. This is one of the most common way of thinking. However, there are also others who doesn’t like the song, but likes the ‘set of rules’ behind it and its meaning.

For (most) students at my school, this is the minor reason as to why they are recording their own style of Harlem Shake. The major reason is because of their own upperclassmen. Now, you may ask, what is the relevance between Harlem Shake, and upperclassmen?

The counselling teachers informed us that most of the freshmen are recording because of their upperclassmen’s persuasion, or dare. Hence why the upperclassmen are mostly blamed, although I’m fairly sure most of us are innocent.

Our counselling teacher told us to not communicate with the freshmen because mostly it will only bring up conflicts because of small things; impertinence, impoliteness, and a little slip of the tongue.

But even so, it is noted by them that, most of the upperclassmen who communicates with the freshmen are those that could be said as ‘bad’ and ‘naughty’, those who likes to mislead the freshmen into doing things they shouldn’t.

I’ve never been aware of these going on, although I had a feeling already that even though discreetly, some of my own mates does this.

There are also a lot of other reasons, as stated by this person, a Harlem Shake addict/craze, what ever the term is [cut because of the length]:

1. the EDM (electronic dance music) beat by Baaur perfectly encapsulates the music that American taste-makers are listening to right now.
2. the videos are short (most between 30-50 seconds) making them relatively easy to watch and produce.
3. the Harlem Shake can be done in any setting (at work, at school, under water, in the air, etc) and while wearing anything, two factors that when taken together make each video so unique.

Then, it is because of Harlem Shake’s short length, flexible setting, and music taste. I can accept these reasons, but they are certainly not counting the fact that this misled a lot of youngsters.

2) What drives people to do the Harlem Shake?

For now, I can only say that people does this because:

1. They wanted to gain popularity;
2. Pressure from other people;
3. Just for the fun of it;
4. Because of the ‘Harlem Shake Competitions.’

At the second point, the pressure could be from other people, or their seniors and things.

To gain popularity? Of course. Every Youtube video of Harlem Shake have about 100k views.

3) Why is Harlem Shake bad/negative?

There are a lot of examples I could give on this. People gets fired because of this life-ruining meme. Students are suspended.

And a lot of other things happened.

But most of all, it is the moral of the society that gets the most hit in the face. For example, the students in my school.

Not to mention that most Harlem Shake videos are graphic, vulgar, and the likes. Some have nudes in there, or even girls using only their lingerie. This is beyond unacceptable.

4) How Harlem Citizens View Harlem Shake Vids

As shown here, the Harlem Citizen said themselves that the Harlem vids created by the other people is really distorted, much less close to the original ones. They also stated that these vids are like trying to disrespect them an their original Harlem.

“Any time people are dancing, especially in this day and age when everybody’s trying to be so cool, and people are letting loose, letting off some steam, I agree with it,” Diddy told MTV News, though he did admit that people should “get educated on the real Harlem Shake, it’s something that’s an art form.”

5) Conclusion.

Harlem Shake, doing it is okay, as long as you do not cross the lines, be it religious lines or socially-acceptable norms. That said, I still do not support Harlem Shake, not at all, and would never in my life.

And this link has a lot of extreme Harlem Shake examples. I have mentioned this link before, here.

(I mean, how do they convince an airline to let them do the Harlem Shake inside a PLANE? Note that the plane is midair, moving.)