Wednesday, March 09, 2022

This aged strangely

I forgot I even had this video bookmarked. I had been holding it in reserve in case I ever got desperate for a TGIF music video. I have no idea what to make of it, between dancing soldiers, rocket barrages and tanks tipping over it is a bit of a mixed message to say the least (or maybe it's not mixed at all if you're familiar with the milieu it came from). From the Wikipedia article that discussed XS Project, the folks who made this video:

In 2010, XS Project, a group of four music producers from Saint Petersburg, released yet another satirical movie on YouTube, together with radio presenters of Gop FM station, accompanying their Bochka, Bass, Kolbasyor (Kick drum, bass and kolbasyor) track, which was released in 2003. In a movie, several artists, DJs and radio presenters, disguised as gopniks, danced in gopnik style on a Saint Petersburg children playground. The movie was intended to mock the so-called subculture of rave gopniks - young people in tracksuits who would go to rave parties in Russia not to have good time, but to get trashed and cause trouble. The mockery was in lyrics, who called for sober and healthy lifestyle, contrary to way rave gopniks lived. However, street youth in Eastern Europe liked the video and preferred to eschew the irony, and, given the rise of sober right-wing lifestyle in Russia around that time, the dancing moves showcased in the movie became basis of a long-lasting series of flash mobs akin to Harlem Shake meme of the time, when young people in verious cities of Eastern Europe were starting to dance, all of sudden, in gopnik style in the middle of public areas outside.

...

Some commentators in Slavic countries of the European Union at first considered these flash mobs to be serious manifestation of the right-wing propaganda, especially given the lyrics in the song, saying "We bring hardbass to your home, 1 4 8 8", with "1 4 8 8" being a neo-Nazi lingo for "Fourteen words" and Hitler salute. However, experts quickly grasped that the usage was ironic, and that the hardbass crowds consisted mostly of football hooligans and bored teenagers, rather than of actual neo-Nazis. Neo-Nazis around that times also dismissed the connection to hardbass, blaming it on left-wing and anarchist circles instead. However, commentators still identified some right-wing sympatizers in the hardbass attacks, but, according to Miroslav Mares, an expert in far-right extremism from Brno Masaryk University, the influence of hardbass attacks on public opinion was negligible.

 

2 comments:

Chuck Pergiel said...

The video is entertaining, I'll give them that.

ambisinistral said...

Yea, it is an entertainingly weird mix of stuff -- the recruitment ad level shots of tanks and artillery firing mixed in with the dancing and blundering. Including Chris Chapell of China Uncensored as the newscaster was another strange touch.

I tried to find English translations of the lyrics to see if that shed any light on things, but no luck.