When Gangnam Hits the Middle East = Re-makes as Identity Practice

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In this paper, we analyze “Gangnam Style” re-makes from a memetic point of view. Our examination unfolds in three parts. First, we present our conceptual framework, according to which Internet memes constitute forms of interpretive (and potentially also political) participation. We then focus our discussion on the case of “Gangnam Style”, in an attempt to unpack the song’s memetic success. In the third and main part we move from the initial video to its successors, asking: What types of changes were introduced to the original version when it migrated to other territories? Focusing on the Middle East, we applied comparative thematic analysis to 78 versions created by Hebrew-speaking populations (mainly in Israel) and 68 versions created by Arab speakers in the Greater Middle East. Our main findings show both similarities between the corpuses (particularly with regards to women’s marginal role in the clips) and differences between them. While Arab creators used “Gangnam Style” as a tool for carnivalesque socio-political satire, Israeli ones tended to “erase” the original meaning by focusing on middle-class lifestyle, leisure, and entertainment. Finally, we claim that remakes of “Gangnam Style” and similar videos may serve as important vessels for negotiating images and identities of conflicted environments.

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