Internet Video's Love Affair with the '80s

Popstars from the 1980's staged a comeback in the Viral Video Chart this week, with Bonnie Tyler and MC Hammer vying with the Jonas Brothers and Poison's Brett Michaels for the top spot.

The Hammer Pants Dance, promoting a new TV reality series about the rapper, rides the coat tails of several internet memes - the flash-mob, the c-razy dance routine, and the exhumation of a long-forgotten pop hero - in order to produce a 2 minute nugget of viral marketing gold. Accompanied by MC Hammer's signature anthem, U Can't Touch This, the clip features a group of dancers wearing gold Hammer Pants flashmobbing a trendy store, much to the surprise of the skinny-jean-clad shoppers.

Taking the flash mob meme as its starting-point, the Hammer Pants Dance is comparable to the 2006 Best Buy Stunt filmed by performance art group, Improv Everywhere. This clip followed 80 Improv Everywhere Agents as they infiltrated a Best Buy in Manhattan dressed like employees, leaving the store's security guards and staff feeling pretty damned confused and discomfited.

There are fundamental differences, though: whereas the Improv Everywhere stunt was all about causing a scene, creating an awkward and subversive interruption of commercial business, the Hammer Pants Dance is itself a commercial event, and one that's more interested in staging a scene than causing a scene. It's a high-camp, highly-theatrical de-politicization of the most potentially subversive of memes. First time round, U Can't Touch This was the best-known single from Hammer's 1990 album Please, Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em; Hammer's gold-pants and doggedly upbeat lyrics were making the news at the same time that anti-poll tax rioters were filling Trafalgar Square.

Two decades later and it's not political causes that draw the crowds to Trafalgar Square - it's a flash-mob karaoke event organized by T-Mobile. It's as though the reaction to financial and political turmoil this time round is not to riot in the streets, but to party like there's no tomorrow. Re-invented by brands such as T-Mobile and A&E, the flash mob is not a political statement but a marketing event, no longer an interruption by activists but a diversion for consumers. Wrapped up and delivered online as a 2 min YouTube clip, the flash mob viral offers beleaguered viewers a momentary escape from the woes of the world, a snack-sized moment of viewing pleasure.

Celebrities from the 1980s are by no means newcomers on the viral scene. David "The Hoff" Hasslehoff is the grandaddy of viral celebs, and then there's the Rick Roll phenomenon, where viewers are tricked into watching a video which unexpectedly breaks into Rick Astley's 1987 signature track, Never Gonna Give You Up.

It's as though there's something inherently risible - but at the same time pleasurable - about eighties culture, a flamboyant, tasteless, overblown vulgarity that amuses and entertains us, that simultaneously dismays and attracts us as we look back across the years with a mixture of nostalgia and collective shame.

The “Literal Music Video” meme takes the 1980’s music video as its staple satirical fodder, replacing the original lyrics with subtitles and newly-recorded audio in order to narrate what is literally happening in the music video. This is a relatively new meme, originating with “Dusto McNeato” (Dustin McClean) and his literal video version of Aha's Take On Me (1985) in the Autumn of 2008. The latest instance of the meme, and the other 80's clip to chart this week in the Viral Video Chart, is the brainchild of DaScottJr, and takes Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart (1983) as its subject.

This power ballad is certainly not to every one's taste, but Literal Music Videos are at their most enjoyable when the video is at its most bizarre and you can't fault Tyler's ballad on this score. This gothic-themed video, with floating curtains, fallen angels, random ninjas and sinewy gymnasts dancing in dimly-lit school halls is guaranteed to make you smile even without the re-worked lyrics that emphasise what - with the benefit of 20 years hindsight - we already know: this is some truly crazy shit!

And if you're still in need of an 80s fix, mashed up with a dash of noughties knowingness, then don't just Rick Roll your friends. Why not Literally Rick Roll them?