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The Downfall Meme



The German film is finding a second life on YouTube.

I was really into that video that was going around last week, of the scene from Downfall transformed via subtitles into the story of Hillary Clinton’s last stand––not just because I dislike Hillary Clinton, but because there’s a goofiness to it that makes it seem more clever than your typical “this politician is just like Hitler!” joke. A lot of my favorite parts are too obscene to excerpt, although I do like it when s/he slams “those fainting sissies over at MoveOn.org” for “choking on their tofu because I voted for the Iraq war!” But I think I was most impressed by what I thought was the novel choice of material––a 3-year old German film detourned into YouTube propaganda? How imaginative!

Um, turns out, it’s not as novel as I thought. A twitter from Chuck Tryon alerted me to the news that Downfall has been the basis of YouTube parodies long before the Hillary clip came to light. Many of these parodies reconfigure Hitler as a frustrated Xbox user; Hitler also has problems using Vista, is unhappy to hear that his favorite soccer team has lost the Champions League Final, and is absolutely irate at an underling’s suggestion that he buy a new Mustang. There are so many Downfall spoofs on YouTube that I’m almost positive I was the last one to know that spoofing Downfall was, like, a thing that people did.

Almost all of these clips have view counts on YouTube in the six or seven figures. Downfall was the second-highest grossing foreign language film of 2005, but it still only made about $5.5 million. Almost certainly, more people in this country have now seen a clip from the film wrangled into a new context than would have ever seen the film in its original state. Downfall thus becomes part of the cultural conversation, but at the same time, it seems unlikely that any of these clips could effectively function as commercials for the film. Maybe it’s sad or maybe it’s totally appropriate, but it seems clear that the general YouTube user would be able to summon way more excitement for the concept of Hitler on the phone with Microsoft tech support, than they would for the concept of Hitler…doing Hitler stuff.

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5 Comments

  1. Karsten
    Posted May 12, 2008 at 6:19 pm | Permalink

    Yeah, you’re a bit late to the game this time. And I think you should remember that A LOT of those hits is likely to come from us International YouTube users.

    Der Untergang was an enormous hit in Europe, and this particular scene is iconic. Which makes it perfect for these kinds of mashups - Hitler realizing the war is lost is maybe the perfect example of… a downfall. Pairing it with, say, HD-DVD and Hillary, makes perfect sense.

    And I’m sure a lot more… to come.

  2. John
    Posted May 13, 2008 at 11:12 pm | Permalink

    Actually, after watching one of those Downfall meme*, I rented the movie and watched it. I didn’t really like it, and I don’t understand why it was so acclaimed.

    But I wonder, which is potentially worse: to say you felt bad for Hitler while watching Downfall, or that you thought the last 15 minutes of Schindler’s List were too schmaltzy? Just curious.

  3. John
    Posted May 13, 2008 at 11:13 pm | Permalink

    *Liguistic question: What’s the plural of ‘meme’?

  4. Posted May 22, 2008 at 4:20 pm | Permalink

    Hi Karina,

    I published my (meta) parody, “Hitler Is A Meme”, just after this article was posted.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6CsG4pPCMA

    It takes aim at many internet memes, as well as the other Downfall parodies.

    SEAN O

  5. Posted May 26, 2008 at 2:13 am | Permalink

    Is the original scene translation up anywhere? It’d be even funnier to compare to the original script.

One Trackback

  1. By The Chutry Experiment » Hillary's Downfall on May 12, 2008 at 6:36 pm

    [...] Karina went and did a little more research on the Downfall meme and raises an interesting point.  Downfall made about $5.5 million in U.S. [...]

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