Our Time Nouvelle–Vague: “I like turtles” and other newly arrived Internet humor

URL for Washington Post article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/29/AR2007072901386.html

         I swear people of primitive era couldn’t understand today’s humor at all, such as the gags from comedy shows or the newly arising Internet humor. And the opposition is also applied. For us, if there was some sort of humor for primitive human, they may seem like meaningless crying and gestures. This is very simple story, since the understanding of fallouts from certain era requires people to have similar viewpoint of the period. Let’s think about the palace performance in 16^th century. Ignoring the language and other humor codes, it’ll be hard to understand the themes and enjoy it. But after studying proper background knowledge, there’s no problem to watch it. That’s because we know why other audiences laugh and cry, and when we have to do so.

           It’s all the same story in the case of “I like turtles,” the 17 seconds fragmentary video. In this video, a reporter tried to interview one boy in Halloween zombie costume all over his face. She asked the boy-what do you think about it (the Halloween costume)?-but the answer was what the reporter (and actually anybody else who has normal psycho) can hardly expect. His answer was three words, pretty short and straightforward-“I like turtles.” Maybe some of the viewers thought the boy is abnormal or very funny, and then go over it. But the important fact is that there were other people who tittered at it and actually rewind over and over. They cut the interview part only from the whole news, and uploaded the short clip on the Internet. Next story is a cliché now. People enjoyed the interview video, and play it with various edit tools.

           At this point, what we have to concentrate on is ‘how people could do that.’  Think about 30 years, or let’s say 20 years ago. First of all, recording the TV program and making it into editable computer file was technically impossible. Moreover, people at that time didn’t have such fantastic editing tools for video and gif files. Naturally, there was no curiosity and need for the Internet humors like ‘turtle’ things. However, the time passed and we now grab the easy-access Internet, recording and AVI/MP4 transforming software and enormous Internet communities like YouTube. Now cutting TV program and making it into short clip is just a piece of cake, and people from all around the world will show interests when it uploaded on Internet.

           From this perspective, it seems the contents of turtle interview video and its derivations shouldn’t be the core of story. And it actually isn’t. The real main point is that the birth background of this new humor code. As I mentioned above, we already had everything needed for the creation of turtle boy. Recording, transformation into computer file, uploading and tools for the creation of other versions. We can think it as one of the numerous ways to utilize our contemporary technology. Like any other vogues, people at first were just interested in what arrived newly. Then they started to reproduce the primary sources in various different ways. Furthermore, there was a massive community called Internet, which contributed greatly to the growth of people's interest.

           It’s not easy to figure out where and when exactly this video became popular. Who started it and why? But overall, it’s not so important. This is the vogue of Internet-based era, and this is one of the possibilities we can play in wholly new method, which came true now. For example, there are “Double Rainbow” video and numerous remixes on the YouTube. All these things are the invention of humor in these days, which only the contemporaries can understand the code easily. I’m not going to say whether “I like turtles” is funny or not. But one obvious thing is this: it’s nouvelle-vague of our time.

02 14 2011 Chang Woo Jung
AP Lang @ KMLA