Dramatic Chipmunk

2007

Date: 30 August 2007 · Place: YouTube, source clip from NTV Japan · Figures: Yoshiko Hara, animal handler · uploader 'pixelface' · Tags: Reaction Loop, Television Recut, Five Seconds 01. A Prairie Dog On Japanese Television The original clip airs on the Japanese variety show Hello! Morning in 2006 and features a pet prairie dog, not a chipmunk, owned by Yoshiko Hara. On 30 August 2007 a five-second cut of the animal whipping its head toward the camera, scored with a stinger from the 1974 film Young Frankenstein, is uploaded to YouTube as Dramatic Chipmunk. Within weeks the clip has tens of millions of views. It is the canonical example of the YouTube loop as a unit of comedic punctuation. 02. The Reaction As Standalone Object Dramatic Chipmunk arrives before the GIF revival of the early 2010s but functions as a GIF: a short cyclic reaction that the viewer summons to react on another's behalf. It teaches the platform that durations under ten seconds can carry as much social weight as a feature film. The misnaming, chipmunk for prairie dog, sticks because correction has no advantage in a culture that has already adopted the wrong word. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Dramatic Chipmunk' • NTV Japan, 'Hello! Morning' episode broadcast 2006 • The Guardian, 'The Year in Internet Video' (29 December 2007)