Technoviking’s story is an entertaining and thoughtful look at how a single piece of internet content can reach a massive global audience, revealing relevant material about the online users who disseminate that content and the murky landscape of intellectual property largely unregulated online.
The infamous video was filmed during a Berlin street parade in 2000. Shot by Matthias Fritsch and titled Kneecam No. 1, the clip shows us a half-naked man dancing aggressively among a sea of horrified and amused onlookers. Fritsch uploaded his video to YouTube and didn’t think much of it. Over a year later, he found his work went viral, eventually racking up over 80 million views.
All this was done without the consent of the original creator of the video. His work has gone viral in large part because it has been manipulated by others. Retitled Technoviking and set to pulsating club music, The Naked Dancer became an internet meme sensation and inserted into various scenes and situations with humor and shock. Young people from all over the world are posting their own renditions of his precise movements.
Techno Viking has become an emerging figure in our culture, but it has infiltrated the most popular platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Its pervasive popularity speaks to the mass appeal of social media and our unprecedented propensity to communicate through images.
Although he was responsible for recording the source material, Fritsch played little role in securing his global audience. Are its exclusive rights being trampled upon, or can it be taken for granted that content can be reinterpreted in the digital age? The actual character, known in pop culture circles as the Techno Viking, also has nothing to do with his internet fame, and he’s not happy with that connection. He successfully sued Fritsch in 2013 for personal rights violations.
Through interviews with various experts from the digital media and legal fields, Technoviking’s story examines the series of challenges, unresolved issues and litigation that followed this phenomenon.
Directed by: Matthias Fritsch
