Mongolian "Gangnam Style" remake

Oppan Mongolian style! Another brilliant remake of PSY's viral hit. Like the Inuit version I blogged here, I love that this one incorporates traditional, local, indigenous cultural references within a global techno internet meme. This one was uploaded and presumably created by "Cari Bou," identified as a user in Mongolia. It's really well done.

(Thanks, Susan Fox!)

• [fergus1948]

  Terrific version! I thought that meme was dead by now but they brought it back to life with something for people of every sexual orientation, tee hee.

• [Pedro Marques]

  Man, I just love to know there’s laid back people in every country in this world. 

• [Andy III]

  Wow, mark it… January 1, midafternoon …my New Years Wish has been blown. I wished for one thing, the death of that stupid meme/craze. Ah well.

• [Jim Saul]

  Can we please get a Die Antwoord Zef Style before this meme is over?

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    How about Hitler planning to do one and then finding out that the meme is dead?

    • [Sekino]

      WANT!

• [mikemcl]

  I’d love to see a version that encompassed human civilisation from Neanderthals thru Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mayan, Aztec, China etc to present day. 

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Would you settle for historyteachers?

  • [Red Pill Junkie]

     The Zapatistas should have thought of it if they were planning a media resurgence. D’oh!

• [blueelm]

  Damn. Now I just want to get invited to a party in Mongolia.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    It seems to be a non-stop muscle party over there.

  • [Susan Fox]

     They are the party culture, believe me. I’ve been there seven times so far and it’s always fun.

• [CH]

  That was truly delightful!

  Many seem to hate the Gangnam style meme, but I (much to my own surprise) love it! I like the original version for the tongue in cheek-ness, and even more for all the re-makes it has spawned. People have been truly creative in making their own versions!

  • [GertaLives]

    I really enjoyed (okay, still enjoy) the original, largely because it’s, erm, original. Frankly, most of the spin-off’s I’ve seen are terribly confused or just plain bad, so maybe that has spawned the meme hate. This one really made me smile.

• [chgoliz]

  An actual horse culture creating their own version of a parody of a faux horse culture….nice.

  • [spejic]

    So instead of a reference to a cultural marker of success, the dance is a reference to a tradition that is perhaps lost to most Mongolians now that half of them live in Ulaanbaatar and the rural part is turning to agriculture. It becomes slightly sadder now.

    • [Susan Fox]

      Not at all. The University of Art and Culture is filled with students learning traditional forms of dance, singing and music. That video is probably filled with them, many born and raised in Ulaanbaatar. Don’t underestimate the Mongols….they’ve been synthesizing other cultures for over 800 years. Also, the “rural part” is not “turning to agriculture”. There has always been some agriculture, there’s just more now than there has been and I’m glad to see it. 40% of the population still live in the countryside herding livestock. And that probably won’t change much for quite awhile. It appears that a fair number of “city Mongols” own horses that are kept in the countryside and just about everyone gets out of town at some point in the summer to get back to the land for at least a week or so.

• [Culturedropout]

  I’m with blueelm – I want to party with these guys!

• [Guido]

  A Mongolian parody of a South Korean pop video, uploaded thanks to a an American company, using very likely Chinese made (or Taiwanese made) technology watched from Chile by a Venezuelan that gets his Internet from a Spanish company.

  The future is weird, and I am loving it.

  • [chaopoiesis]

    Three cheers for soft globalization!

    • [Guido]

      My old blog was named “Globally Connected” and devoted to this kind of stuff, plus my rantings. 

  • [Bryce Anderson]

    “A Mongolian parody of a South Korean pop video, uploaded thanks to a an American company, using very likely Chinese made (or Taiwanese made) technology watched from Chile by a Venezuelan that gets his Internet from a Spanish company.”

    Only to be blocked in Pakistan and China.  Grump grump.

    • [Ipo]

      “This video contains content from UMG, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.”
      Of course this message had reached me in error.  Almost all videos containing music are blocked in Germany now.  But they can still proxy through China.

• [☃]

  It’s Oppa, not “Oppan”.

  • [Daniel Roy]

    You’re wrong, it’s ‘oppan’.

    ‘oppan’ (오빤) is a contraction of ‘oppa-neun’ (오빠는). “Oppa” is the pronoun used to designate an elder brother. “Neun” is a subject marker. Basically, the sentence reads:

    “Oppa-neun Gangnam Style” -> Elderbrother(subject) [is] Gangnam Style

• [Terry Carroll]

  This one is great; truly delightful. But my favorite is still “OB/GYNE Style” from the birthing department of a Toronto hospital:

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

  • [Kludgegrrl]

     Doesn’t compare to the Higgs Boson particle one IMHO

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7DvQq8TU7s

    • [Rik Elswit]

      Needs a translation and subtitles.

  • [LinkMan]

     Holy crap that’s amazing!

• [Bryce Anderson]

  Why do we Americans put up with all these furriners who keep stealing our memes?

• [Rik Elswit]

  This one charmed me.   I love the traditional costumes and the Mongolian horse culture references, the excellent dancing…   But what  really got it for me was when they pulled the cultural camera back at the end and showed the kids in their street clothes dancing in the city.   That bit of self awareness framed the entertainment and made it art.   This was really well done, both in concept and execution.

• [euansmith]

  I think PSY should be up for the Nobel Peace Prize for bring a lot of innocent pleasure to the peoples of the world. 

• [Tadas Jelinek]

  Soooo last year… :|