Road to Success

An instant gay icon, a messy bitch who lives for drama and the epitome of the “she lived, she served c*** and then she died” meme, those few seconds in the trailer cemented M3GAN’s icon status. Devoid of any context, M3GAN sashaying down a hallway could be seen as wholly comedic, or it could be seen as ironic, or it could be the filmmakers not realising how camp it is, or it could be the film’s definitive horror finale ripped away from its environment into something entirely ludicrous. Basically, it could be anything, and until you decide to ingest it fully within its context, it can live on in your chosen memeability indefinitely. 

It’s not the first time we’ve seen a dance moment transcend its confines in the last year, in fact, it’s just the latest in a line of films and TV shows making the most of whatever split-second of movement they have. 

Fresh, starring Sebastian Stan and Daisy Edgar-Jones, dropped on Disney+ at the start of 2022 to fairly muted fanfare. That was until a short dance scene nestled into its middle became TikTok’s trend dujour, with the scene itself racking up millions of views and a remixed version of Demi Lovato‘s “Cool For The Summer” becoming one of the year’s most viral trends. It didn’t really matter what the film was about (cannibals) or what the dance meant (that Edgar-Jones was about to bite Stan’s testicle off), it was memeable and easy to replicate and that’s all the film needed to hit a streaming boom two months after its release. 

Elsewhere, Wednesday probably didn’t need a helping hand in becoming a record-breaking success. Based on an existing IP, starring a fresh new it-girl (Jenna Ortega) and following a character that’s seen solid representation every Halloween since the early 90s, Netflix’s Addams Family spin-off was always going to be a hit. But a scene where Ortega’s Wednesday performs a staccato dance to The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck” immediately emerged as late-2022 viral material. The clipped-out dance itself has been viewed over 35 million times on YouTube, and over on TikTok it’s been replicated tenfold to the backing track of Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary”. The cycle of virality closed back on itself by its popularity being pointedly referenced in the announcement for Wednesday‘s second season, with Gaga as its soundtrack.  

The lure of a good dance moment couldn’t even be avoided by Top Gun: Maverick, a blockbuster-intended film literally constructed to obfuscate any kind of online memeability. A half-second moment of a shirtless Miles Teller dancing on the beach made its way into the Twitterverse, creating somewhat of a bridge between the old and new guard targeted in the film’s hope for box office glory.

Ultimately, M3GAN is more than just a dance and, it turns out, the moment is very much aware of itself as a silly, campy and instantly iconic horror set-piece. The film knows its camp value, and whether or not the film studio knew just how much that dance scene would catapult its success we’ll never know (though they did a great job of immediately capitalising on it in marketing). But it goes to show that in an age where a film or TV show lives multiple lives, one of them being through shitposts on the internet, throwing in a little boogie where possible is probably not a terrible idea.