YouTube Trend Breakdown: Ride of the Valkyries

YouTube Trend Breakdown Pt 1: Wagner’s Epicness

By Manzoni's Requiem Mar. 16th, 2011

Society has basically agreed that certain acts of behavior will elicit predicted responses and reactions.

Girl wears low cut shirt → Attract more male attention
Guy buys expensive sports car → People will look at him and he will appear successful
Man or women of the non-black variety starts sporting dreadlocks → They must smoke pot

Like in the real world, YouTube world has similar rules.

You know the quote.

In part 1 of internet video meme breakdown, today’s focus will be on Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner, which is the popular name for the beginning of Act III, of the opera Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) that is one of four operas that make up the epic Ring cycle which for you with bladder issues, is 15 hours long.

Most notably Ride of the Valkyries is set to the famous helicopter attack scene in the film Apocalypse Now. This is where the conditioned response comes in. The scene in Apocalypse Now is considered one of the most memorable scenes in cinema of all time. Along with also being being bad-ass it includes cooking up some VC extra crispy as well as Robert Duvall filling the screen with pimp-juice so concentrated Minute Maid shit itself with envy.

With that in mind, often when an internet clip may be missing some panache, or oomph; the addition of Ride of the Valkyries can be a good prescription for saying, “this video is fucking serious and epic!”

Below are a few examples of how Wagner’s musical piece is utilized. Please note that the first video is in my top 10 of all time.