2023-12-05 08:51:53
Even famous magicians are turned away at the door of the Berlin techno club Berghain – especially when they are English tourists. “You’re not a Berliner, Harry,” says the gatekeeper to a young man who bears a strong resemblance to Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe. This is how the clip “Harry Potter but in Berlin” begins, which went viral on social media around three weeks ago and has received almost a million views. The characters in the video were created by an artificial intelligence; the artist “demonflyingfox” fed the programs with the necessary information.
Jannis Holl
Editor in the “Society & Style” department.
The short video is a satire on the lifestyle of young new Berliners, linked to the world of the Harry Potter franchise. The bouncer who denies Harry Potter entry into the club is reminiscent of Sven Marquardt, the Berghain gatekeeper. However, he is significantly fuller than the real Marquardt and has the stature of the half-giant Hagrid, also a character by the British author Joanne K. Rowling. “You’re not a Berliner, Harry” is a reminiscence of a quote from Rowling’s books. In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Hagrid tells young Potter, “You’re a wizard, Harry.”
More clicks than the Balenciaga winter collection video
This is the formula for success in the videos from “demonflyingfox”: connecting two worlds that don’t actually belong together. Plus the modified quotes as a reference to the original material. On his social media channels, the artist lets Batman play in Japan, moves Marry Harron’s “American Psycho” to an Arabian desert state or lets the Pokemon experience the collapse of the Soviet Union. American journalist Kyle Chayka attributed the clips’ greatest fascination to their “meaningless collision of cultural symbols.”
“demonflyingfox” also used this formula for the video that became his most successful to date: “Harry Potter by Balenciaga”. The characters from Harry Potter have angular model faces and wear Balenciaga’s signature eye-catching shoulder pads and silhouettes in dark fabrics and leather. The flash of a camera flashes across the picture, a hectic, dark electronica beat thumps in the background: the world of magicians has shifted to a dystopian catwalk. Despite the comedy, all of the AI artist’s works have something dark and disturbing about them due to the empty, slightly moronic looks and the unnatural movements of the avatars.
The fake trumped the original. The American trend blogger Michael J. Miraflor put the numbers side by side on the X platform in April. The video of the Parisian fashion house’s official winter collection for 2023 received 2.6 million views within four weeks, while the video from “demonflyingfox” already had 4.5 million clicks after two weeks. The video has now been viewed more than 11 million times. The success of the video may not have gone unnoticed by Balenciaga and the fashion house’s parent company, Kering SA. “Someone got in touch,” says “demonflyingfox”. However, details about this are not intended for the public.
The Berlin-based creator of the videos has no connection to the high fashion scene. “By mixing two such big brands, it was already designed for virality. But I didn’t expect it to make such big waves,” says “demonflyingfox,” who only wants to perform under his stage name. At first, his video didn’t do particularly well on YouTube until users of the Reddit internet platform spread his clip. Then “Harry Potter by Balenciaga” went viral, and the American magazine “The New Yorker” reported on the video.
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