Marx my words

This video features in a responsive display in the museum that presents the moments, stories and memes capturing the zeitgeist by going viral on the internet.

This TikTok video is staged like a thirst trap. The popular video format is designed to attract attention, often by highlighting a user’s physicality and sexuality. It’s common among internet users but regularly used by influencers to gain attention, build followers and, at times, sell products. Jade Kim (@jadestradamus) stages this video similarly, sauntering into frame and suggestively applying lipstick. But instead of using her platform to sell something, she advocates for socialism, seemingly suggesting that if we paid as much attention to class consciousness as we did to thirst traps, the world might be a more equitable place.

The video is also a recreation of a famous scene in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), where the killer, Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), dances in front of a mirror wearing nothing but a kimono. Apart from the dance moves, this is clearly signposted by using Q Lazarus’ song “Goodbye Horses”, which soundtracks the original scene. This further layering of meaning – and alignment with an iconic villain of cinema – could be Kim alluding to the grotesqueness of capitalism. Or, it could just be a fun Easter egg or a way to leverage the scene’s cult status to gain more views.

It’s also worth clarifying that the video isn’t a judgement on thirst traps or people who make them, but rather a sly critique of the attention economy and what types of content achieve cut through.