American Chopper Argument

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About

American Chopper Argument refers to a scene from American reality TV show American Chopper in which Paul Teutul Sr. and Paul Teutul Jr. get in a shouting match about Jr.'s tardiness. Since its original airing in 2009, the explosive scene has spawned an exploitable photocomic series that humorously illustrate various debates in pop culture fandom. In March 2018, the meme made its first breakout on Twitter.

Origin

The scene aired in the first episode of Season 6 of Discovery Channel's American Chopper, "NHL Bike B2 Bomber Bike," which aired April 9th, 2009^[1] (shown below). In the scene, the Teutuls get into a violent argument after Paul Sr. raises issue with Paul Jr.'s tardiness in the morning. By the end of the episode, Teutul Jr. gets fired from the shop.

Spread

The scene started becoming an exploitable comic in late 2011. A post to /r/funny on November 24th, 2012^[2] and made the dialogue wholesome gained over 1,300 upvotes (shown below, left). The post gained over 1,400 upvotes (shown below, right). Another variation was posted to fuckyeahdementia^[3] on December 10th, 2011 (shown below, right).

Over the following several years, there were some variations in the meme, but the majority of posts with the template featured the wholesome edit shown above. In March of 2018, the format began seeing new popular variations. For example, a Twitter post by @_ericcurtain referencing the All Women Are Queens meme gained over 14,000 retweets and 47,000 likes (shown below, left). A post on /r/MemeEconomy from March 27th, 2018 referencing Garfield gained over 1,600 upvotes (shown below, right).

Photoshop Parodies

As the meme continued to grow in volume of iterations, photoshop variations of the dialogue began appearing, featuring characters from other media franchises superimposed over the original American Chopper template. On March 31st, 2018, FunnyJunk ^[5] user lerky posted several variations of the format, including a Prequel Memes version featuring the "I have the higher ground" meme (shown below, left). On April 4th, 2018 Twitter^[6] user @markpopham posted a version based on a scene from the American television situational comedy Frasier (shown below, center), garnering more than 2,200 retweets and 8,300 likes in six days. On April 6th, Twitter^[7] user @notebooklines posted a recreation of the scene featuring Neon Genesis Evangelion characters (shown below, right), receiving more than 4,100 retweets and 8,700 likes in four days. On April 10th, Twitter user @grayflannelsuit^[4] uploaded a "twitter friendly" version of the meme featuring the frames side-by-side to shorten the length of the image to comply with Twitter's format.

Media Coverage

Several media outlets covered the popularity of the meme, including Vice, ^[7] USA Today,^[8] Cnet,^[10] Slate,^[11] Mashable ^[12] and more.

Various Examples

Fandom

Metahumor

Academic

Political Discourse

Some of have found the meme has various implications in class, politics and gender. Writing for Vox^[9], Matthew Yglesias writes:

"Part of what makes the meme work is that you don’t actually need to be familiar with the show to read the facial hair and cap as class signifiers. At the same time, the dispute is clearly taking place in an office setting -- reflecting the reality that the Teutuls are wealthy business owners and television stars rather than struggling workers.

This dichotomy between economic status and the sociocultural aspects of “class” has become a hallmark of the Trump years, in which political disagreements between white Americans have come to be deeply polarized between the more and less educated even while the policy orientation of the GOP remains overwhelmingly focused on the wealthy.

The Teutuls are, in this sense, the perfect Trump-era Republicans -- a couple of lowbrow regular guys who happen to be incredibly rich business owners who’d probably appreciate a big tax cut for pass-through income. They’re the social and political antithesis of the young, debt-burdened recent college graduates living in expensive cities and struggling to make a living in creative fields -- the sort of people who’ve been enthusiastically creating and sharing the Chopper meme.