Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Breakfast Club Dance Video

Overview

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Breakfast Club Dance Video refers to a video of Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing to the 2009 indie rock song "Lisztomania" by Phoenix while she was attending Boston University. In early January 2019, an edited clip of the video meant to shame Cortez began circulating on Twitter, which was subsequently widely mocked by those who found her dancing endearing.

Background

On September 30th, 2010, YouTuber Julian Jensen uploaded a video of Boston University students recreating a dance scene from the film The Breakfast Club set to the song "Lisztomania" by Phoenix. The video features a young Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, credited as "Sandy" Ocasio-Cortez. Within nine years, the video gained over 1.3 million views.

On December 2nd, 2018, the Conservative News YouTube channel uploaded clips of Ocasio-Cortez dancing in the video dubbed with a background track featuring a Bo Diddley beat (shown below).

Developments

On January 2nd, 2019, Twitter user and apparent QAnon member @AnonymousQ1776 tweeted the edited video, writing "Here is America’s favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is……High School video of “Sandy” Ocasio-Cortez." The tweet gained over 2,000 retweets and 9,000 likes before it was deleted.^[1]

Most were quick to take the attempted smear and mock it for inadvertently making Ocasio-Cortez look charming, including conservative news outlets like The American Conservative^[2] and Washington Examiner.^[3] Twitter users posted screenshots exchanges between @AnonymousQ1776 and commenters telling him he had simply made Ocasio-Cortez look cool. A post by @SonOfGodAndMan gained 70 retweets and 1,300 likes (shown below, left). The Breakfast Club actress Molly Ringwald tweeted her support of Ocasio-Cortez and the video, gaining over 1,800 retweets and 13,000 likes (shown below, right).

Ocasio-Cortez responded to the controversy by posting a video of herself dancing to "War" by Edwin Starr on Twitter (shown below).

Remixes

Additionally, Twitter users took the clip and created a remix meme, adding different background music to the footage. For example, Twitter user @JimAdair3 posted a remix using the old theme song for the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers, gaining over 100 retweets and 700 likes (shown below, top). A Twitter account hosting numerous remixes, @AOC_Dances,^[4] launched that day and gained over 9,000 followers. As of January 4th, their most popular remix sees Ocasio-Cortez dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" (shown below, bottom).

Search Interest

External References