A moment of viral fame for Louis Theroux, the documentary filmmaker (and a personal hero). From the New York Times today:
His agent has been fielding dozens of requests for personal appearances and invitations to perform. Mr. Theroux, a 52-year-old British American documentary filmmaker with a bookish, somewhat anxious demeanor, has turned them all down, not least because, as he put it in a video interview from his London home, “I am not trying to make it as a rapper.”
But in a way, he already has: Mr. Theroux is the man behind “Jiggle Jiggle,” a sensation on TikTok and YouTube, where it has been streamed hundreds of millions of times. He delivers the rap in an understated voice that bears traces of his Oxford education, giving an amusing lilt to the lines “My money don’t jiggle jiggle, it folds/I’d like to see you wiggle, wiggle, for sure.”
It’s a great craze, one of the best in TikTok’s short history. Here’s a good one, with a mere 13 million views:
But as amused as Theroux is about all this, he can’t help feeling a little downbeat. He’s become a one-hit wonder… without ever actually releasing a record. The fame he’s long sought in America has come for the wrong reason:
“I’m pleased that people are enjoying the rap,” he said. “At the same time, there’s a part of me that has a degree of mixed feelings. It’s a bittersweet thing to experience a breakthrough moment of virality through something that, on the face of it, seems so disposable and so out of keeping with what it is that I actually do in my work. But there we are.”
It’s always baffled me that Theroux’s work, which shines an incredibly intimate light on America, its quirks and its problems, has never found much of an audience here. Theroux’s work on the prison system, religious extremism and the right-to-die was groundbreaking. His film on paedophilia was one of the most disturbing pieces of television I’ve seen — yet riveting. But somehow, few here seem familiar with his work.
Maybe his slow style doesn’t land. Or maybe Americans are averse to having people they perceive as outsiders give their take on how they live and the problems they face. I don’t know. All I hope is that this jiggle-jiggle fun leads people to discover his documentaries too. Right now, some of the very best of them are on HBO Max.
