‘the ice-cream van’ meme - a critical analysis
This essay is my attempt to identify and explore the various factors behind what makes the above 26 second YouTube video such a viral sensation - at time of writing it has over 17 million views in the three and a half years since it was uploaded. We will examine the meta aspects that make this video so attractive to click in the first place, and then dive into the grounded world we are first presented with when the video starts. The timing and escalation of concerns feels expertly crafted to maximise drama, and the end itself is surprising and a brilliant subversion of our expectations. As we will see, this video has an astonishing amount of depth, most of which appears to be entirely accidental, that it is more than worth examining with a critical eye.
The Front Cover
From the outside, the video does almost everything correctly to attract views. We will be considering the properties of the video a modern YouTube user would see if they were to stumble across it in a sidebar or trending page: the thumbnail (a frame from the main build up shot, showing the older boy with toast in mouth looking to the side), the video duration (26 seconds), the video title (”the ice-cream van”), the channel name (Selina Omeara), and the view count (at time of writing: over 17 million).
The thumbnail and title work together to entice viewers in, since cute kids and ice cream are both things that typically make people feel good, and the lack of capitalisation in the title contributes towards the ‘down to Earth’ and approachable nature of the video. The channel name further reinforces this effect - this isn’t from some mega-popular meme-harvesting brand name, but from a literal mum uploading the first video to her channel. The only thing out of place would be the view count, a discrepancy that would indicate that something here is worthy of our attention.
The video duration of 26 seconds is also particularly worth highlighting, since it is ideal for virality - not long enough to put off the attention span the modern meme-hunter, but not too short that it feels trivial or frivolous. There is a long history of ~30 second video memes online, and entire subreddits have sprung up around the concept.
World Building
When the video first loads, the opening scene contains out first subversion of expectations: where is the ice-cream van? This is the mystery that persists for the first 15 seconds of the video, before our attention is turned elsewhere - more on that later. We must first explore the world we are presented with in that opening scene. The framing here shows us everything we need to know about these characters and situation: a family getting some food at the end of a busy day. The boys are in a jacket and hoodie, with the younger boy wearing outside shoes, suggesting they’ve recently returned home. It appears to be a typical early/mid evening judging by the lack of natural light from outside. The food they are having, beans on toast with milk, is a quick and easy meal for a parent to make, and with the empty bowls around the kitchen (possibly the left overs from an earlier breakfast?), all signs point to this being the first peaceful moment after a full day out with the boys. We should also acknowledge the presence of the mother herself, who is easy to miss - during the first 15 seconds we can hear her satisfied slurps of a hot drink as she idly films the boys.
Video Walkthrough: The Set Up
These first 15 seconds are so important for getting the viewer comfortable before the forthcoming drama. An expert balance is struck here - it is required to be slow, with not much happening so as to set up expectations and make the viewer think they know how the video is going to play out, but if there is NOT ENOUGH activity the viewer would be instantly bored. The most important thing that holds engagement is the shift of focus around the scene. The older boy is naturally the first thing we look at, since he is larger in the frame and is taking his first bite as the video starts. Each bite of the toast is a relatively dangerous action, since it is larger than his hands and he is delicately lifting it each time as if it were a serving platter. The apparent instability of this maneuver is reinforced by a single bean on the table in front of him, the fallout from a previous attempt. As viewers we might be expecting a “fail” meme, so we anticipate the inevitable messy face and/or clothing. Despite all the odds though, the older boy prevails, and looks satisfied. The first focus shift now occurs as the boy looks at his food, and we see how loaded up the toast is on the far side, raising the stakes for subsequent bites. Following the boy’s gaze as he looks away from his toast and back towards us, he goes for the next bite - surely this is where the anticipated failure occurs? But no, successful chomping happens again, and the boy again looks satisfied.
Almost as if in response to the challenge, his younger brother now makes an attempted bite - for some viewers, this might be the first time they even notice the boy in the background. Despite his firmer grip, as a younger man we can expect the task to be harder than his brother’s, so we start to expect that THIS is the bite that gets messy. A clear pattern has been established, which would also match the comedic “rule of three” pattern. Of course, nothing goes wrong and from an analytical point of view, we can consider the opening sequence of events to be competed.
The “action” moving from character to character keeps us engaged as viewers, but there is not just a psychological shift of focus, but also a LITERAL one. The camera itself pans around slightly, keeping the frame dynamic but fundamentally unchanged in content. This combined with the auto-focus shifting in and out keeps the scene visually interesting. Furthermore, attentive viewers might be distracted by the specs of black on the left of the screen, a sign of dirt or dust on the lens, which also draws attention to the shaky camera movements. This has the additional purpose of contributing to the world-building by demonstrating that this is a candid, impulsively constructed shot by an amateur.
Video Walkthrough: The Turn
As a comfortable audience, we finally approach the payoff. The camera unfocusses one last time, before landing on the younger brother’s coy smirk as he takes a swaggering step forward, missteps, and collapses off to the side. On first viewing it is surprising since it was not immediately obvious that the younger boy was on an inch-high box - typical viewer reaction matches the mother’s “Oh gosh” chuckle. The act is silly, but no need for concern - the boy rolled relatively slowly and safely down, and indeed it is later revealed that he even held onto his toast throughout the ordeal. Our attention as a viewer is drawn to the older boy, the only character remaining on screen, because he now obscures his brother - but he seems content in continuing to eat his own toast in his own little world.
This world is interrupted by an outside force, as the promised ice-cream van jingle plays loudly and unambiguously! This snaps the older boy out of it, his eyes grow wide and he places his hand on the table to steady his descent. In his raspy, dramatic, but somehow still cute voice, he confirms his intentions: “THE ICE-CREAM -” as he raises his toast high and promptly plunging out of frame. The camera stays still as if in shock as the mother processes what has happened, and again her stifled laughter reflects our own. The older brother took up a decent third of the shot a few seconds ago, but he has fallen so far and so fast that his absence now in the same shot adds to the absurdity.
Video Walkthrough: The Conclusion
The damage is done and the narrative now considers the consequences. As smooth as our attention was shifted from younger to older, we now shift back again as the younger brother is revealed (in stark contrast) to have regains his footing. But this time his smug grin has turned to concern as he looks down and out of shot, and both the camera and the mother turns once again to the older brother for the final time. Her stifled laughter turns into an emphatic “Oh my GOOOOOD…” (in essence a more intense version of her reaction to the initial, softer fall) as the drama of the situation is made apparent by the teary expression of our injured protagonist.
Escalation
Now that we’re familiar with the finer points of viewers’ attention as the video progresses, we can clearly see an escalation of drama on multiple levels. The length of each of the three stage increases the intensity as we move forwards, since each is approximately half the time of the previous stage: 15 seconds of setup into 7 seconds of action into 4 of aftermath. The onscreen action and visual interest transitions from static shot of static characters in the intro, to a static shot of active characters, to finally both an active shot AND active characters as the camera itself moves in the conclusion. Each stage adds visual interest by adding something new. The same is true of the audio - what starts as quiet, contemplative eating and drinking, moves into the bangs of children falling to the floor and the titular ice-cream van jingle is introduced, into the final wails of the older boy drowning out all previous sounds. There is also the more symbolic escalation of the young and simple to older and more complex when comparing each brother’s respective eating and falling actions.
Subversion of Expectations
It should also be highlighted how expertly this video subverts our expectations though misdirection. We go in expecting something about kids being cute with ice cream, but we get the kids eating a completely different food. The video takes ample time to establish this new setting, before subverting again with a completely unrelated event in the boys falling, the twist that it’s the promise of ice cream that causes the real drama being a great callback and a great break in tension. We don’t know which boy (if any!) is going to be the focus of the video until the final third, and just when we think it’s been confirmed we get the actual and intensified “fail”.
Mother’s story
We’d be wrong to skip the wider story of the mother, who is arguably the most important character because she represents the viewer in this situation as the only adult, the camera operator, and as the emotional touchstone to the events as the unfold. This video isn’t the start or end of a story, but the main struggle in a larger story of that day for the family overall. We know from the implied worldbuilding that they’ve had a busy day, and clearly the aftermath of this video will need some parental care to console the older boy - luckily ice cream is a great healer. The genius of this video is it’s brevity (which this essay has helpfully ruined by existing). We can deduce a larger, multiple-hour story of what came before and after the events of the video, but all we actually need is this single 26 second clip as the central narrative nugget that is ripe for extrapolation.
Conclusion
Even on a superficial layer, the combined power of fail memes and cute kid memes is potent enough that “the ice-cream van” was likely to be a hit regardless of actual details of the content. What I hope I have demonstrated today is that the construction of this video goes far and above the standard expected for such a short and transient experience for the viewer. The fact that this was all put together in an accidental way, when so much of it appears to have all the hallmarks of a carefully planned and edited sequence is astounding to me, and really makes me want to look out for the subtleties in editing and design of other viral gems like this.
Thanks for reading! As we all know, Internet is Serious Business ;) If you have a response or comment, feel free to HMU on them Twitters yo.