Just a few facial expressions, but what a twist! How a basic TikTok trick became an effective protest
While most artists around the world were dealt a heavy blow by COVID, Sarah Cooper made a killing. The 43 year-old comedian, who rose to fame thanks to her TikTok videos, succeeded in breaking out of the young app bubble after launching a series of brilliant lip-sync videos last April, in which she uses the voice of President Donald Trump. Only a bit of lip-syncing and a few facial expressions, but what a twist!
It’s no big deal to make fun of the usual suspect, but in this case Cooper simply does a brilliant job, shedding an interesting light on the strange place where the United States is today. Her videos have received millions of views, causing her career to soar exponentially. She has landed a Netflix variety special as well as a TV comedy series. Meanwhile, in Israel, the last time lip-syncing in Hebrew made anyone laugh was back in the days of “Od Lahit” (“Another Hit”), a studio show launched in 1977 that featured a series of video clips, when it happened without anyone intending it to be funny as singers were asked to lip-sync the song playing in the background. Now, someone is doing it intentionally – the comedian Corina, who posted a series of successful lip-sync videos à la Sarah Cooper on Twitter, in which she presents her own interpretation of texts spoken by Sara Netanyahu, Ayelet Shaked, Osnat Mark and others. The Shaked video that went live last week received over 40 million views in just a few days, and one may assume that Corina is still far from done. All of which proves that sometimes, even a basic children’s trick can become an effective protest.