X 2: Electric Boogaloo

This originates with the title of a 1984 film, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. It was the sequel to Breakin’, a B movie about breakdancing, and was received as one of the “25 Worst Sequels Ever Made”.

X variants [chosen semi-randomly from top Google results] include Five Iron Frenzy, baby geek, get me naked, tumblr meetup, and Obama girl. The general limitation on what may appear in the X slot seems to be that (1) there is an X (1) that predates X 2, and (2) the work as a sequel is not to be taken too seriously. The most popular instances are titles of real (music albums, YouTube videos) or fictional works of art. Wikipedia’s page on the film notes on this snowclone, “The implications [of this usage] vary, but tend to imply a sequel that is ridiculous, disappointing, formulaic, or simply obscure.” The phrase has a nice nearly-trochaic rhythm, which may help give this snowclone some ease of use/production.

Ben Zimmer wrote about this snowclone–and the nature of snowclones in general–on the Oxford University Press Blog in his “From A to Zimmer” feature last August.

3 responses to “X 2: Electric Boogaloo

  1. Ben Zimmer: Hi Erin, just catching up with your recent posts. As it happens, I wrote about this snowclone last year on OUPblog: “Phrasal Patterns 2: Electric Boogaloo.”

    [comment was getting marked as spam, and until I figure out how to resolve that, I’m keeping his comment here. –EOC]

  2. I’ve used this with a larger number in order to suggest one of a large number of more or less interchangeable sequels (with silly subtitles, in fact).

  3. mili sandokan

    well it seems in my country we use and abuse of snowclones. On this particular one, we don’t use exactly but we refer to sequels as in Rambo-like movies, for example:

    X 2: La venganza (revenge)
    X3: esta vez es personal (this time is personal)

    If I find more, I’ll let you know 😉

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