I Drink Your Milkshake!

About

I Drink Your Milkshake is a catchphrase originating from There Will Be Blood directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, a film adaption of the 1927 Upton Sinclair novel, Oil! The film was released in New York and Los Angeles on December 26, 2007, receiving significant critical praise and numerous award nominations and victories. It tells the story of a silver-miner-turned-oil-man on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California’s oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In the film, the phrase was intentionally used as a metaphor: sucking milkshake from someone else to demonstrate not only oil drainage from prized land, but the harsh nature of how cruelty often trumps meekness.

In its original context, the scene is meant to evoke contempt for the character of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) and pity for his adopted son H.W. (Russel Harvard).

However, there were many who found the scene wrought with sheer absurdity, finding a literal interpretation of the milkshake analogy to be hilarious, even exploitable.

Origin

Before “There Will Be Blood” expanded its release and rising buzz, on January 18, 2008, KevinKoonz uploaded a music video on YouTube, titled There Will Be Milkshakes, a montage of scenes from the original There Will Be Blood "trailer"::http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3THVbr4hlY, clipped together to the song Milkshake by Kelis.

Nearly a month later, on February 02, 2008, YouTube user ShawnRay9 uploaded a music video of the same title and song. This time, the video was much longer and focused on the infamous Milkshake scene. The audio had been disabled. ShawnRay9 had later on moved to a new account, LeafyBugProductions, and reposted the video. This time it was titled I Drink Your Milkshake!!!

By early February, the scene was popping up all over YouTube, and people were quoting and impersonating: “I. Drink. Your. Milkshake! I drink it up!” Other users started making their own Milkshake music videos, and the Milkshake scene gained popularity. As it gained more popularity, the music video trend slowly died out, leaving the memetic scene as it is.

More Kelis Mashups

Other Musical Derivatives

Reenactment Derivatives

YTMND

• I Drink Your Milkshake
• Picard hates MILKSHAKES
• Sean Connery Loves MILKSHAKES
• Don’t Fuck with Gene’s Milkshake
• There Will Be REMIX
• There Will Be FRIDAY’S
• There Will Be M.I.A.
• I’ve abandoned my MILKSHAKE
• Daniel and Eli break it down

Google Insights

The popularity of the “I drink your milkshake” meme peaked sharply following the film’s general release in theaters, benefiting from buzz directly related to the film. It’s safe to say that an understanding of the film is necessary in order to understand the unintentional humor present in the scene, and that interest in the meme was dependent on the timeliness of the film.