"Uber" in pop culture

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

    Last semester one of my students drew my attention to "uber" in pop culture and prepared a brief report on it.
Over the summer he did a bit of additional checking on it and yesterday sent me the e-mail below. I now share it with ads-l and would welcome any feedback on it. I will of course share it with Mr. Barnes.

Gerald Cohen

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From: Barnes, Seth Wayne (UMR-Student)
Sent: Mon 8/20/2007 5:25 PM
To: gcohen at umr.edu
Subject: Uber


Hello Dr. Cohen. You had asked me to revise my report of the progression of "uber" through Pop Culture. Sorry It took so long to send you my first draft, but as you will see the recent information I have gathered has been the most valuable. The movie 300 came out just before the end of the school year and the repercussion of its use of the word uber was far greater than even I predicted. Let me know if it needs editing or anything else interesting you know.

Best Regards,
Seth Barnes


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Uber:


            From the German Über, as a word or prefix, meaning literally "above;" Uber was introduced to American youth by the Dead Kennedys, an 80's rock band with a strong German influence, in the song "California Uber Alles" (Germany Above All.) From here the history is relatively quiet, growing in popularity throughout the nerd and surfer communities until November 2001 with the release of SSX Tricky, a popular snowboarding game for Playstation 2 that used the terms "'über' tricks" and "'über' boards."


Though SSX Tricky introduced uber to a wider audience the term was still relative scarce outside of nerds and gamers. Uber most owes its popularity to X-Box Live, an online gaming interface used to connect players of the uber-hit Halo 2 and other games.  In conjunction with the most popular MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game) ever, World of Warcraft, X-Box Live took uber mainstream, though still underground. Uses of uber after Halo 2 would be in a comic store, at an electronics gaming convention, or in the X-Games (extreme sports). Television uses of uber follow:


In the TV commercial for Quizno's Prime Rib on Garlic Bread Sub actors describe prime rib as the "Uber Meat." ... [2007]

In the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer the word "Ubervamp" was coined to describe the Turok-Han that featured in the 7th season. [2002-2003]

In the TV series The X-Files, Special Agent Scully refers to "überchildren" when talking about a female scientist and a male that is bound in a wheelchair. [1993-2002]

In the TV series Andromeda, "uber" is an insulting slang term for Nietzschean. [200-2005]

In the TV series South Park's Episode 8 of Season 10 entitled, "Make Love, Not Warcraft", the word Über is used gratuitously as the boys play World of Warcraft. ("That was such über pwnage." Of Hot Pockets: "That's über cool.") [2006]

(Wikipedia.org)

Uber finally came out of the underground with the release of the 2007 blockbuster 300, a slightly fantastical movie about the battles of the 300 Spartans sent to face the Persians as aid to their mother state Athens. In the movie, the Persian king's personal entourage were called the "Uber Immortals" for their ability to fight so well that they never died.  In its wake the word uber has been flying around everywhere from a report by the Fashion Police on E! in the context "...uber fashionistas..." and on the Food Network's Unwrapped.



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