Oppenheimer Fancams / "Can You Hear the Music"

About

Oppenheimer Fancams refers to several fancam montages of film character J. Robert Oppenheimer (based on a physicist of the same name and portrayed by Cillian Murphy in the 2023 film) staring at the camera with an overwhelmed and remorseful expression. The montages, set to the song "Can You Hear the Music" by Ludwig Göransson, gained virality as the source material for video and GIF caption memes on TikTok and iFunny in late July 2023.

Origin

On July 21st, 2023, the biographical thriller film Oppenheimer, a chronicle of the life of American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, premiered in the United States.^[1] In the movie, the musical composition "Can You Hear the Music" (the main theme of the film composed by Ludwig Göransson) plays (video shown below).

On July 22nd, 2023, TikToker^[2] @pseudoism999 posted a fancam that combined several shots of Oppenheimer (portrayed by actor Cillian Murphy) staring with expressions of being overwhelmed and remorseful, among other conflicting emotions, captioning the video, "How I feel after my Physics teacher says that I have a lot of potential." The video was set to "Can You Hear the Music" by Ludwig Göransson from the film's original score and gained over 2.8 million views and 648,000 likes in four days (shown below).

Spread

In the following days, @pseudosim999's fancam achieved popularity on iFunny where it was used as a video caption format. For example, on July 24th, 2023, iFunny^[3] user Kaner made a video caption post that received over 480 smiles in two days (shown below, left). On July 25th, user DanielDumbassV3 posted^[4] a meme that received over 230 smiles in one day (shown below, right).

Meanwhile, video caption memes using @pseudosim999's fancam and other similar montages were posted on TikTok. For example, on July 23rd, 2023, TikToker^[5] @omar_roshdy posted a video caption meme that gained over 833,600 views and 193,000 likes in three days (shown below, left). On July 24th, TikToker @officerfriendly88 posted a meme that received over 684,000 views and 147,000 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References