Since someone already asked about the milkshake - what on earth is up with shaking it like a Polaroid picture? The only thing that comes to mind is that awkward flapflapflap of a cheap photo developing in air, but that’s hardly a partyin’, festive, or erotic image.
I give the metaphor award to Mr. Anthony Ray, for “Got it goin’ like a turbo 'Vette.” An engine is, if running properly, balanced and synchronized in its vibration, the way buttocks should be…
Because, when one takes a Polaroid, if one wants to develop it faster, one shakes it in a rapid, rhythmic fashion, the way booties should be shaken.
I just never found that whiffly whop flippywhop dropit oops pickitup motion erotic.
But it rolls off the tongue so nicely.
Though if the booty is approaching the speed of a well-shaken Polaroid, that’d be a sight to see in itself. High velocity butts are a new, untapped field in the realm of booty-shaking.
You can shake a Polaroid with style. I know some people pick up the developing prints by the corner like it’s a dead rat. That’s about as erotic as dryer lint. You gotta wave it like you’re fanning yourself with it, with a twist of the wrist.
It also helps if you’re hot.
What, he’s not saying “Shake it like a pony-fried preacher”?
Or “Shake it like a bona fide pizza”?
Runs off and takes shower
I started a GQ thread on that topic a while back, inspired by “Hey Ya!”, and the consensus was that shaking modern Polaroid film does nothing to make it develop faster. Decades ago, it did help–because the film was wet on the outside after you peeled off the cover, and shaking dried it off–but today, you just look like a fool if you shake a Polaroid picture.
Ah, so “shake it like a Polaroid picture” refers to something that is energy-draining and pointless. It does sound like my sex life.
Another point: Before the era of ubitquitous digital cameras, much amateur adult material was produced using Polaroid cameras. Most folks don’t have their own darkroom, and if you take it to the one-hour photo, you can be sure that the developer is going to keep (and possibly distribute) copies. Which leaves polaroid. Not that there’s a direct relationship with shaking, but it’s another association which is there.
Yea. But pressing the button over and over doesn’t make the elevator come faster and we do it anyway, ya know?
I bought a Polaroid 600 just this past Saturday. The instruction manual that came with it looked sorta like something out of “Goofus and Gallant.” “Goofus takes pictures with the sun behind his subjects. Gallant takes pictures with the sun at slightly in front of the subjects.” Only instead of Goofus and Gallant, it had big check marks by the drawings showing you what you’re supposed to do, and big “X” marks by the things you’re not. One of them “Goofus” (i.e., “X”) drawings was a hand shaking the photo.
I was going to start a thread a while back on something like this (thankfully for you guys I didn’t ), about songs which contain obsolete (or soon to be obsolete) references in them - this song started it off in my mind, since who really shakes Polaroid pictures nowadays? Then I thought of the 1980s songs “Is It Love” by Mr Mister (“The broken record, goes round and round” - hmm, guess Dead or Alive’s “Spin Me Right Round” fits that too - “right round, like a record baby”) and then Tommy Tutone’s Jenny (867-5309) (“for the price of a dime…”)
and then I got tired and forgot about it…
I just want to say that I was very relieved when I actually read the OP. From looking at the thread title, I was thinking this was just another thread designed to make me feel old. As in: “What is this ‘polaroid’ you speak of? I don’t have to shake my camera-phone to get the picture to show up.”
I’m not even that old (32), but I can still remember my Polaroid One-Step, as well as 45’s, 8-track tapes, analog watches, the Mosaic web browser, USENET, acoustic modems, the original HBO promo theme, when HBO wasn’t The Sopranos channel but just meant “Hey, Beastmaster’s On!”, The Comedy Channel, Channel 17 before it became TBS The Superstation, and having to go without something even if I knew it were available because online shopping hadn’t been invented yet.
SirRay: one of the examples of what you’re talking about that’s trotted out all the time is from one of those cyberpunk novels (Snow Crash, maybe?). The author says “The sky was the color of a television turned to a dead channel.” At the time of its writing, that meant the gray-white color of static, but now it refers to a bright, artificial blue color.
And speaking of “Hey Ya!”, here’s something thoroughly pointless: a friend of mine bought an EP of the song which included an instrumental version. Hearing the instrumental version, I described it as, “You know the Main Street Electrical Parade at Disneyland? This is like what the same parade at the competing black amusement park would sound like.” Nobody I’ve talked to understood the reference. Was anybody here in marching band in a predominantly white high school and understands at least partly what I’m talking about?
Entertainment Weekly talked with someone from Polaroid who shared their thoughts on the song. Although they do get the idea, Polaroid photos should not be shaken. It does not decrease the development time, and it may cut off some of the picture.
It’s William Gibson’s Neuromancer that starts with the line, “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” Everybody misquotes it and I thought it was so pretentious it made a very bad intro for the novel.
But I digress.
The video for “Hey Ya” demonstrates the correct way to shake a Polaroid pciture. You don’t flop it around like someone just stung by a bee, you flip it with a “come hither and see what else I can shake” look on your face. It would work on me.
In the olden days of Polaroid, the pictures came in two pieces. You peeled off the negative and threw it away. The positive piece was damp with chemicals and required a couple of minutes of drying time. I think this is where the shaking came into effect. I can also remember my dad using some kind of applicator on the old black and white Polaroids.
I think there are professional Polaroid films that come in two pieces, large format film for example, which are peeled apart, but the negatives of these can be saved for darkroom use. I wouldn’t imagine that the pros shake their Polaroids though.
Nowadays, consumer Polaroids are all one piece, the chemicals activated after the picture is squeezed as it passes through rollers in the camera. I could see why shaking these types might cause problems as they could cause uneven distribution of the chemicals. I have seen some techniques where the photographer will use a stylus on a developing picture to create artistic effects by redistributing the chemicals between the print’s layers.
Sure, I and everybody I know is pretty sure that shaking it dosen’t make it happen any faster. But neither does pushing that elevator button, or (I suspect) fooling with the thermostat at work. I think it isn’t hooked up to anything. 
It’s an almost instinctual “get -on- with it” motion. I fully believe that if spacemen came from Alpha Centauri and landed and I took a Polaroid picture of them, after they fried me with their rayguns they’d stand there shaking it watching it turn yellow… yellow… yellow… woah, getting color there, keep shaking it…
It’s just what you do. That’s why it’s funny in the song.
From what I remember, shaking the picture did absolutely nothing to speed up development. Once the negative was peeled off, you had to apply a kind of sealant with the applicator, or the image would degrade. I think it gradually got kind of sepia-toned without the sealant. That’s when you had to shake the photo, to dry the alcohol-based sealant. Smelled real bad, too.
Indeed, the way those girls in the video shake their Polaroid pictures reduced me to a pile of quivering, bubbling goo.