Thursday, October 28, 2004

Eminem Joins the ABB Mosh Pit

By Thomas Wheeler

Read full article...

Posted 10/28 | Add a Comment

    Comments:

    You must register to comment.

    Login | Register

  1. You can watch the video at www.eminemmosh.com!  It’s pretty shocking and effective -I’ve seen past work by the Guerilla News Network guys and it lives up to or surpasses it.

    It’s been on MTV since Tuesday but I hear it was banned by BET.

    Posted by Mike from New York  on  10/29  at  01:55 AM

  2. And so...all the talent and time go into advocating The Ballot Box Ballet.  As Bruce gets up to strum Kerry’s Sturm and Drang, drumming up Demo Biz, Em loses the op to pop open Nader and/or Peltier as a viable option. All is not alliteration.

    Posted by Richard Oxman from  on  10/29  at  10:37 AM

  3. This video has the power to effect the voters. Eminem is not trying to say vote Bush out of office, but says that some of the things Bush has done in his term have been completly wrong. This is a great video, and reminded my parents of the anti-war songs of the vietnam era. Eminem has a way of saying things that will touch your heart and make you mad at the same time.

    Posted by Max from Florida  on  10/29  at  12:18 PM

  4. This wasn’t banned by BET. That was his last video, ‘Just Lose It’, which was banned by BET because it was offensive to Michael Jackson.

    Posted by Chris from  on  10/29  at  04:04 PM

  5. Of course, it has the power to affect many potential voters. Sure, it should be applauded on certain aesthetic grounds. But you are stark raving wrong in saying that the video asserts that Bush has only “done some things wrong,” and that it’s not about voting Bush out. AND...most importantly, perhaps, wrong about it not endorsing Kerry as a better choice...implicit in the whole shebang. Yeh, your parents have a point about Vietnam era stuff, and you have a “reasonable” take on Eminem, BUT...the whole family had better wake up to how weak the video is...how weak virtually the entire “Movement” is...in terms of its not confronting how equally rotten to the core both candidates are...and how unlikely voting is to change what’s offered up to us...in the future.

    Posted by Richard Oxman from  on  10/29  at  05:40 PM

  6. Regarding Art as a means for political education: it is one strategy but hardly the most substantive. This may sound very boring to hear but has anyone every heard of READING? An empirical analysis of the history of the two party duopoly clearly shows (and there are many references where one could go to learn this) that focusing on one mainstream party candidate versus the other is an exercise in substanceless entertainment. The entire ABB movement has fallen into that trap.

    I realize though (so they tell me) that in this “post modern” world we can no longer reach people through the written word. You need flashing lights, T&A, acid house music, pierces and tattoes before anyone will take you seriously. However, if this is true, there is clearly noone in the entertainment world who has a very deep political crtique going on. “Get Bush outta office”? How lame, as you younger whippersnappers would say.

    One last comment, since I do not live in the USA I don’t often see TeeVee from there. But I recently saw CNN for a few minutes. I must say these people are very deeply sick individuals. Their level of cynicism, laughing on camera at all sorts of important issues that affect people’s lives shows the level of socio pathology that now clearly infects mainstream media.

    Posted by Rhino Rick from  on  10/29  at  08:46 PM

  7. Eminem’s video clearly says that he was pissed of about going to war with Iraq. This is also stated in another one of his songs, “I’m a soldier” on his last CD. It isn’t about voting Bush out, its about going to vote. Yes it is true that there are only negative images of Bush, but the choices Bush has made in his term has brought many Americans pain. Emienem is trying to get to the 18-25 crowd, I feel. He is trying to make a connection to why young Americans should vote. I went to war with Iraq. I was there. I disagree with it, and want my 7 months of service there to feel like I did something right. I don’t have that feeling. You my friend, must be a replubican. I am a democrat voting for Kerry. In Eminem’s video he symbolizes a riot with voting. If we weren’t such a orderly nation, I feel that riots would erupt.

    Posted by Max from Florida  on  10/30  at  10:31 AM

  8. Re rioting, I recommend you read my comment #2 attached to AFTER THE VOTE here, where I quote Churchill on that subject. However, more must be said in light of your confusion. To wit, mobilizing in the manner suggested by Eminem would be suicide. The gen’l gist of solidarity in very good, BUT...the notion that we can change things primarily through electoral politics is very misleading, dangerous at present. Again, this is NOT to advocate violence following the usual paradigms...hinted at by Eminem, but, rather, to say he’s --in the video-- building to a crescendo following false models...only to culminate in creating false hopes. Your choice of Kerry is dumbfounding considering your background.  How can you possibly support his shaking his fist at Osama, threatening to up the ante in the Middle East...with what you’ve been through?

    Posted by Richard Oxman from  on  10/30  at  11:06 AM

  9. I think the song is more ambiguous than that though I have not seen the video.  The lyrics themselves do not even mention voting or being pro-war, rather it is the most viscerally affecting - and truly radical in terms of lyrical content - antiwar song since Dylan’s Masters of War.  What I mean is that it calls out the enemy and speaks of a solution “bring the troops home” instead of most simple protest songs that encourage peace signs and hippy-dippy shit.

    The fighting prole aesthetic of Eminem is very very influential to poor kids all over the States, as an admitted product of trailer trash.  As per Rick’s point about art as political education I would go back to Hegel and posit politics as artistic education, or quote Kopkind on Woodstock “this is what it will feel like after the revolution.”

    Beauty, art, is the sole purpose of revolution.  Art is inseparable from revolutionary politics, and as aesthetic quality advances, political implicaitons do as well, and vice versa.  In a misunderstood comment the composer Stockhausen called 911 the ultimate work of art.  In a sense, in the age of spectacle, he was absolutely correct.  This is not about good or bad, but about arrestability.

    Eminem and other popular artists who either directly or obligquely reference politics are living up to their responsibility.

    Posted by j cummings from  on  11/01  at  10:32 AM

  10. E does a good turn by simply contributing to a sense of solidarity among his followers.  However, your problem may lie in, as you say, not having viewed the video to date. To wit, a viewing makes it VERY clear that E has given us something that’s anything but revolutionary. It all points, ultimately, to the voting booth.  Still, a contribution.  Too bad he didn’t jump on the op to do what you think he’s done.

    Posted by Richard Oxman from  on  11/01  at  11:29 AM

  11. Perhaps the video does that...still...I think that to his fans - who are legion - the video is as trivial as any artist’s video.  Fortunately music video is not the dominant means of articulation in music anymore.  Talking Heads work notwithstanding, I think that “video” really was bad for music.  With the sort of demographic-ation of music consumers, there could no longer be artists that solely contribute to the world through art.  And at the very least, telling kids to vote (hey - they may vote Nader) and then having them see how the system does not follow up on those promises may not necc. what young M has in mind, but cannot be bad. 

    And with a song such as this - which is lyrically an antiwar song - it may up the ante in the once heavily politicized but now heavily violent and bourgeois - hip hop lyrical content - helping by the way, truly radical hip hop artists, such as (my personal favorite) Dead Prez, KRS One and The Coup.  Hegemonizing the antiwar idea in popular culture is a good thing, regardless....

    Posted by j cummings from  on  11/01  at  12:00 PM

  12. Dont get me wrong,the only music I listen to is hiphop and I used to be an Eminem fan,until I realized he was just another tool the media industry are using to widen the generation gap and make single parents even more persecuted.

    And what about ems banned video where he portrays little girls dancing around like video whores,did he use his own daughter?And how about the company he keeps,in one D12n song bizarre talks of raping his grandmother and in another about him taking his 12 year old neices virginity.Just coz he puts out one cool song,does not make him a hero.I am a true hiphop fan,not a fan of artists working for rich record company execs to the end of trying to give rap culture a bad name.

    Eminem has done more harm than practically anyone in hiphop in giving rappers and their fans a bad name.If you want to hear some real political hiphop from the heart try the beasties new album,they are nwe yorkers and have very personal reasons for being against bush.Others are Gangsta,blackalicious,Lyrics Born etc.
    Eminem is nothing more than atwelve year old girls sex symbol.He even made it to the front cover of Barbie magazine in Australia.
    What are we doing to our kids encouraging them to listen to this creten.Shame eminem,Shame.

    Posted by kjezt from Australia  on  11/09  at  05:31 AM

  13. I saw the video,and it was well done from an art standpoint.Where it fell short was the anticlimactic ending.Instead of rising up(which is the buildup of the whole video)and taking back the power of “the people”,it ends with marching en masse to vote.Which is supporting the very system that created the war to begin with.

    As an artist,I appreciate it purely from the artistic POV,but come on.Eminem is a cog in an industry solely devoted to making bucketloads of cash.How many cars does he have?Houses?How much"bling"does he own(and I have to ask if he or any other hip hop/rap artists know where those diamonds and gold actually come from and the lives sacrificed to get them from the ground)?Who is he helping with his wealth?

    It never fails to piss me off when the entertainment elite get out there and run their mouths about how messed up this country is,call themselves “activists”,and support various causes without sacrificing one damn thing in their own comfort zone to actually help make one person or place better.Show me someone from this “business"who lives a more average life and uses their income to help other people and I’ll have respect for them and hold them up as"heroic".

    Posted by Tammy from Metro Atlanta  on  11/09  at  08:40 AM

    14. Next entry: After the Vote

    Previous entry: Chomsky, Zinn, Nader & the Quadrennial Farce

    [ads]

    Support Press Action