Weekly Shredder 19:
"Mosh" by Eminem
by James Norton

In an election as tight as this year's race, every demographic counts. The black and Jewish votes? Heavily analyzed. The Arab vote? Same. The Cuban vote? Picked over like a basket of curly fries.

One factor, however, always seems to fall by the wayside: the youth vote. Young people tend to vote Democratic (when they're not voting for Bush by voting for Nader), but they don't tend to vote very often. In 2000, only one-third of the 24 million eligible voters aged 18 to 24 cast ballots, according to the US Census Bureau.

And so, as a demographic, they're mocked, forgotten and marginalized. "Rock the Vote," a belated tradition of trying to get young people to eat their civic spinach, has a history of falling flat. (This year, it should be noted, they've stirred up serious buzz — and trouble — by bringing the draft into their campaign.

For archives, audio, and background about the column, click here.

Now, too late to boost registration but in a real position to crank up the turnout, comes a new CGI-based video by Eminem.

How — how — how, you might ask, could a new video by Eminem have any kind of effect on something as massive as the 2004 presidential election? Particularly when computer-generated anything is involved?

If you're open-minded, watch it right now.

If you're a little more skeptical, read on. Because Eminem has identified both the problem and the cure for the low youth turnout.

The problem: Voting is for nerds. What can be duller than trudging down to the Baptist church, waiting around in line, and dealing with the elderly keepers of the ballot box?

The solution: Make voting look incredibly cool. Make it look like a unified pack of badasses changing a sorely messed-up country, instead of a lone nerd waiting in line to make an ultimately meaningless statement that's swallowed by the tide of wankers and old people that normally determine how elections come out.

In "Mosh," Eminem does exactly that. He nails the Bush administration dead to rights on three major issues: Iraq, economic injustice and the plight of minorities (particularly blacks) in America. He shows how individual voters, mobilized by their own issues, can come together to unseat a power-crazed sitting president. And he looks (virtually) cool as hell in the process.

The video for "Mosh" kicks off with a mordantly witty shot of Eminem-as-Bush, sitting in a classroom, reading an upside-down book titled "My Pax." It echoes Bush's infamous seven minutes on Sept. 11, 2001, but also sets the stage: This is a lesson, kids.

From a classroom, we see Virtual Eminem, shot from behind, facing a wall of headlines. They range from the mainstream ("Bush Declares War") to the thoughtful ("Senate Upholds Ban On Coffin Photos") to the provacative ("Sick Wounded Troops Held in Squalor") to the downright conspiratorial ("Bush Knew").

The headlines are marked up, highlighted, scribbled on, covered in graffiti — it's an incredibly effective thumbnail that sets the scene and establishes Eminem's connection to what's going on.

The lyrics, meanwhile, telegraph "Mosh"'s arc:

I ostracize my right to express when I feel it's time/ It's just all in your mind, what you interpret it as/ I say to fight you take it as I gonna whip someone's ass/ If you don't understand don't even bother to ask

Despite its thrillingly menacing imagery — just ramping up at this stage of the video — "Mosh" isn't about literally kicking ass. It's about changing the political culture and ousting an irresposible, isolated president through legal and nonviolent means.

Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog/ Till the light, at the end, of the tunnel, we gonna fight/ We gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp/ We gonna mosh through the marsh, take us right through the doors

The video gets darker and more personal at this point. It's not just Eminem contemplating headlines anymore — it's a young black man, hassled by the cops, coming home to his apartment to find his father watching the Klan and a burning cross on TV. His eyes meet his fathers' and he dons a black hooded sweatshirt that becomes the video's shorthand for active resistance. As the lyrics fall into a contagiously rhthymic cadence ("we gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp") our first pissed-off voter-to-be falls into step behind Eminem.

And should you miss his point about one becoming many, the video cuts back to a gorgeous wide shot of an open-air Eminem concert.

To the people up top, on the side and the middle/ Come together, let's all bomb and swamp just a little/ Just let it gradually build, from the front to the back/ All you can see is a sea of people, some white and some black/ Don't matter what color, all that matters is we gathered together/ To celebrate for the same cause, no matter the weather/ If it rains let it rain, yeah the wetter the better

A young, multiracial crowd of US soldiers bounces along to the chorus as a super-articulated digital Eminem throws down gestures as emphatic as anything ever seen in our waking world.

But one of the soldiers isn't bouncing to the beat; he's got something on his mind. The video quickly takes us to his homecoming, but no sooner has he greeted his wife than she produces a letter reading "Private Kelly, You have been re-assigned to Iraq."

They ain't gonna stop us, they can't, we're stronger now more then ever/ They tell us no we say yea, they tell us stop we say go/ Rebel with a rebel yell, raise hell we gonna let em know/ Stomp, push up, mush, fuck Bush, until they bring our troops home come on just...

"Fuck Bush," he and Eminem say together. Digital cartoon character or not, you know that real people have been in his situation, and it's a jolting moment. And Eminem picks up another black-hooded recruit.

Shortly thereafter, his wife comes home to see her kids watching TV — it's Bush, and the ticker reads "Tax Cuts!" Meanwhile, she's opened her mail, and it's a notice of eviction. Having nailed his third issue in about three minutes, he moves toward a long, sweeping close.

Imagine it pouring, it's raining down on us/ Mosh pits outside the Oval Office/ Someone's trying to tell us something, maybe this is God just saying/ we're responsible for this monster, this coward, that we have empowered/ This is Bin Laden, look at his head nodding/ How could we allow something like this, Without pumping our fist

In this, one of "Mosh"'s toughest verses, it's hard to tell whether the "monster" and "coward" epithets apply to Bush (the "Oval Office" line that kicks off the verse) or Bin Laden (who wraps it up). The video hints that "both" might be the correct answer — the mountainous background from an iconic shot of Bin Laden delivering a threat falls over like a piece of cardboard, revealing executives — possibly Bush and Cheney — in suits exiting a studio set.

This is irresponsible.

In a sophisticated reading, Eminem may be suggesting that the administration has just hidden behind Bin Laden as a bogeyman to justify its war, its tax policies and its suppresion of civil liberties. Or he may be reminding viewers that Bush's father helped create and arm the mujahideen fighters who became the core of Al Qaeda. Or that President Bush's belligerance and war in Iraq has helped fuel our enemies.

But in an unsophisticated reading, Al Qaeda — and Sept. 11 — were just another toy in the Bush administration's pocket. It's an unethical, marginal thing to imply... no matter how good it may feel to see the mud slung at the candidate behind "Swift Vets for Truth," the Sproul Associates vote-stealing scheme and the dirty push-polls used against John McCain in South Carolina.

Maybe we can reach Al Qaeda through my speech/ Let the President answer on high anarchy/ Strap him with AK-47, let him go/ Fight his own war, let him impress daddy that way

Paired with a cartoon of a befuddled cartoon Bush getting put into uniform and given a gun, this is devastating stuff; it's hard not to remember Bush's "service" during Vietnam, the fact that only one member of Congress has a child serving in Iraq, the fact the Jenna and Barbara are free and clear of any of the hassle facing US troops in harm's way — and the incompetence with which Bush has conducted a deadly serious conflict.

No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our soil/ No more psychological warfare to trick us to think that we ain't loyal

This might be the richest couplet in "Mosh." On one hand, the naively oversimplified "no blood for oil" platitude that was brilliantly unsuccessful in stopping the first Gulf War. On the other, 13 words that sum up the Republican penchant for using terms like "aid and comfort to the enemy" to paint any of Bush's political oppononets as disloyal, un-American, and allied with the terrorists. Rap (or poetry) at its best — memorably conveying a lot with a little.

And as we proceed, to mosh through this desert storm, in these closing statements, if they should argue, let us beg to differ, as we set aside our differences, and assemble our own army, to disarm this weapon of mass destruction that we call our president, for the present, and mosh for the future of our next generation, to speak and be heard, Mr. President, Mr. Senator

It's the last hard attack on the president, and a warning shot for Kerry, whom Eminem hasn't yet endorsed — and may be equally caustic about, come 2008.

Thus, in five minutes, Eminem makes his case. It's emotional. It's logical. It's admirable. It's reprehensible. It's low culture. It's high-concept. But however you define his mix, it's explosive.

Only on Nov. 2 will we know how big the bang actually was.

E-mail James Norton at jrnorton@flakmag.com.

— graphic by Derek Evernden (derek@ocellus.net)