Eminem
Mosh
A wall of news clippings in the first scene of Mosh
"Mosh" is a song and video clip by the controversial rapper
Eminem and
Guerrilla News Network, released on October 26, 2004, just prior to the 2004
presidential election. The video is available for free on the internet,
and sends a very strong message to its audience to vote. The song was an excerpt
from his album,
Encore, not yet released at the time the video was made available to the
public. One of the possibly featured, uncredited people in the video is rapper Lloyd
Banks.
Goals
Eminem casts his vote in Mosh
According to the
Internet Archive (one of the hosts for this video): "On the eve of one of
the most spirited elections in recent times, its time to try and turn out the
vote. With more than 55 million voters between the ages of 18 and 35, this
demographic group accounts for 36% of the total eligible voters in the U.S. And
as witnessed in 2000 it all comes down to who shows up to vote on election day."
"The goal of this production was to make a video that inspired young people
to vote because they too often disregard it as a powerless exercise. To show
them that political decisions do impact their daily lives and that voting is the
most powerful act we all have to voice our opinion and effect change. And
finally, to educate and reiterate the point that whether or not people want to
accept it, there are forces in play that attempt to suppress the youth and
minority vote."
The goal might not have been reached. While more young people showed up to
vote in the 2004 election than in 2000, their percentage of the overall vote
remained the same (17%) due to an increase in all voting ages. Eminem later told
an Irish paper that he wished he had released the video earlier because he felt
that perhaps it would have inspired more young people to vote. However, polls
have consistently showed that entertainers rarely have an effect on the public's
voting habits.
Storyline
The song and video are heavily anti-Bush, and very critical of his
presidency. The video is highly stylized, containing altered video, cartoon
techniques, and is shot in a dark tone.
The opening scene features the sound of children reciting the American
Pledge of Allegiance, as a jet plane flies over their school. Offscreen an
impact is heard, as the children sit in their classroom. At the head of the
class, Eminem
is seen apparently reading from an upside-down book that says
My Pet
on the cover as he shouts "It feels so good to be back!"
As the driving beat of the music builds, an animated character dressed in a
hooded sweatshirt, representing the artist Eminem, leads a large gathering of
hooded people to the White House. The crowd appears highly discontent with
George W. Bush's leadership. At first, the police attempt to block the crowd
from entering, but they break through. Once inside we see that they are merely
there to vote.
Near the end of the video, Eminem faces the 'camera' and raps the line "In
these closing statements -- 'It takes an army' -- 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
march to the future of our next generation, to speak, and be heard: Mister
President, Mister Senator!"
The video closes with a small child's voice asking the question: "You guys
hear us?" , then fades to black, and the message: VOTE TUESDAY NOVEMBER 2
appears on the screen.
Credits
Mosh was produced, directed and edited by
Ian Inaba, of GNN TV. The Art Director was Anson Vogt, of phong.com. Character
Animation was done by Hank Hoisington of blackmustache.com. Motion Graphics were
by Steve Ogden of steveo.tv. Craig Patches did illustration and animation for
the video. The Eminem character was animated by Kevin Elam, after effects were
by Mark Nicola -- both of kevinelam.com. The Green screen producer and cameraman
was John Quigly. Illustration design was by Thomas Brohdal, with illustration
support by Nicholas Sanchez. Mosh was a Guerrilla News Network production.
The video was updated after the elections (possibly to allow
MTV to keep this video on heavy rotation) with the mob storming the Capitol
during Bush's State of the Union Address and Vice-President Cheney
suffering a heart attack.
Free download
Scenes from Mosh
The demand for this video within hours of its release in October of 2004 was
so great that it was served from multiple locations by http, as well as ftp
servers and bittorrent. According to archive.org:
-
- "...GNN.tv produced a get-out-the-vote Eminem video that they
uploaded to the Archive. While we have a gigabit connection to the
Internet, even that is being pounded by this movie. We are serving more
around 2 videos each second at this point (that is about 500Mbits/sec
between the US and the EU archives)." ... "...we are getting 10's of
thousands of downloads just for that file...".
External links
References
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