Media Coursework ‘Parody aims to mock in a critical way’- Fredric Jameson. How and why are politicians parodied in Eminem’s ‘Mosh’ and A Perfect Circle’s ‘Counting Bodies Like Sheep To The Rhythm Of The War Drums’? The genre of parody is a work that imitates another work in order to “ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some affectionate fun at the work itself.” However, Fredric Jameson says that ‘parody aims to mock in a critical way’, which means that the text is showing the negatives of the thing it parodies, maybe to prove a point or make a difference to people’s opinions. One medium that involves parody is that of the music video, which sometimes parodies political figures in our society. But do these music videos follow the conventions of parody, and if so, how and why do they satirise these politicians? A Perfect Circle’s video for ‘Counting Bodies Like Sheep To The Rhythm Of The War Drums’ (directed by the band’s frontman Maynard James Keenan in September 2004) is shown to ridicule U.S president George W. Bush and is also an attack on the Middle Eastern attacks and the US foreign policy of 2004 (the same year the video was released). The entirety of the text is animate, although not in a typical CGI style of animation but more like a children’s cartoon style, which means that the director of the video would have a distinctly larger range of ideas to use within the text, with no limitations as to what he/she could come up with. The beginning of this text shows a peace sign slowly shattering away from the screen, a sign that there is no peace left in American society, which is then followed by a mid-shot of an oil pump churning blood onto the screen until the entire screen is covered up by red, which appears to be a comment on the money-hungry attitudes of the American government and people, and a link to the fact that most of America’s wealth comes from oil production. It is then followed by a shot of what appears to be televisions with open mouths that are ‘screaming’ at the screen, as if to grab the attention of the viewer just like television does in real society with it’s programming. We see a mid-shot of a boy swinging from a tree outside when we see a horse being ridden by the animated George W. Bush moving on screen. The Bush depiction is the only human character in the text which has any physical facial features, which in my mind is a clear indication that the director intends the viewer to focus mostly on this character and his actions. He shoots a gun into the air, perhaps a link to America’s policy of ‘the right to bear arms’ and how that has spiralled out of control, and a television is then excreted from the horse’s behind, which the boy immediately sits in front of after coming down from the tree. Once he starts watching the television the image of planes dropping bombs onto the ground can be seen in the background, and the boy’s head turns into that of a sheep. This scene represents the idea that the American public have been turned into followers, or ‘sheep’, of Bush through television, and that whilst we are distracted by television America’s government has sent it’s army to destroy the society around them. Next we see a colourful strobed-lighting effect depicting a close-up of a television, much like the television seen earlier in the text, taking the brain from a young-looking character, showing the idea that television is ‘literally’ taking over our minds. Then, the action turns to a high-angled corner-of-the-room shot of a classroom with two students reading, when the Bush character bursts through the door, taking the role of a substitute teacher, holding and placing down a television on the desk. He then presses a red button on a small device (red showing a colour connection with danger, and is a colour commonly used throughout the text) that shoots a laser beam across the classroom, setting fire to books on its way to turning on the television, and as before the children watching the screen begin turning to sheep, once again showing the conformity of the American public. We see more shots of Bush appearing to children in different settings after that, such as in a living room and from an ice-cream truck, and in both of these shots he offers the children televisions on cones instead of ice-creams, and as the children lick their ‘ice-creams’ they turn into sheep. Next, we see two contrasting shots of Bush which both see him ‘travelling’ towards the right-hand side of the screen. The first is of Bush riding a chariot which is being pulled by sheep, dressed as a Roman Emporer, giving off the representation of power in two different generations of time, then and now. I believe this comparison between a Roman Emperor and the U.S. President was made by the director to indicate the force in which the president goes about his business, much like an emperor, and also perhaps making a link between an emperor making gladiators fight to the death in the colliseums and the president sending off American civilians to fight in the war in Iraq. In the background of this ‘tracking shot’ we see the same oilpumps from the start of the text. It then cuts immediately to Bush doing the exact same movements from the previous shot, and again ‘travelling’ from left to right, but this time we see him in a motor boat across a sea of blood, that colour of red signifying danger again, with a skyline of tall buildings in the background, perhaps showing how these major corporations who occupy these buildings are destroying civilisation as we know it. These two shots repeat again as if to emphasise it’s point clearer. After this, we see a mid-shot of Bush in his chariot slowly riding through a street, and then grabs a microphone, at which point the chariot turns into a military tank, possibly a reference to the US Army and how he is leading them on verbally. The pavement the tank is driving on is made up of televisions falling from the sky and forming themselves into the floor. The tank is followed by a large gathering of sheep, going back to earlier references of Bush followers acting ‘like sheep’, and when people come out of the buildings to see what is going on they themselves turn into sheep. As we see the herd and the tank travel across the road, we see a sheep seemingly snapping out of the trance he is in and trying to escape by climbing up the walls. The sheep is then grabbed by a giant hand sporting the Republican Party elephant logo on it, and the hand flings the sheep into a meat cutter, which turns it into a woolen coat. This may be a reference to anyone standing out of line being ‘dealt with’, almost as if the Republicans were working like the Nazi Party. As the herd continues to walk on we see in the background of a shot the White House burning down, as if Bush doesn’t need it anymore. After this, we see two more sheep snapping out of the trance and attempting to kick the televisions on the walls down, a fight back against the evil that turned them the way they are. From the sky, we see two sticks hurtling towards the ground, both with flags labeled ‘traitors’ tied to them, that impale the two sheep, another Nazi Party-esque action. The Bush character then leads the remaining sheep into a fiery inferno off the edge of a cliff, as if to say that following Bush will only lead to a quicker death. For the last minute of the video we see a close-up of Bush’s face with his eyes in hypnotising spirals as if to hypnotise the viewer the same way he brain-washed the sheep in the video. His mouth also appears to be moving as if he is talking, but no words are heard, only the sound of marching feet can be heard at that point. 'Counting Bodies' is clearly mocking and degrading the President through this animated form, a technique also used by Detroit rapper Eminem in his October 2004 video for 'Mosh' (directed by Ian Inaba). A citation reads- "The goal of this production [‘Mosh’] 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." . This idea of getting the younger generation to vote didn’t work as planned, as the video was released too near to the presidential election, therefore not giving them enough time to rally as many youngsters as they wanted to. References to Bush's blunders are made throughout the video, the vital one being at the start of the video where children are heard reciting the Pledge Of Allegiance whilst a plane soars overhead and then can be heard crashing off screen, followed by an animated Eminem in the role of Bush reading a children's book the wrong way up. This is a reference to the 9/11 attacks where George W. Bush was reading with a school class in Florida when the attacks happened, and then preceded to read on instead of leaving the classroom and heading back to the White House. To emphasise Eminem’s message at to what he was looking for in public voting, and the ways that the Republicans were trying to stop any Democratic voters from voting, we see shots of a live-action Eminem leading an animated crowd, who are all wearing black hoodies like Eminem's (perhaps a symbol of today's youth culture and hoody wearers), to the White House. The crowd are all protesters against Bush's regime, as noted by earlier scenes of a couple of the marchers being 'screwed over' by Bush's decision making, e.g. a soldier who has just returned from Iraq and about to be reunited with his family getting orders to return there. The song itself was not released as a single, but the video was released for free onto the Internet, a modern and effective way of connecting with the younger audience the video was aiming for. So rather than the music video being used as a marketing tool to promote a single (which is the aim of almost every music video made), this music video was a personal message from the artist himself reflecting his views and hoping that people would agree and act upon them. However, since this music video at the time was publicly controversial, it gained much more publicity on music video channels and the Internet, thus boosting Eminem’s popularity and album & tour sales. Both of these contemporary texts are 'aiming to mock in a critical way' towards Bush, but do they follow Dan Harries' 'Four Conventions Of Parody'- Recognition (where the audience sees a reference to something else and sees how it has been altered), Parodic Exaggeration (where something from the generic convention is greatly exaggerated), Inversion (where a usual scenario is 'turned upside down') and Parodic Misdirection (where the viewer is thrown off course from the generic convention)? Although both 'Counting Bodies' and 'Mosh' are highly exaggerated in their ways of negatively portraying the United States President, we don't see any recognition from any other animated text, in fact the only real Recognition we see is in Bush himself. Inversion isn't seen in either of the texts either, but we do see a little bit of Misdirection in the 'Counting Bodies' video where we see the horse that excretes the television. The exaggeration of these two texts are made this way due to the fact that these are animations, meaning that the director has a much more open range to put across stronger and more impactful media. The reason that artists make these videos to ridicule certain politicians, in these cases George W. Bush, is not just to show the world their own views, but to bring out its target audience to make a difference, go with the video makers and vote for the candidate that isn't being ridiculed, for example John Kerry in the 2004 elections. These music video directors, some who are the actual musicians themselves, believe that they are such important celebrity figures that they would draw in the aspiring and passive audience (the latter being a Hall theory from 1981) to believe in the same political beliefs that they had. Because of the apathetical youth in America in terms of voting, hence only a 17% turnout in the 2000 and 2004 general elections for youth voters, musicians before have tried to have a big impact on politics, most notably through big live events such as Rock The Vote, which increased youth participation in electoral voting for the first time in 20 years (statistically election votes have been declining each year ever since), Live 8, a follow-up to Live Aid which was put on to pressure the world's leaders to drop the debt of third world countries, and the less successful 'Vote Or Die' campaign, part of the Citizen Change group, set up by P. Diddy to encourage more of America's youth to get out and vote, but was seen as unnecessarily violent and overly useless. These are all prime examples of today’s celebrity status and culture, and how we as an audience aspire more to these idols of ours and look more to them to solve our world problems rather than our politicians who are actually in charge of it all. Of course, 'Counting Bodies' and 'Mosh' are not the first music videos to ridicule politicians in such a way. A historical example of the music video medium being used to parody politicians can be found in Genesis’ video for their 1986 single ‘Land Of Confusion’. The video uses puppets from the popular British television show ‘Spitting Image’- a show that prides itself on parodying famous political figures from the time, such as then-US President Ronald Regan and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher- and focuses on Regan’s inept ability as President both physically and mentally. Other than political parody being used, various references from other media can be seen parodied in this video, for example when a gorilla throws a bone up into the air it resembles a familiar scene from Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. However, this video was simply a harmless jab at the President and didn’t show any real signs of asking the viewer to vote against Regan in any upcoming elections. A more recent but still historical text that focuses more on British politics can be found in George Michael’s 2002 video for ‘Shoot The Dog’, an anti-Tony Blair song with an equally anti-Blair video. Once again the music video is animated, this time using the animators from another popular animated show, 2DTV, who, like Spitting Image, heavily focus on parodying high political figures, but with much more modern politicians such as Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Gordon Brown, John Prescott etc. Also like Genesis, this video was simply used as a cheap pop against a politician that the artist, in the case George Michael, didn’t particularly think was any good at his job. The video sparked controversy and was vastly unpopular not only within the government, but also with the general public, making it a flop. In ‘Shoot The Dog’, the representation of George W. Bush is different from the representations of him in ‘Counting Bodies’ and ‘Mosh’, because he is seen as an evil figure in the two contemporary texts, but in ‘Shoot The Dog’ is seen as very child-like, as noted through his childish laughter and at one point talking to a sock puppet, a regular feature on the 2DTV programme. All four of these texts use animation to put their point across. One reason for this may be that they are cheaper to make, so therefore they can get their personal message across faster to their audience. Another reason may be that cartoons and animations can be seen as being less offensive than live-action videos. Cartoons are mostly related to children, so therefore seeing these animations may make an audience laugh rather than get offended in any way. Both ‘Land Of Confusion’ and ‘Shoot The Dog’ can be seen as parodies, unlike ‘Counting Bodies’ and ‘Mosh’. The recognition in ‘Land Of Confusion’ comes not only from the political references but also from the ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ reference. The ‘Shoot The Dog’ recognition is seen at one point where 3 George Michael characters are seen on the screen, and one is dressed as an old Wham!-style version of himself, something fans of Michael would recognise immediately. Both videos have greatly exaggerated actions made by the politician(s) they are attacking, for example in ‘Land Of Confusion’ when Ronald Regan’s puppet is dreaming we see him sweating profusely as if to cause a river effect (at one point you can see a rubber duck floating by). In ‘Shoot The Dog’ we see misdirection when George W. Bush throws a ball, and instead of seeing the dog on screen chasing after it, we see Tony Blair chasing after it as if he is a dog himself (a reference to Bush having Blair ‘obey’ him and have him agreeing with his policies). And inversion is seen in the ‘Land Of Confusion’ video, where we see Regan and his wife Nancy go to bed, only to find out that they’re off to bed at 4:30 in the afternoon! Although A Perfect Circle’s ‘Counting Bodies Like Sheep To The Rhythm Of The War Drums’ and Eminem’s ‘Mosh’ do aim to mock President Bush in a critical way, with absolutely no positive views of him being reflected and only negatives being shown, the videos cannot really be classified as proper parodies, due to their lack of Parodic inversion and recognition of other popular media texts, and whilst misdirection and exaggeration can be seen within the texts, neither video can be truly classed as a parody, but simply as shots at the President of the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosh_%28song%29
Copyright © 2008 Mark Es Hanson |