Music Video Hell #3: Eminem

Now that MTV has about as much to do with music as KFC has to do with Kentucky, the Internet has become our primary source for music videos. With the Internet, though, there is no filter. It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Well here, ladies and gentlemen, is the chaff. It’s your penance for a lifetime of sins: Music Video Hell.

Full disclosure time: I’ve never really been an Eminem fan. I wasn’t much of a hip-hop fan in general when he became popular back in the late ‘90s, and by the time a diet rich in The Roots and The Wu-Tang Clan helped me overcome my antipathy toward the genre he just wasn’t all that fun anymore. You can only rap about killing your wife so many times before it loses its charm.

I liked “Stan,” though. It was a pretty honest and introspective look at the horror of realizing the negative impact one’s work can have on the mentally unstable if, for instance, one raps about killing his wife. The sample from Dido worked well, too. Whatever happened to Dido? Anyway, after “Stan,” Eminem seemed to have an increasingly difficult time deciding if he was a joke-a-minute laugh machine or a Serious Artist. By the time Encore was released, I was no longer the only white guy in the suburbs who just wasn’t that into him.

Eminem took a few years off after Encore, and then last year he wowed no one by trying to make a comeback with Relapse. If you can name a single song off that album, you officially qualify for minority status. Not content to underwhelm us with just one album, though, he has followed up a year later with Recovery, which brings us to the subject of this column: “Not Afraid.”

“Not Afraid” is Eminem in Serious Artist mode. The video is dark and somber and looks like it was probably recycled from an unused concept for a Linkin Park video. It starts with a brunette-haired Marshall Mathers standing on the edge of a building and looking like he might jump off. Lyrically, he’s promising to get us out of the dark place we’re in. Because, you know, he’s been there. It doesn’t take much of that for me to start really hoping that he’s going to take the plunge.

Eminem is not afraid to take a stand and urges everyone to take his hand. He’s presenting himself as some sort of a mopey, agitated savior. I’m sure there are parallels between the Sermon on the Mount and lyrics like “Forget the Earth; he’s got the urge to pull his dick from the dirt and fuck the whole universe.” I didn’t pay attention in Sunday school, though, so I can’t be entirely sure.

After some sermonizing from what looks like an abandoned Fight Club set and some walking around on the street looking troubled, Eminem ends up in a house of mirrors. Apparently no one told him there was going to be a carnival in downtown Detroit on the day they were filming his video. He breaks through the mirrors in what I can only assume is some sort of metaphor, and then ends up at the edge of a gaping urban chasm. Once again he is teetering on the brink, and once more it would be really cool if he would just jump and end the torture that is this video. This time, though, he actually does it. This is the closest a music video has come to a wish fulfillment dream for me.

But wait! Something’s not right here! Rather than plummet to his demise, Eminem gains the power of flight. Like a majestic eagle without the majesty, he soars through the air. Eventually he ends up on the same building ledge where the video started, thus mocking me and my dream of seeing him go splat.

What is Slim Shady going to do with his newfound power of flight? I can only imagine that he intends to fly really fast around the planet, reversing its rotation and sending us all back to a time when he was actually considered relevant. It’s a clever idea, but his superpowers have no effect on me. As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, there was never actually a time when I had anything more than a passing interest in him. Sorry, Slim. Better luck next time.

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About the Author

Jeremy Clymer lives in Michigan with his wife and kid. He shoots his writings out into the ethers of the Internet in the hopes that someone will pick up on his transmissions and shower him with money and/or praise.

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