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Originally Posted by ARTelevision
I understand your objection.
This is an aesthetic issue for me.
It is also a cultural one.
You may know I see what is called "popular culture" as a cesspool that we all inhabit. I have nothing good to say about the Beatles as propagandists, either.
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I suppose you gave Kieth Haring an earful too when he attempted to address the AIDS problem through his art? Seriously, what are your criteria for deciding something is propaganda? I've got news for you, if the Beatles and Eminem are to be dismissed as propagandists than so can pretty much any artist.
quoth the OED:
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Propaganda:
1. (More fully, Congregation or College of the Propaganda.) A committee of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church having the care and oversight of foreign missions, founded in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV.
2. Any association, systematic scheme, or concerted movement for the propagation of a particular doctrine or practice.
3. The systematic propagation of information or ideas by an interested party, esp. in a tendentious way in order to encourage or instil a particular attitude or response. Also, the ideas, doctrines, etc., disseminated thus; the vehicle of such propagation.
4. attrib. and Comb., as (sense 3) propaganda campaign, chief, film, fund, leaflet, meeting, play, poster, raid, technique, war, warfare, work; propaganda machine, an organization responsible for the dissemination of propaganda.
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Your concepts of aesthetics and propaganda are reactionary and arbitrary and therefore completely irrelevant, sorry bub.
I've had a love-hate relationship with Eminem from the beginning. I was turned off by his homophobia and violence but attracted to his poetry. It wasn't until I heard his song
Stan that I felt he was doing something unique. I own all his albums, not just mp3, and I'll probably end up getting this one too now that I can see there's more depth than the first single displayed.
What's so startling about the new video is that it preaches something other than complete apathy or narcissism (e.g. "life as a rockstar is so tough, poor me!"). I personally could do without the messianic complex:
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...I give sight to the blind, my insight through the mind...
...Come along follow me as I lead through the darkness
As I provide just enough spark that we need to proceed
Carry on, give me hope, give me strength
Come with me and I won't steer you wrong
Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog
To the light at the end of the tunnel...
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But its true, I approve of his message so I'm much more lenient on the techniques he uses to disseminate that message. If he were preaching "follow me, were gonna kill all the fags" or something I would reject it. Instead we see Eminem deliver a fairly cogent response to current events and deliver that response in a powerful artistic statment. It's powerful because it's true, young people are being sent to fight in a war they don't understand (by a president who doesn't understand the situation either) against people they actually have quite a bit in common with. I know, at least anecdotally, that Iraqis love Eminem.