Music videos are terrible. This is a well-known fact to anyone with a brain in his head and an ounce of taste in his body. Despite the lofty aspirations of a few directors working in the video industry today, the medium started off as a simple promotional tool designed to plug records, and for the most part, so it remains.
One of the unfortunate realities of this is that the bands that seem to benefit most from them are usually a) good-looking and b) not very talented musically. Can you say Duran Duran? Videos have been the chosen medium for some of the greater atrocities of the recent past, including the "We Are The World" debacle, and later on, "Hit Me Baby (One More Time)."
The odds of a video causing people genuinely to reexamine their political views seem infinitesimally small. With their new video, however, it looks like Rage Against the Machine might be ready to help the music video industry along the winding road to respectability.
After the success of the video for the song "Sleep Now In The Fire," the rock band has again teamed up with controversial documentary director Michael Moore to produce the video for "Testify," Rage's latest single from the album "The Battle Of Los Angeles." According to the campaign Website for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader '55, the video was conceived by Moore and the band "to express their disgust at what the aristocratic two-party Democratic and Republican political system has put forth for this year's presidential candidates."
At www.votenader.org, there is a link to the MTV Website where you can view the video, or vote for it on Total Request Live. In case you didn't know, TRL is the one show where the audience is guaranteed on any given day to be made up of teen and pre-teen girls (on the likes and dislikes of whom all decisions about popular entertainment rest).
Around the end of August, the Nader campaign sent out e-mails to supporters asking them to vote for the video. According to Rage's official Website, www.ratm.com, the video recently just fell short of making it into the top 10, and a few more votes could push it over the edge.
I was not a Nader supporter before I saw this video. I wasn't particularly interested in any of the candidates since Bill Bradley '65 was about as close to a candidate as I felt I could have supported. I have seen the video three times now, however, and I wouldn't hesitate to say that it is hands down the best video I have ever seen.
Politically meaningful as well as technically flawless, the satirical images in "Testify" actually enhance the lyrics' message, making the song even more powerful than it was to begin with.
It is, of course, very left wing, since Rage's politics have always leaned toward the radical. I have always been a little bothered by Rage Against the Machine for a number of reasons, not the least of which has been the band's audience. We all know the frat-boy Rage fan who loves to head-bang his way through "Guerrilla Radio" with his Gap shorts on. And frankly, getting a bunch of sexually frustrated 15-year-old boys to chant along with the band while the singer shouts "F*** you, I won't do what you tell me," isn't much of a breakthrough.
But on the other hand, Rage has done a lot to further the causes the band believes in by lending both its name and its finances. Bottom line, I will support any group that can continue to speak its mind, despite the pressure that Sony — Rage's record label — undoubtedly would have put on the band to conform.
When Rage's debut album came out, it didn't sell anywhere near the numbers of "Battle Of L.A.," and you can rest assured that Sony was leaning on the band pretty hard to temper its liberal politics.
Rage didn't let it affect the band, and now despite the fact that Rage is one of the biggest bands in the world, it continues to break all the music industry's rules by standing up and continuing to say what the band believes.
So whether you believe in what Rage Against the Machine, Michael Moore, Ralph Nader '55, George W. Bush or Al Gore have to say, you owe it to the country that you will inhabit for the next four years to check out this video on the Rage Website and find out what it has to say.
If nothing else, one viewing of "Testify" makes it clear that Rage is refusing to participate in the two-party system anymore, with its soft money donations, blatant pandering to religious groups and unadventurous platforms. And after seeing this video, so am I. David Morris is from Oakville, Ontario. He can be reached at dmorris@princeton.edu.
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