Mosh pits outside the oval office : Mapping sign functions in a music video with a political message

• When the Eminem music video ‘Mosh’ was released on the Internet shortly before the 2004 US election it was mass downloaded, and its strong political imagery quickly made it a pop culture phenomenon. One journalist actually called it ‘the most important piece of mainstream dissent since the 60’s’. In this article a deconstruction of this video is carried out, drawing on Roman Jakobson’s semiotic theory of sign functions. The primary goal, however, is neither simply to discuss, nor to review the video ‘Mosh’ as a specific expression, nor is it to champion Jakobson’s theory as the ultimate semiotic model. The aim is rather to illustrate the potential possessed by basic semiotic analysis when it comes to bringing the symbolic workings of a ‘political’ visual text to light – and thereby critically investigating a case of construction and contestation of the social world in visual discourse.

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