Yes, I Still Hate Blood On The Dance Floor

This is very old news, but again, people still wonder how I can hate the “band” Blood on the Dance Floor. They claim that they have good meaningful music and music videos like “Rise and Shine” show a huge issue in today’s society. I have seen that video and think the exact opposite. “Rise and Shine” is about a school shooting, but it isn’t awareness, and I will tell you why by comparing it to the music video that takes an issue and shows it gets better. Both involve bullying, one is “Rise and Shine” by crappy BOTDF, and another is “Make It Stop (September’s Children)” by one of my personal favorite bands, Rise Against.

In “Rise and Shine,” what we see is a severely bullied kid. People make fun of him. But there is also hints of the band in the video like someone writing “Blood on the Dance Floor” in their notebook in the beginning, which I guess is okay for the beginning. In this video we see him taunted in class and a teacher doing nothing. Of course Dahvie is in the class wearing his hideous makeup that makes him look like a Kiss reject. The kid is continued to be taunted in the hallways. By now Dahvie is singing in front of the class, but a lyric kind of bothers me. “beat on another kid, not on me.” I get if you are bullied, you want it to stop and are willing to let it go to someone else, but that is no solution to the problem or a solution anyone should look for. By now there are bloody handprints everywhere, and the kid is in the hallway with a gun, obviously disturbed. (What is also obvious is Dahvie’s auto tuned voice). News flashes of Fox News are then shown about school shootings. (Seriously, if you want someone to take you seriously, do a news network that isn’t truthful only 8% of the time) the bullied kid then starts shooting, we see all the kids around him dead and bleeding, not to mention the blood spatter on the camera. Then parents wondering where they were and a teacher saying no one is listening. Next, kids are seen putting guns to their own heads, one goes as far as putting it in his mouth, and the teacher writes “I will not listen to blood on the dance floor” on the board. Then the bullied kid wakes up, and puts the gun away. There is no solution shown but the kid putting the gun in his backpack. None. Then just a bunch of statistics are rattled off about bullying in America, but no actual solution is offered. The kid will probably still shoot up the school.

Rise Against has a lot of music videos that show actual problems in the world, my personal favorite being "Hero of War" and their newest "I Don’t Want To Be Here Anymore."  The one about bullying is called Make It Stop (September’s Children). It is in memory of the ten teenagers who committed suicide in September of 2010 because they were bullied for being gay.

The video starts out with showing three teenagers, two boys and a girl who are inferred to be gay based on the subject matter of the video. The teenagers are seen harassed by their peers, one’s bag is stolen, one’s lunch is spit on and one is cornered in the bathroom while two jocks hold him down and a girl kisses him. The teens later flee, one to a bridge, one to a garage, and another to her room. The three contemplate killing themselves because of the harassment they face daily. After It Gets Better videos play and lead vocalist Tim McIlrath names off five of the teens that killed themselves, they then decide against it and their future is shown, one becomes a congressman, another an artist, and another finds love and gets married. It may look like there is no solution, but the lyrics of the song talk about holding on and bring awareness to the issue. The final verse is make it stop/let this end/all these years pushed to the edge /proud I stand/of who I am/I plan to go on living. More videos from the It Gets Better project are shown, along with the project creator. This video paints a bright future for these three teens and everyone because it does get better.

In comparing these videos, we have two that show a problem, one that portrays it well, and one that shows how it gets better. I can best compare this with Starbucks and Walmart. Rise Against is Starbucks and BOTDF is Walmart. One attempt at being a good corporation (Walmart) and fails miserably while one does an awesome job (Starbucks).

Making another point, Rise Against does an amazing job at just showing issues in today’s society and have truly meaningful lyrics. They have shown how broken the government is, they have shown how broken society is, they have shown what it’s like to serve in the military (yes, “Hero of War,” and I understand it is not always like that, but we have gone to a foreign country and invaded them when we shouldn’t have just because our stupid president wanted to finish what his father started), they have shown what really goes on in the world, the problems we have such as school shootings, violence, terrorists like al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Boko Haram. Their videos have shown what goes on overseas with the video “Hero of War,” in “Ready To Fall,” we see the effects of pollution on the environment, in “Prayer for the Refugee” it brings awareness to sweatshops and young kids making things along with foreigners that are then marked “Made in USA.” The video for “Audience of One” takes a huge jab at George W. Bush and shows a video depicting a young George W. Bush playing with a miniature world and plays with objects depicting high gas prices, the war in Iraq, the funeral of a soldier, Abu Ghraib prison, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, deforeststation, house foreclosures, gay marriage, and illegal immigration (all things that happened when he was president ) and then Bush goes to bed in the White House before he smashes the miniature White House lawn the band is performing on. In the odd video for “Savior” it shows how the Republican Party does not give a fuck about endangered species. In “Help Is on The Way,” it shows how bad the response to Hurricane Katrina was and people suffering and having to escape to the roofs of their homes and wait for the helicopter. In their latest video, “I Don’t Want To be Here Anymore” it shows the violence in Chicago (the bands hometown which is apparently becoming the new Detroit), it shows statistics (but unlike BOTDF’s statistic, this is during the video and shows actual footage, and none of it is Fox News) there are 1,800 shootings per year in Chicago (which averages out to 4.9 a day), footage is shown on the drug war and that 120,000 have died in it, the evilness of Boko Haram and that 12,000 people have been killed so far by them, 30,000 elephants are killed every year and poached ivory funds terrorist networks (TAKE THAT KENDALL JONES) elephants are due to be extinct now in 11 years (so thank you Kendall for contributing the extinction of a species that is endangered, so please, go fuck yourself), there has been 1,083 assassinations by ISIS last year and now major Iraqi cities are falling back under extremist control, a video of Obama saying we are now out of Iraq is shown, but then headlines showing we are now going back to help Iraq get control of their country, showing that there is averaged of one school shootings in the Unites States every five weeks, 5,000 youths are lost to violence every year in the U.S, the militia in Iraq is now more than 50,000 strong, 51 million have displaced by conflict worldwide (half of who are children) , 2,000 children are reporting missing every day, hundred have been abducted by Boko Haram since 2009 and since it is so devastating to parents of these children, they are starting to become vigilantes so they can protect them and then a final statistic of the world has only been at peace for 8% of recorded existence. Rise Against won’t give up on trying to make this world a better place, especially with showing what is going on out there. They care and show it.

Next time someone tells me or you that Blood on the Dance Floor is trying to make a difference and help people, please do them a favor and point them in the way of Rise Against. Show them what a band that is trying to make a difference looks like and what they really do. Show them that Tim McIlrath, Joe Principe, Brandon Barnes, and Zach Blair are doing to make this world a better place, not some cliché music video BOTDF made that shows a problem with no solution where the kid is probably going to shoot up the school anyway.

“Revolution begins at learning. If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention” –Tim McIlrath