Eminem's 'Darkness' music video draws fire for depicting Las Vegas shooting

Eminem released his highly anticipated album, Music to be Murdered By, on Friday, along with a dark music video for the single Darkness. The chilling music video was seemingly a call to expand gun control. It recreated the Las Vegas shooting that took place in 2017 where Stephen Craig Paddock had committed one of the deadliest mass shooting when he opened fire on a crowd of approximately 22,000 concertgoers attending the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival on the Las Vegas Strip from his 32nd-floor hotel room. The incident took away 58 lives (excluding Paddock) and nearly 489 were left wounded. 

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Eminem, who has also penned the lyrics from the perspective of the shooter, depicts a shooting at a concert in a similar style which closes with actual audiotapes, video footage, and news coverage of other recent mass shooting incidents around the world.

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Watch the triggering music video of Darkness:

A link to the Darkness music video on Eminem’s official website also encourages fans to contact gun violence prevention organizations such as Sandy Hook Promise, Giffords Law Center and Everytown for Gun Safety.

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Eminem faces backlash from survivors over Darkness music video

While long-time fans of the Detroit rapper have praised him for taking up such a bold political subject and delivering a strong statement in his unexpected comeback, for Melissa Williams, a 40-year-old survivor of the actual shooting in Las Vegas, the music video was nothing short of “horrific” and “triggering.” In an interview with the Insider, Williams, who runs a non-profit organisation to support fellow Las Vegas survivors, stated that most of the survivors were outraged and triggered by the graphic details that were portrayed from the actual incident, including real, live footage from the festival grounds.

The Las Vegas shooting that claimed many lives in 2017 is considered the worst mass shooting in the history of modern America. And while the incident took place over two years ago, many of the survivors still grapple with the physical and mental toll of the incident.

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