PopScreen: My Chemical Romance, "Welcome to the Black Parade"

I’ve almost come around to admiring My Chemical Romance. They know what they like to do (I still hesitate to say ‘know what they do well’), and they don’t beat around the bush.

At some point in the writing process for their current single, someone must have said, “Hey, we’re dark, yet upbeat. What’s a metaphor for death that sounds sort of upbeat? ‘The Black Parade’? I like it. Let’s go get lunch.”

The video for said single is the result of a similarly straightforward process, with the added philosophy of “why not?”—but these hypotheticals become so over the top that the video becomes entertaining through sheer effort.

Why not stick the band on a float, followed by a bunch of people in skeleton makeup, and have them march down a post-apocalyptic road? Why not put a damn blimp above it with a sign that reads “The Black Parade,” just in case there’s any confusion? Why not ramp up the drama by making it black and white except for splashes of red, and topping the whole thing off with snow? Why not give lead singer Gerard Way a really unfortunate bleach job?

There is actually a storyline of sorts in the video, in which a person with an undefined disease, attended by the kind of nurses rarely seen outside of music videos and horror posters is welcomed to the black parade. He gets a variety of fabulous prizes, such as what appears to be an extremely dour photo-op with the band, eye-socket-blackening makeup which makes him look more panda-like than dead, and a medal which presumably says, “Congratulations! You’re dead!,” although too small for the viewer to read.

In the end, however, he’s left wandering alone in the wilderness. Only the really cool dead people—or at least the ones with an affinity for drama—get to party with My Chemical Romance.

—Elisabeth J. Bloomberg