I got sort of hypnotized while watching MTV2 earlier today, and had some weird revelations. One of them was about Eminem. For some reason, they CONSTANTLY play him on MTV2 and it’s totally fucking annoying. Anyway, yeah, my realization was that Eminem has some kind of weird message that he’s conveying that I never tapped into before about identity. And it goes on all different kinds of levels.
First of all, in every one of his videos (that I can remember or have seen lately) he spend almost the whole video dressing up like other people, usually celebrities. Second, in most of those videos, he also has one or a whole bunch of people who dress up like him. And he has several songs where the lyrics are also about people looking like him also. It’s really weird. I can’t quite put my finger on what he’s after, but I’m convinced it’s very specific and intentional.
The other level, of course, is that he’s a white guy trying to make it in a genre ruled and pioneered by black guys. So, he almost has to “dress up” and modify his identity somehow in order to do that and to be acceptable in whatever way. I don’t know. It’s just a start to unravelling what he’s doing. I never really liked his music much, but he’s always struck me as a really intelligent guy, and I feel like I need to think about it some more.
On another note, I was just looking up lyrics to one of his songs, and there was a Google Ad which said something like “Eminem, Gay?” And I clicked on it and it’s like some weird quiz that you say what you think and then try to win money. Some kind of scam. Anyway, I have been actually wondering that myself lately, because of this new song of his where he says something like, “Shake that ass, boy - Oops I mean girl”. It seems like an odd direction for him to go in, and I wonder if he is going to come out and make some kind of bold pronouncement about being gay. Not that I care one way or another, but it would really fit into all of what I’m trying to say here about his shifting sense of identity.
It would also make sense too archetypally. Like, as a “trickster” figure in contemporary media mythology, not only would he be able to shift identities, but genders as well. Like David Bowie did, except totally different.
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