Eminem Strikes Chord in Society
by Dorothy Marcic
Just one month after Washington, D.C.-area sniper suspects
were taken into custody, it appears that the national media
are now enthusiastically embracing rapper Eminem’s screen debut in “8
Mile.”
The same media that were horrified by the coldblooded violence
of the snipers now hold the poster child for “white male rage” in acclaim for his
acting (“‘8 Mile’ is box office’s best,” Life, Nov.
13; “‘8 Mile’ stays high on charts,” Life, Nov. 14).
To be fair to Eminem, he did not create the conditions that allowed his success.
My research on popular music shows that it is a lagging indicator of current
values. When Eminem sings about anger, he isn’t creating it, but rather
reflecting what is already there.
The 1990s was a decade of white male rage, first noticed with the Oklahoma
City bombing and the horrendous school shootings across the country.
Eminem has tapped into white male rage, singing about killing his wife or mother
and pushing the bounds of deviance down further to trivialize violence.
Now we have mixed messages about the glory of violence.
While the alleged criminal acts of sniper suspects John Lee Malvo and John
Allen Muhammad are condemned, Eminem sells millions of albums espousing essentially
what Malvo and Muhammad are charged with doing.
Two questions we should be asking:
* Why is Eminem so popular?
* What does that tell us about the values of today’s
society?
And why are we so powerless as violence and misogyny
escalates? We could learn a great deal from this man. Not so much from
him and his music, but rather from the way he has touched some deep
part of the youth psyche.
Can we learn? Or do we instead turn a blind eye?
--U.S.A. Today, 2002
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