Eminem: Star-Text As Videographic Armor

Addison Godel
Gender & Music Video Final Paper
WMST 6250 (Special Topics)
Instructor: Dr. Susan Thomas
The University of Georgia
 
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Introduction: Eminem's Self-Absorbed Star-Text

Because I am… whatever you say I am
If I wasn't, then why would I say I am?

- Eminem, "The Way I Am"⁰

Few performers in recent memory have made as indelible and unique an impression upon the pop-cultural landscape than Marshall Mathers, also known as Slim Shady, perhaps best known as Eminem.  This 31-year-old, Grammy-winning recording and film star is loved by millions, and his singles and albums reliably hit the top of the charts¹.  But his impact cannot be measured only by these indicators of success; like all celebrated mass media icons he represents a sort of role model.  At the least it can be said that who he is and what he does has some kind of impact - perhaps minor, perhaps profound - on his fans and even his detractors.

Detractors are something of which Eminem has no shortage.  He has often been criticized for his purportedly misogynistic, homophobic, violent, and drug-referencing lyrics.  Indeed, as I'll argue, engaging with that criticism has been a key way in which Eminem has forged his own identity.  However, the focus on Eminem's lyrics (including all his non-single album tracks) arguably misses a major way in which Eminem reaches a mass audience: through his music videos, which have almost always been regularly-rotated hits on MTV, and sometimes VH1 and BET.  What kind of cultural information do these videos carry? What do they say about Eminem, stardom, and identity?

I am at present ill-equipped to examine the specific effects of these videos on audiences, and so my analysis is going to primarily follow the framework of textual/literary criticism.  My principal tool will be Andrew Goodwin's notion of the star-text, although other means of dealing with music video will also be employed where appropriate.  This paper is thus is divided into three sections, each dealing increasingly with video.  In the first (this one), I introduce Eminem and the concept of star-text as I believe it applies to him.  In the second, "Bad Boy: Telling It Like It Is, And Like It Isn't," I attempt to further flesh out my interpretation of Eminem's star-text as a constantly reconstructed framework for kidding and authenticity.  In the final section, I'll try to show why I think this all matters through the example of three Eminem videos: "The Real Slim Shady," "Superman," and "Guilty Conscience."

I spend a great deal of time on Eminem's star-text, because I agree with Andrew Goodwin that one is ill-advised to approach and critique music videos without first addressing their creators' star-texts².  Goodwin treats a "star-text" as the malleable identity of a star, mediated by star and audience, that helps in turn to create meaning for the star's actions and creations³. Goodwin articulates this idea in a discussion of Madonna's videography, which he believes has been widely misunderstood by serious critics who miss information available to much more casual watchers who are familiar with the star-texts and use them to frame newly appearing videos.  The process works both ways: information from a star-text helps the viewer give meaning to videos, while the videos themselves can help the viewer graft new information into the star-text.  I think that in Eminem's case this process is largely accumulative: the star's products encourage the viewer to add layers to the star-text, but to date the viewer has not been required to chip anything off and begin again.

Looking at Eminem with star-text in mind is important.  The first thing that may strike a casual browser of Eminem's discography is the man's overwhelming self-absorption.  While hip-hop is home to a deep and often rich tradition of boasting and confessional lyric-writing, Eminem's case is unusual, perhaps even unique.  Certainly, there is no other performer, including Madonna, to have achieved Eminem's level of stardom by commenting on nothing so much as that very stardom.  Consider just the titles of some of his singles, with emphasis added: "My Name Is," "Without Me," "The Way I Am," "Cleaning Out My Closet," "My Band," "The Real Slim Shady."  Beyond the titles, the contents of these songs revolve around Eminem, the individual: his problems, his life, his fame.

It is common in confessional songwriting to combine very individualized verses with a more accessible hook - consider Dylan's "Tangled Up In Blue," or, for an example closer to Eminem's generic material, 50 Cent's "In Da Club."⁴  Eminem tends not to follow this formula - his hooks are as Eminem-specific as the verses.  The oddity of this becomes more plain when one recognizes that these songs are tremendous hits: what exactly is the appeal of riding down the highway and singing along to someone repeating "Hi! My name is… Slim Shady!"⁵ if one's name does not happen to, in fact, be Slim Shady?

This leads us to another point of interest.  As much as Eminem is prone to rap at length about the details of his life (particularly, he's waxed lyrical regarding his failed marriage and abusive mother), in terms of his mass-market singles, there seems to be nothing he likes to discuss more about himself than his status as Slim Shady - alternately Eminem - the star.  "The Real Slim Shady," "Without Me," "My Band," "Superman," and especially "Stan" all revolve around Eminem's status as Eminem, the icon, the record-selling genius, the superstar.  Raps in these songs remark on the way fame has created its own pressures - second-rate imitations ("The Real Slim Shady"), professional strife ("My Band") and creepy fan stalkers ("Stan").  An entire feature film, 8 Mile, starred Eminem as a fictionalization of himself playing out portions of his public biography.  The lead single from the film's soundtrack album, "Lose Yourself," retold the story again, meaning that Eminem was now rapping about how a movie version of himself, in the film, succeeded by rapping about himself.  While these songs are often interesting and filled with clever lyrics - "Stan" especially is quite affecting - the critical reader keeps coming back to the question - why can't this guy get over himself?

The answer, I think, is that Eminem needs to constantly re-establish himself and what he represents, not only in order to stay on the marketplace radar⁶, but more deeply to justify the more objectionable aspects of his work.  It is worthwhile to note that while Eminem has covered a great deal of ground in his lyrical discussions of himself, in dealing with his star-text he has kept his posture remarkably consistent - despite the possibility for identity play that his multiple aliases (and his discussion of them) originally suggested.  Eminem has not followed the path of Madonna, Bjork, or David Bowie, who have used stardom as an opportunity to publicly play games with the meaning of their own names, faces, and beings.  Instead, he has followed the more conventional (though not inherently worse) path of consistently adding detail and reinforcement to the identity established early on.  His formulation of this identity - through song lyrics, interviews, public appearances, his film, and (most germane to our analysis) music videos - has consistently revolved around two seemingly inconsistent meta-themes: Eminem is telling it like it is, and Eminem is just kidding.  Phrased differently, Eminem has made sure to establish himself as serious and authentic; but also as non-serious, a joker.  I believe that by combining these two themes, Eminem, like other "bad boys" before him⁷, creates a considerable space in which he can get away with nearly anything as a performer.  When criticized, he can always claim that he is either authentically relating observations on life as he sees it (in which case he is purportedly above criticism), or simply trying to be entertaining and funny (in which case he is purportedly beneath criticism).

Bad Boy: Telling It Like It Is, and Like It Isn't

And it's no movie, there's no Mekhi Phifer,
this is my life, and it's gettin' even harder…

- Eminem, "Lose Yourself"

Now this looks like a job for me, so everybody just follow me
'Cause we need a little controversy, and it feels so empty without me.

- Eminem, "Without Me"

Authenticity

What "authenticity" means for someone in Eminem's position is somewhat difficult to pin down, since so much of the academic work done on authenticity in music deals with the rock genre.  Despite Eminem's audience of primarily suburban white males, and his rebellious stance, he is not a rock-and-roller.  Does hip-hop, as consumed and interpreted by white males, have different standards for "authenticity"?

Although I'd like to revisit this question in future essays, for now I can only speculate, and offer a sort of composite set of signifying strategies through which I believe Eminem is very actively engaged in building his authenticity.  Some of these, such as hyper-masculinity, a distance from the feminine, an association with the tough streets, and a tendency to flout authority figures (or start "controversy") are familiar tropes from rock discourse.  Added to the mix is a racial classification - in hip-hop, blackness is arguably read as more authentic.  I would like to look at each of these sign systems in turn as they relate to Eminem as a video artist.

Race.  Eminem, as a white artist in the genre of hip-hop, is aware of the danger of being pigeonholed as a "wigger" or cultural exploiter.  It is worth noting that many of his early lyrics make antagonistic references to other white rappers, particularly Vanilla Ice⁸.  Ice, of course, famously rose to stardom in part on the authenticity granted by biographical information later revealed as a hoax - he was not as "from the streets" as he was supposed to be.  White rappers live to some degree in his shadow, and presumably Eminem feels a need to establish that he is not "phony" in the way that Ice was.  Lyrically, he tends to position himself as if he is on the defensive for his whiteness - this adds to his "rebel" authenticity while giving him a chance to address the topic.  For example, the opening line of "The Real Slim Shady" is "Y'all act like you never seen a white person before," and "The Way I Am" includes a screed directed at "cocky Caucasians" who think Eminem is "just some wigger who tries to be black 'cause I talk with an accent."  "Role Model" features a series of lines which interestingly integrate the issue of whiteness and Eminem's broader persona as a self-destructive maniac: "But I don't get pissed / Y'all don't even see through the mist / How the fuck can I be white? I don't even exist."  The opening sequence of the "Fight Music" video features a strange gathering of different cliques, emceed by a villainous rabble-rouser (played by black rapper Ice-T) who gives a speech putting D-12 on the defensive; he declares that D-12, "led by some white boy named Eminem [are] single-handedly destroying the music industry."  By suggesting that only ignorant or biased critics focus on his whiteness, Eminem escapes it for purposes of authenticity⁹.

But Eminem's bids for racial authenticity (i.e. blackness) are more thorough than that.  Videos have regularly shown him in the company of black men, either as members of an idolizing crowd or vague posse (see "Role Model") or as friends and collaborators - these allow Eminem to be "black by association."  Eminem protégé Obie Trice has appeared once (in "Without Me"), but the main recurring examples of this phenomenon are Dr. Dre and D-12.

Dr. Dre, onetime member of the celebrated gangster rap act N.W.A. and solo star in his own right, was widely cited in the press as Eminem's "discoverer" and mentor during the latter's early career.  This was reflected videographically by a cameo in the "My Name Is" video which introduced Eminem to the world; the impression was solidified by a pair of videos for duets, one for Eminem's "Guilty Conscience" (in which the two rappers trade lines) and another for Dre's "Forgot About Dre" (in which Eminem raps the hook and one whole verse).  Dre's appearances in Eminem videos have decreased significantly since 1999; he appears in "The Real Slim Shady" in a very minor cameo¹⁰, and has a non-rapping guest role as a tougher, more serious foil for Eminem's Rapboy character in "Without Me."  Perhaps this was because Eminem's popularity had become greater than Dre's, making the authenticity boost less substantial; perhaps the point had simply been made¹¹.

That said, Dre has essentially been replaced by members of the rap crew D-12 (the "Dirty Dozen").  While biographical materials stress that Eminem has been a member of D-12 since before his rise to solo stardom, the crew remained essentially unseen by the mass public until their 2001 debut CD, Devils Night.  Since that time they have been regular fixtures in a variety of Eminem videos.  The group is composed of Eminem, Bizarre, Kon Artis, Kuniva, Swifty, and Proof - the latter five all black men.  Aside from their own singles (to date, all with hooks rapped or sung by Eminem), D-12 has appeared - visually but not lyrically - in the videos for "The Real Slim Shady," "Without Me," and possibly others.  We will revisit D-12 later, although for reasons of space it is impossible to give proper attention to the very interesting implications of this group's composition and status.  For now, let it suffice to say that Eminem has, intentionally or not, added to his air of authenticity by surrounding himself with highly visible, and often audible, black men.

Distance From The Feminine / Hyper-Masculinity.  Hip-hop is not heavy metal music; nevertheless, I'd like to bring to the table Robert Walser's analysis of gender in heavy metal videos of the 1980s¹².  Certainly Eminem's work as an artist is at least somewhat relevant to the "dialectic of controlling power and transcendent freedom," related to virtuosity, that Walser finds in heavy metal.  Replace the instrumental discipline valued by heavy metal with the lyrical "skills" valued by hip-hop and the rest begins to fill itself in.  More crucially, Walser identifies heavy metal as a musical discourse "shaped by patriarchy" and appealing to "a group lacking in social, physical, and economic power, but one besieged by cultural messages promoting such forms of power."  Certainly many white teenagers of all class backgrounds manage to convince themselves, correctly or not, that they lack the power to achieve our culture's masculine ideals; Eminem himself, coming from inner-city poverty, has inevitably been affected by these discourses.

What Walser says about heavy metal, specifically with regard to video, is that it uses femininity in certain recurring ways to negotiates its way through the contradictory demands placed on masculinity.  He specifically identifies four video strategies employed to this end - misogyny, exscription, androgyny, and (later) romance.  Romance is as absent in Eminem's work as it was in most of the early heavy metal videos, but the other three strategies are regularly employed by Eminem to provide a kind of reassuring sense of superiority over women - if not one so overwhelming as to alienate his many female fans.  I believe that by employing these strategies, Eminem parodies women and thus secures his own masculinity - and thus authenticity.

Misogyny is apparent in a number of Eminem's videos, though it is often shrouded in a defensive posture.  The videos for "Guilty Conscience" and especially "Superman" are essentially open forums for female-bashing lyrically and visually, as I'll discuss in detail later.  A distaste for the feminine appears more broadly in a number of anti-gay jokes which Eminem has explicitly defended as not being about gayness at all, but femininity.  This is a stretch of a defense, and if it is tenable at all for his regular use of "faggot" as an insult on record, it is less so for videographic denigrations of "feminine" conduct by males.  Examples of this include "Purple Hills" and "The Real Slim Shady," both of which follow references to gay conduct (sex and marriage, respectively) with "Ewwwwwww!" sounds and images of Eminem making a disgusted face.  Then there is the swishy, banana-caressing, yoga-practicing caricature of techno star Moby in "Without Me."  Moby is referred to as "you 36-year-old bald-headed fag" in the lyrics, although the video bleeps these out of the realm of comprehension.  What the video adds is an image of Obie Trice following the suggestion of the lyric "Moby, you could get stomped by Obie"; Obie picks up the star, hurls him to the floor, and leaves him in a crumpled heap.  The substantial (and seemingly unprovoked!) violence is followed by an insult to further strip Moby of his manhood: "You don't know me / you're too old, let go, it's over / Nobody listens to techno!"¹³

On the other hand, the mistreatment of Stan's wife in "Stan" is clearly not intended to be looked at with approval - although it is hard to take such a message seriously, since Stan is depicted as consciously acting out the lyrics of one of Eminem's album tracks, "'97 Bonnie & Clyde," in which the star raps about murdering his wife and child.  This leads us to one of Eminem's preferred means of expressing misogyny: focusing it on specific, named targets, his wife and mother most often.  This is another case where star-text works on itself: the audience's knowledge of Eminem's troubled past and his ongoing legal complications with these two individuals inclines them to be more understanding when he spits out the bitter fury of "Cleanin' Out My Closet" ("You selfish bitch / I hope you fucking burn in hell for this shit") or the spousal abuse fantasy of "Kim" ("Now shut the fuck up and get what's coming to you / You were supposed to love me / Now bleed bitch bleed").  Meanwhile, expressing such sentiments so openly allows Eminem to further claim authenticity (see the controversiality section below) and certainly distances him from the feminine.  We will see later on how Eminem responds to such criticism in a way that further secures his position.

One additional way for Eminem to disdain the feminine is by abusing its genre proxy: pop music, recognized culturally as a feminine mode of musical expression.  Lisa A. Lewis notes that pop music has historically been treated as less significant, less "creative," and more appealing to an unsophisticated audience; to Lewis, this distinction coincides with and is explained by a gender distinction - pop feminine, rock masculine¹⁴.  While Lewis does not address hip-hop, it is perhaps reasonable to assume that with this value system in place, a denigration of pop music is in some way a means to assert masculinity.  Note, then, Eminem's stated raison d'etre in "The Real Slim Shady": "I'm sick of all you little girl and boy groups / all you do is annoy me / So I have been sent here to destroy you."  The aforementioned assault on Moby perhaps falls in the same category, and the ridiculing of boy bands recurs in "My Band."  Moreover, the song "Fight Music" may be seen as a kind of theme song for anti-pop, with its chorus claiming of D-12's work that "This kind of music […] causes mass confusion, a drastic movement of people actin' stupid."¹⁵

Exscription - the absence of women from video narratives - can only be detected after reviewing all of Eminem's video work and counting up the women.  Eminem does not quite construct the kinds of female-free male homosocial worlds that Walser finds in heavy metal videos, but women are typically not present except when specifically made into characters by the lyrics ("Superman," "Guilty Conscience").  Extras tend to be overwhelmingly male, although in some cases this reflects Eminem's own self-obsession - see, for instance, the army of Slim Shady look-alikes in "The Real Slim Shady."  Incidentally, it is striking to note how often the women who do appear are culturally marked as unattractive - consider the little people in "Purple Hills" and "The Real Slim Shady," or the handicapped woman and strange army of barbarian whores (?) in "Fight Music."  Perhaps Eminem deserves credit for not (routinely) using females as sex objects - but if it is because he finds them repulsive, then perhaps not.

Androgyny is also not employed by Eminem in the same way as the metal stars, who Walser feels appropriated feminine attributes into their appearances as a way of eliminating the need for actual women.  Eminem's standard star-appearance is unquestionably masculine.  However, he has more than once appeared in videos in some type of drag which serves a different male-centered purpose - the use of women's bodies as a joke in and of itself.  Certainly comic drag can be used in many ways, to many purposes.  Eminem probably feels his costumes are "just jokes" - but they work to re-emphasize his own distance from the feminine.  It is a joke that establishes authenticity.  Examples of Eminem in drag as a feminine parody include Britney Spears in "The Real Slim Shady," and more tellingly, the two groupies in "My Band."¹⁶

Setting aside for now Walser's work, note that Eminem does not limit his engagement with gender to the way he treats femininity.  His own masculinity is asserted in direct ways not involving women - and boy, is it ever asserted. The clip for "Fight Music" demonstrates this clearly - the video is a dark playground of masculine tropes, with various armies of outcasts raging through a nighttime urban landscape, smashing cars and otherwise "actin' stupid" as advised by the chorus.  While the video's narrative depicts D-12, including Eminem, as being on the run and thus vulnerable, all of the shots of members rapping show them confidently (almost violently) striding up to the camera and making the expressive gestures typical of gangster rap videography.  Here and elsewhere, of course, the lyrics themselves specifically celebrate the stars' capacity for macho behavior, particularly violence and drug abuse (note "Role Model").  However, as these references tend to get bleeped, they are less significant videographically than the body language and ownership of the camera that is consistently displayed.  There is, of course, something of a blurring of discourses here - the more street-smart and generally "authentic" Eminem is, the more he can be read as male - and the more male he is, the more he is read as being "authentic" and at home on the streets.

The Streets.  While I note that comfort with, and roots on, "the streets" are bound up in the above discourses of masculinity (see Lewis's third chapter, "Male Address Video"), I separate this section because Eminem devotes so much energy to this topic specifically.  He has issued many interviews and other press materials stressing his from-the-grassroots biography: born in poverty in a broken home, he discovered hip-hop as an outlet and came up through the Detroit "battle" scene.  This story has been told many times, most vividly in the "based on a true story" feature film 8 Mile, which starred Eminem as a thinly-veiled version of himself.  The lyrics to the movie's theme song, "Lose Yourself," basically make the point that Eminem genuinely came out of tough, hard times in the urban environment:

Another day of monotony's gotten me to the point, I'm like a snail
I've got to formulate a plot or end up in jail or shot
Success is my only motherfuckin' option
Failure's not
Mom, I love you but this trailer's got to go
I cannot grow old in Salem's lot
So here I go it's my shot, feet fail me not
This may be the only opportunity that I got

While Eminem rarely evokes this theme with the degree of skill and poignancy as he does in "Lose Yourself," it certainly appears elsewhere in his work. In terms of video, it is typically unstated; the appearance of "street life" is easy enough to do in a video clip.  The aforementioned "Fight Music" is probably the best example, as it is entirely set on boardwalks, vacant lots, alleyways, and subway cars - about as "urban" and "street" as you can get.  As well, this is a good point at which to note Eminem's general mode of dress, which is varied but almost always incorporates some signifiers of urban, working-class life¹⁷.  Certainly his jerseys, sweatpants, baseball caps, tattoos, and occasional dogtags convey complex information which includes a geographical component.  Of course, they are part of a hip-hop dress code - but it is worth noting that Eminem did not adopt the hip-hop dress of, say, Puff Daddy (now P. Diddy), or other rappers whose clothing signifies wealth and upper-class tastes - things which have little place in Eminem's star-text.

Controversiality.  The master thesis of Eminem's bid for authenticity is his self-styled controversiality; over and over he has stated explicitly that he causes controversy and is viewed by authorities as a dangerous figure.  These claims have appeared not only in interviews but in lyrics, on such a regular basis that it is hard to select representative quotes.  The song "Without Me" is dedicated to the controversy Eminem purportedly causes, and is also an excellent example of his recent tendency to suggest that this controversy reflects uptight, out-of-touch parents trying to protect their children from Eminem (see also "White America," "The Real Slim Shady," and "Fight Music").  Alternately, Eminem claims to "tell it like it is" as an act of male bravado, with statements like "I'm only giving you things you joke about with your friends inside your living room / the only difference is I got the balls to say it in front of y'all / and I don't gotta be false or sugar coat it at all."¹⁸

Controversiality is also an avenue to another kind of authenticity claim - that of the serious artist.  When Eminem comes under attack (as he often does), he and those acting on his behalf argue that he is an artist trying to express himself, and thus should be entitled to artistic freedom.  Consider this quote from the star himself: "I say what I want to say and do what I want to do.  There's no in between.  People will either love you for it or hate you for it.  That's what I've found just on a street level – fans, and people on the street.  They either can't stand me or love me for telling the truth and saying what's on my mind."¹⁹  This artistic freedom defense is often expressed as a claim that Eminem is only playing characters in his lyrics, but one wonders if the subtleties of this identity work carry over to his audience, considering that the "characters" kill "characters" with the same names as Eminem's wife and mother and rap about problems remarkably similar to those the star himself is known to have.

Note that, as important as controversiality is to the Eminem image, he hasn't yet found a great variety of ways to directly represent it in video, especially since there is a limited supply of things one can do which are shocking but still permitted on the airwaves.  Mostly he has let his lyrics and subject matter do the work of implying (or specifically claiming) controversiality.  When Eminem does try to portray his controversial nature as such in video, he tends to head into the territory of the wacky - making this a good point at which to move on to the second main strand of Eminem's star-text musings, alongside Eminem-as-authentic: Eminem-as-kidder.

Kidder

The metanarrative of Eminem as being simply an entertainer, a humorist not meant to be taken seriously, is comparably simpler to unravel.  The signifiers for this claim tend to be explicit or at least overbearingly obvious, and the payoff is similarly clear: if Eminem successfully positions his work as "just" entertainment, then those who criticize him will be seen as either "missing the joke" or "reading too much into things."  This would seem, on paper, to inevitably present sabotage to the above-discussed defense that Eminem's work is a serious, even artistic, statement - but neither the star nor his public seem to have much trouble with the doublethink necessary to believe both of these things at the same time.

Eminem broadcasts the kidder image in several ways.  Sometimes he explicitly elaborates (in print and television interviews) that specific songs and videos are "just" songs and videos, that he is just joking or trying (jester-like) to start controversy.  More rarely, he uses specific gestures to soften his image.  The most famous example of this would be his duet with Elton John during a 2002 awards show; this provided both a symbol of his "I don't really hate gay people" defense and an opportunity to discuss it in interviews.

However, it is through video that Eminem has most thoroughly established himself as a merry prankster of the airwaves.  This has been the case since the beginning of his major-label career.  His first heavily-pushed video, "My Name Is" (effectively a debut, as suggested by the song's chorus of "Hi! My name is … Slim Shady") depicts Eminem as the star of a variety of silly-looking television programs, watched by a stereotypical "white trash" couple which is alternately amused and horrified by his antics.  The programs feature Eminem in various generic "silly" costumes - mental patient, high school science teacher, ventriloquist's dummy; moreover, he appears in costume as Marilyn Manson, Bill Clinton (complete with an extra dressed as Monica Lewinsky), a fugitive from justice on a "Cops"-like reality program, and nine copies of himself comprising the "Shady Bunch."  The formula of the "My Name Is" video, copied for the first singles from his next two albums, is simple: using funny costumes, pop-culture references, and quick cuts which emphasize the somewhat goofy nature of the background music, depict Eminem as an amusing sideshow act, a sort of MTV jester with an "edge."

The "edge" is of course important to maintaining authenticity - if Eminem's videos were funny in a bland, conventional way, he would amount to just another 'Weird Al' Yankovic.  Songs and videos alike insist that Eminem is the starter of "controversy," to the point where his works are assumed to be controversial even before they see wide release.  In the more authentication-centric videos, Eminem refers to these controversies with bitterness and resentment; but in the cartoony videos that emphasize his status as a kidder, the controversy-starting is reduced to being a kind of joke in itself.  As a side benefit, the humor and cartooniness may help Eminem more easily appeal to younger audiences (and arguably female audiences).

To make the point clear, a brief scan of "The Real Slim Shady" and "Without Me" (the aforementioned first singles/videos from The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show) will leave the reader bombarded by elements of cartoonish zaniness.  Looking just at pop cultural references, we have: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera (as a blow-up doll), Tom Green, Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee, Dick Cheney, Sally Jesse Raphael, Absolut, Elvis Presley, the cast of The Real World, Moby, Osama Bin Laden, and members of the cast of Survivor.  The "Without Me" video, to ice the cake, is built around a sustained and involved allusion to comic book iconography in general and the 1960's "Batman" TV series in specific, with Eminem appearing in a Robin-like garb as "Rapboy."  "Fight Music" it ain't….but D-12 does get in on the cartoony act with similar, if perhaps somewhat less frenzied, videos for "My Band" and "Purple Hills."

There is certainly something interesting going on when even the profoundly bleak "Role Model" video features an animated cartoon sequence in which Eminem appears as some sort of superhero who (following the song's lyrics) beats up Looney Tunes standby Foghorn Leghorn with a giant acorn.  (The "look" of this sequence was apparently adapted for Eminem's one-shot, South Park-esque, animated TV program, "The Slim Shady Show.")

These cartoonish (or literally cartoon-based) sequences do not show up randomly.  They serve discursive purposes which usually relate to the song's contents in some direct or indirect way²⁰.  D-12's "My Band" is an excellent example. The song's verses, taken at face value, are shockingly frank: after Eminem boasts of the benefits of being the highly-recognized lead singer of the "band"²¹, the other rappers in D-12 complain about his disproportionate prominence which grants him the attention of fans and the media, as well as a better paycheck: "So why he get 90 and we only get 10 percent?"  Certainly there is a hearty helping of irony when a group raps about its own unequal structure, but it's assuredly a bitter meal to swallow even without considering that the men purportedly getting "10 percent" are all African-Americans while the man who "gets 90" is white.  Thus, to soften things up - or to make absolutely sure the audience gets that it's supposed to be a joke - the video is over-the-top silly.  Eminem appears as the archetypal vain star, petty as he idly takes in his tanning bed, his limo, and a parade of groupies; later he is transformed into the leader of a boy band for a parody of that genre's sound and visual presentation²².  This is followed by a musical and visual non sequitur: Eminem is dressed as a bullfighter leading a mariachi band (D-12) in a musical celebration of his own brand of salsa.  This is perhaps a very strained reference to Kelis's "Milkshake," but I'm not sure - either way there is no doubt that it is intended as a "joke" coda to a "joke" song.  The message of the song - which has the powerful potential to stir up a meaningful controversy about racially-drawn inequality within star groups - is so couched in signifiers of "silly" that it becomes impossible to take seriously. D-12 have discursively defused themselves. This is something at which Eminem (as should be evident by now) has become quite adept.

Specific Video Analysis

As I said at the outset, I believe a discussion of Eminem's star-text is worthwhile because it explains a great deal about the kind of work the man has released to the public.  Specifically, I think the Eminem star-text creates a shield, a zone of untouchability, around anything he does or creates at which criticism might be directed.  Eminem's star-text cannot, of course, be given complete and total credit for the amount of leeway he has been generally allowed to say and do highly offensive things.  Complicit in this affair are MTV and the music press, as well as the artist's record company and other handlers.  As well, Eminem's status as a white male has undoubtedly enabled him to get away with more than other hip-hoppers, who are typically black.  I don't wish to downplay these factors in the slightest - they are simply not the focus of this paper.

The images in Eminem's videos, by and large, range from the banal to the thought-provoking.  Occasionally something irksomely tasteless but innocuous pops up, and just as occasionally, genuine mood and emotion are conjured up.  Combining this overall picture with the fact that Eminem's most disturbing lyrics are typically on songs not chosen for videos, or bleeped when they are, and the casual viewer might really wonder what all the fuss is about this Eminem character.

However, there are a few Eminem videos which fall well outside the boundaries of this not-unreasonable state of affairs.  In them, Eminem uses his screen of inviolability - his identity as simultaneous jokester and artiste - to get away with material that, taken at face value, is shockingly repulsive.  It is a testament to the power of the star-text that it can take effort to realize this; so deep have I been at times within the Eminem mythology that I completely failed to notice scenes deeply demeaning to women, in particular justifications of rape and stalking.  My discussion of video here, then, is not going to deal so much with traditional issues of narrative structure and gaze, but rather with the simple, straightforward contents of the videos; I want to show how Eminem encourages the viewer to see very disturbing images as harmless jokes or honest statements.  With this in mind, we will look at three videos with an eye towards gender: "The Real Slim Shady," "Superman," and "Guilty Conscience," in that order.

Women Wear Your Pantyhose, Sing The Chorus And It Goes…

Of the three videos I'll be looking at, "The Real Slim Shady" is by far the most "harmless," but I think a careful look at it will serve both to contrast it to the other two, more sinister clips, and also to give a sense of the kind of under-the-surface gender politics that go on in Eminem's work.

I've touched on this video several times before, principally as an example of Eminem's "cartoony" side.  With its quick cuts, saturated color, and pop-culture references, it is assuredly meant to be taken chiefly as a comic work.  It also served to make a statement about Eminem and his career; aside from the literal comments by the lyrics on supposed Eminem imitators and his chances of winning a Grammy, the song served as a statement of "Here I am again" - it was the lead single off of his second major-label album and there was almost certainly pressure to "top […] 'My Name Is'."²³  Indeed, "The Real Slim Shady" is a kind of discursive sequel to "My Name Is," re-establishing as it does that his name is Slim Shady; that there is only one Slim Shady; and that he is, at least in this video, a bouncing, provocative cartoon of a figure.

"The Real Slim Shady" also features Eminem's first response to criticism in a video single.  I am certainly not the only or the first person to note the misogyny in his lyrics, which he here defends by directing "humorous" misogyny at his critics: "Feminist women love Eminem / chicka chicka chicka 'Slim Shady I'm sick of him, look at him / walkin' around, grabbin' his you know what / flippin' to you know who' / 'Yeah but he's so cute though.'"  In "The Real Slim Shady"'s video, these lines are not represented literally, although they do accompany a sequence of Eminem (in a variant of Tom Green's "My Bum" costume) chasing down a group of male bystanders and "comically" assaulting one.  The strategy is classic backlash: feminist critics are just overly sensitive women who secretly are attracted to the misogynist.  It goes without saying that, to my knowledge, no feminist critic of Eminem has focused on his "grabbin' his you know what"; they have been more concerned with his treatment of violence against women as material for black comedy.  However, for Eminem, and presumably for much of his audience, this irrelevant verse closes the discussion.

But the video itself re-opens the discussion with a series of problematic images.  I've already touched on its key homophobic moment - a shot of a gay male wedding, followed by an "ewwww!" despite the previous line "There's no reason that a man and another man can't elope."  There is also a verbal and visual ridicule of stars Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.  The latter is accused of sexual promiscuity in a discussion of what would happen if Eminem went to the Grammy Awards:

So you can sit me here, next to Britney Spears?
Shit, Christina Aguilera better switch me chairs
so I can sit next to Carson Daly and Fred Durst
and hear 'em argue over who she gave head to first
Little bitch, put me on blast on MTV
"Yeah he's cute, but I think he's married to Kim, hee hee!"
I should download your audio on MP3
and show the whole world how you gave Eminem V.D.

For presentation on MTV, the words "shit," "head," and "bitch" are silenced, but all else remains intact.  As a bonus, the video accompanying this scene adds to the "comedy" of this verse; Eminem plays both Britney Spears (in "ditzy schoolgirl" mode) and himself (as basically an innocent bystander).  Fred Durst (leader of Limp Bizkit²⁴) appears as himself, and Carson Daly (heart-throb of MTV's Total Request Live) is played either by himself or a double (I'm not sure).  Pop star Christina Aguilera is played by… a blow-up doll, dressed in Aguilera's outfit from the "Genie in a Bottle" video.  Eminem watches with bemused curiosity as, a few seats over in the facsimile Grammy audience, Daly and Durst pull the doll (seated between them) back and forth, as if fighting over it; eventually (during the last two lines quoted above) it pops and flies backwards into the seating behind.

So what we have here, in this "just kidding" video is one real-life woman (Spears) mildly accused of flaky stupidity (remember Lewis's comments on pop) and another (Aguilera) represented physically as a sex object, destroyed by men because of her alleged sluttishness.  Clearly we are not meant to sympathize with Aguilera here - her blow-up representation deserves what happens to it because of her purported sleeping-around and its purported consequences (Eminem contracting venereal disease).  Accusing women of sexual promiscuity is a classic tool of repression, as noted by feminist authors from Marilyn Frye to Emily White²⁵.  That it shows up in a text which treats itself as a work of comedy is not surprising, but still depressing.

One last irksome scene from this clip: in the first verse, Eminem suggests the shock he supposedly creates in audiences is "like Pam and Tommy just burst in the door / and started whuppin' her ass worse than before / they firstly divorced / throwin' her over furniture, 'Ahhh!'"  In the video, actors represent the famously volatile couple; the Pamela Anderson character is sitting and reading a magazine when the Tommy Lee character "bursts in the door" and makes threatening hand motions at her.  The video cuts back and forth between this scene and Eminem (dressed, as in "My Name Is" as a mental patient) rapping, as Tommy, posture threatening, chases a helpless Pam around the room.  Just before Eminem's feminine shriek "Ahhh!" which closes the scene, the chase leads straight to the camera's wide-angle lens, for a brief, if not too revealing, look down Pam's skimpy bikini top.  That Eminem can follow a scene like this, which essentially turns domestic violence into a jokey parody, with the suggestion that feminists only disapprove of his "grabbin' his you-know-what" is sad and telling.

Don't Put Out, I'll Put You Out; Won't Get Out, I'll Push You Out

"The Real Slim Shady" contains scenes strongly overlaid with misogyny; "Superman" is absolutely saturated with it.  I've gone to the trouble of providing the complete lyrics of the CD version of this song in Appendix II (opens in new window); I suggest a careful reading before a look at the "Superman" video. Basically, the lyrics are a second-person attack on women who pursue Eminem romantically - possibly groupies in specific (as in "My Band"), or possibly just women in general.  To a very limited point, Eminem's irritation with these women is understandable, and even if he is dipping into tired and problematic rock tropes when he suggests the women who want to sleep with him do not really understand him, one can at least let it go by as just another cliché.  But many times the lyric of "Superman" slides past any justifiable position of defense against being misunderstood; Eminem here is deeply, deeply contemptuous of these women.  Aside from calling them bitches and hoes (already a warning signal in feminist critique of hip-hop), he demands sex without attachment from them (in the first verse), blames them for his potential to stalk them (in the second), and repeatedly threatens to beat them up simply for flirting with him (in the third).  Taken together, the verses are a brutal devaluation of women in general - they're going to be beat up for talking to him, made to have sex with him if they want to enjoy his company, then stalked if they develop a relationship and dumped completely if they don't.  How this is translated to video is interesting.  Consider "The Real Slim Shady" and "My Band," which used Eminem's colorful/cartoony side to mask and soften up potentially worrisome lyrics. "Superman"'s video does anything but, as we'll see.

The first scene in the video depicts the leading-up to an intimate encounter between Eminem and a woman (played by porn star Gina Lynn).  She is dressed scantily in an outfit which prominently displays her enormous breasts, and made up heavily.  Eminem, in t-shirt and sweatpants, leans up against her in a hotel hallways, a physical gesture to which she is receptive.  With his arm over her shoulder and his other hand holding a wrapped condom, he leads her into a hotel room, where she lies in waiting on the bed.  Eminem begins to strip as he lipsynchs the sarcastic spoken lines "I wanna grow together / let's let our love unfurl."  Meanwhile, computer effects create a girl's-eye-view of Eminem as a romantic heart-throb, with wind blowing at his tie (previously unseen) and the edges of his unbuttoned shirt, as he says "They call me Superman / I'm here to rescue you."

He jumps on the bed and pulls the covers over both of them, and then suddenly the tone changes. As Eminem launches into rapping, with the line "I'll never let another chick bring me down,"²⁶ we are back in the hallway with the woman being thrust out of the doorway and against the wall, presumably by Eminem.  He then tosses several of her things out after her, and walks out himself to yank a necklace (his?) from around her neck before retreating to the room.  The next sequence is especially uncomfortable to watch: through the peephole, we see, alternately, the childlike and cinematically uglified face of Lynn trying to get back in, and Eminem, gleefully taunting her:  He waves the necklace like a hypnotist with a gold watch, moons her (eliciting her licking her finger on the line "Kiss my ass"), and unzips his fly (provoking some provocative posing and hair-flinging).  We also get a repeat of the throwing-out sequence, plus Lynn, still in the hallway, stripping naked (breasts blurred for TV release).  Throughout the rest of the video, as other events occupy the narrative, the camera cuts back to Lynn in the hallway and Em in his room.  Like a lonely puppy, she never seems any less eager to remain by his side, even as he ridicules her and in one strange sequence seems to attempt to set her on fire.  This is also a spot from which Eminem, as narrator, mimes the "back hands" he intends to give certain women and makes mocking facial expressions and gestures while delivering the song's sarcastic refrains.  The video's other scenes are unremarkable compared to the ickily mean-spirited hotel scenario, but we do get visualizations of the stalking sequence ("…never know what kinda car I'll be in!"), which cuts off just as Eminem is running towards the target of his stalking, and his decision to "bump you off that barstool" - after which the woman involved poses provocatively on the floor, spreading her legs to reveal a computer-generated twinkling star at her crotch even as Eminem raps "Leave footprints all across you."  The visual hook, which first appears with the line "Cause I can't be your Superman…" is Eminem's torso and face sticking out of a sea of writhing, nearly-naked female bodies, a gray, grim and passionless orgy in which virtually none of the women's faces are seen and he regards their activities with at best indifference.

How can one read this video as anything but a proud declaration of contempt for women?  It's certainly not funny²⁷, although it sometimes seems to be trying to be - the discomfort it provokes is just too great.  The dark orgy scene cements this impression - if anywhere in this video we were going to see some vivid color or optimism it would be in the hook.  Eminem's antics in the hotel room go for slapstick, with some speeded-up film and quick cuts, but the activities he engages in are just too unpleasant for me to laugh at.  Perhaps the video was intended to be comical and it is simply a tremendous accident that it came out nauseating.  But its overall tone and visual pallette is much closer to the grim "The Way I Am" and "Cleanin' Out My Closet" videos, and so I imagine that this video is intended to function in their tradition, as an honest (authentic) expression of Eminem's bitterness and hatred.  Needless to say, it participates in a variety of misogynistic discourses, most crucially in the Gina Lynn plotline.  The porn actress, whom we are encouraged to see only through Eminem's gaze (by the peephole gimmick) comes off as simple-minded, eager to sexually please Eminem despite his abuse, with apparently no other thoughts in her head.  The other women in the video are similarly objectified, but not with anything like the thoroughness of abuse heaped on the Lynn character.  One wonders why she agreed to appear in this piece at all, but that aside, it is amazing that Eminem can make work like this and still claim that anything he creates is merely "entertainment" meant, like a sophomoric prank, simply to "start controversy."  But it is the twin of those claims - the assertion that Eminem is speaking from honest experience, that underlies "Superman" and lets him get away with such a work of videographic hate speech.

"I'm Your Motherfucking Conscience." "That's Nonsense!"

It is hard to say which of "Superman" and "Guilty Conscience" is more distressing; I have put "Guilty Conscience" last in this analysis because I think that its use of Eminem's prankster persona to justify misogyny is a shade darker than "Superman"'s use of the authentic confessional discourse.  "Guilty Conscience" also manages to say more misogynistic things, both in lyric and video.  I won't include the full lyrics as I did for "Superman," as my discussion should speak for itself.

"Guilty Conscience" was an early Eminem single, a team-up with Dr. Dre in which the two played opposing characters: in various scenarios, outlined by a sober-voiced narrator, Dre played the "good conscience" and Eminem the "bad" of some person confronted with a moral dilemma.  It's essentially the Warner Brothers cartoon trope of an angel and a devil on each shoulder, but in hip-hop form.  The video's material is dark but its tone is strangely light, thanks to the use of (low-budget) Matrix-style freeze-the-action-and-spin-the-camera shots, the goofily non-diagetic narrator, and other signifiers of non-seriousness (for example, a scene in which one of the protagonists tries on a dress and a blonde wig as a disguise, at Eminem's suggestion).  In each of the video's three sequences, violence against women is to some degree a part of the story, and while at first Dre's advice to refrain from such violence is heeded, in the second sequence Eminem wins out, and in the third he convinces not only the character beset by indecision, but Dre as well.  The chorus denies responsibility, asserting: "These voices / I hear them / and when they talk I follow."

The first sequence, according to the three-piece-suit-wearing narrator, concerns a young man ("Eddy") who is preparing to rob a liquor store.  In the video, he is frozen at the moment he bumps into a woman on the way in, knocking her groceries everywhere - they remain suspended in midair as Dre appears out of a flash of blue light and advises him not to rob the store, partially because he will probably get caught and partly because the female store clerk is "older than George Burns."  Eminem, appearing from red light, reminds Eddy that he needs the money and gives him suggestions on how to escape capture (the aforementioned drag sequence), but Dre wins out and Eddy turns to go home, although he does not assist the knocked-over woman with her groceries²⁸.

The second, far more disturbing scene, features "Stan" (not to be confused with the character from the later Eminem song of the same name), who, at a frat party, leads an apparently intoxicated "young girl" up to an "upstairs rec room," and is frozen as he is thrusting her down onto a couch.  The girl's face is never seen, although Stan (a stereotypical white "frat guy" in letter jacket et cetera) is seen clearly.  Again, Dre offers moral and "you'll get caught" arguments, while Eminem provides handy advice: "Now listen to me / while you're kissing her cheek and smearing her lipstick / Slip this in her drink / Now all you gotta do is nibble on this little chicken's earlobe […] Pick this chicken up, get her off Brad's couch, and leave her on the front porch of her Dad's house."  When Dre objects, "This girl's only fifteen years old! How could you take advantage of her?" Eminem rebuts, "It's easy. Cut these lights out. That's how."  The sequence ends as the action unfreezes and Stan drops on top of the girl, kissing her.

As if enticing a young man into committing rape (and giving him advice on how to get away with it) wasn't enough, in the final sequence Eminem prevails on Dre and one "Grady" the necessity of murdering both his wife and a man with whom she has been caught engaging in adultery.  Eminem makes this an issue of pride: "Man, you just caught your wife cheatin'! While you at work she's with some dude trying to get off? Forget gettin' divorced, cut this chicken's head off!"  Over Dre's objections, Eminem goes on: "Okay, thought about it? Still wanna stab her, grab her by the throat, get the daughter and kidnap her? That's what I did! Be smart, don't be a retard!"  Dre's own famously violent past ("Mr. Dre, Mr. N.W.A., Mr. AK..") works against him and finally the former voice of reason declares, "What am I saying? Shoot 'em both, Grady, where's your gun at?"  The video ends with an exterior view of Grady's mobile home and the sound of a gun being fired.

Eminem's arguments and antics in this video are clearly meant to be funny in a "that's so sick!" way, much like the work of his contemporaries and fellow Detroitians The Insane Clown Posse²⁹.  His body contorts, shivers and shakes as he makes funny faces and antagonizes Dre. He wins out in two out of the three moral dramas, and there are no visible consequences (though Dre suggests some that might emerge) for the evil actions of the characters.  These are seriously evil actions, and I honestly cannot remember this video eliciting tremendous controversy - although Eminem claims it did in "The Way I Am."  Nor can I remember any other video with such an explicit and open suggestion of rape - certainly I've seen videos where rape was suggested iconographically and through the choice of gazes, but "Guilty Conscience" shows us the preparations for a literal rape, and moreover has one star urging it on and another basically giving up trying to stop it.

It should also be noted that even aside from the song and video present women being raped and murdered, the women of this song are objectified even before their fates are doled out.  They are consistently used here as the objects of the moral choices that generate the plot of the song.  We don't see a woman coming home from a blue-collar job and considering the murder of an adulterous husband, or even a woman trying to decide whether to rob a liquor store; the song and video thus conform at this basic level to age-old stereotypes of men and women's capacity for agency, moral decision-making, and violence.

At the time this video was released, it was one of the world's first real looks at Eminem - it appeared not long after "My Name Is" - and so it can be seen both as benefiting from and creating his screen of comic invulnerability. The logic seemed to be: if Eminem is a jokester (established by "My Name Is") then "Guilty Conscience" can surely be broadcast and received as a joke, and if "Guilty Conscience" is a joke, then Eminem must be one heck of a jokester!  Once again, I think we see in this video the benefits of a defensive star-text and the work done to create that star-text in a single video.

Final Thoughts

This has been a difficult essay for me to write.  Since Eminem's first appearance in the mass media, I have enjoyed many of his singles, and I well remember the excited instant-messages I'd exchange with old buddies when a new and purportedly excellent Eminem video - "My Name Is," "Guilty Conscience," "The Real Slim Shady," all of the non-"dark" ones, really - hit the airwaves.  Nowadays our tone is more subdued, partially through changes in our tastes and Eminem's style, partially as well through my own development as a feminist.  But still there is a tendency to want to find something redeeming in Eminem, an excuse of some kind to enjoy his work.  "Well, 'Lose Yourself' is a powerful song." "He really shows some incredible skills on 'Without Me.'" "'My Band' has got to be some kind of postmodern masterpiece."

But it is impossible to separate Eminem's talent, his humor, and his air of creativity from his most odious products; as I've argued in this paper, I think it is these very characteristics of Eminem that enable him to release such things as "Superman" and "Guilty Conscience" and the countless smaller misogynistic texts I've cited.  Does this mean I'll stop taking note when new Eminem videos get released?  Probably not.  But I do hope that in the future, when I praise the man, I have the presence of mind to also criticize him, for he has done an incredible amount of cultural work which I - and I think most feminists - would find offensive.  For, regardless of Eminem's claims to the contrary, we do not need a little contro-ver-sy, at least not his kind.

Addison Godel, April 2004
with some revisions August 2006

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