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CounterPunch
November
26, 2002
The Body and Soul of Eminem
Across the Borderline
by DAVE MARSH
While I watched Eminem's 8 Mile, the film that
replayed itself in parallel wasn't an Elvis film or Purple Rain,
which I'd been told to watch out for, but Body and Soul, Robert
Rossen's 1948 boxing movie in which John Garfield struggles to
survive a world of fixed fights. It's not the plot that struck
me as similar-the bouts in 8 Mile are fixed only by the script--it's
the way Eminem looks and acts.
Most of Eminem's acting-that is, all
the numerous emotional contradictions his character discovers
in himself--comes out of his Pinocchio eyes and his small lithe
body. In an early, defining scene, he takes a lonely late night
city bus ride. He sprawls his small lean body in  its baggy sweats across the back seat,
and stares out at the barren streets of metropolitan Detroit
with an intensity that suggests determination not to beat the
bleakness but simply to fight it, without really caring who wins.
Director Curtis Hansen places Eminem
in a world so cold and dirty you can practically smell its squalor.
The Detroit streets seem as devoid of people as they are full
of derelict buildings. Ninety percent of the people we see are
black, which must be a first for a film with a white star. The
exceptions are Eminem's (Rabbit's) girlfriends, who are both
white-of course, if they had been black, that would have had
to be the subject of the film.
The true subject here is cultural miscegenation,
a more important first. Elvis made 40 films without ever getting
to race matters; Purple Rain took the position that Prince transcended
race (both true and impossible). 8 Mile takes race as an inescapable
social and musical constant.
The film music adds up to very little
(the soundtrack sounds way better), largely because the MC battle
that's the film's crucible gives each competitor only 45 seconds
to perform. The best musical moment comes when Eminem and his
best friend, Future (Mekhi Phifer), who is black, are outside
working on Eminem's junker. In his mother's trailer, her deadbeat
boyfriend plays Lynyrd Skynyrd. In their bemusement at this cracker
cliché, they begin freestyling to the tune of "Sweet
Home Alabama" an hilarious commentary on how and why Eminem's
impoverished trailer trash life sucks. Even more than the final
scene when Eminem wins over a black club by 'fessing up to his
honky roots, the scene drives home that the only thing that might
trump race solidarity is class solidarity.
Eminem says the movie's message is that
"no matter whether you come from the North side or the South
side [of 8 Mile Road], you can break outta that," if "your
mentality is right and your drive is right." But he's wrong.
The film actually shows that in a world where everyone is trapped,
including prep school kids, the only way out involves using your
individual drive and vision to tell the painful truth-it's not
identity of any kind that can't be faked but *emotional* authenticity.
So Eminem's victory comes not when he
moons his white ass at a lesser opponent but when he tells the
whole truth about his trailer trash background. The decisive
factor involves championing that experience as more authentic
than his black opponent's roots in prep school.
So at the end of the film when Eminem
says he needs to work by himself for a while, he walks off not
into a sunset but back to the bus stop, back to his factory job,
which means, to caring for his family, to accepting responsibility,
to struggling as hard he knows how to live in a more decent world.
Is that what an artist would or should do?
Apparently.
DeskScan
(what's playing in my office)
1. No
Stranger to Shame, Uncle Kracker (Lava)-A devastating
"Drift Away" duet with Dobie Gray, a sweet, nasty heart
"Letter to My Daughter." Wet Willie does hip-hop, in
a sense. Between Eminem, Kid Rock, and this guy, have the shores
of Lake Huron become a new Redneck Riviera?
2. Sam
Cooke with the Soul Stirrers: The Complete Specialty Recordings
(Fantasy, 3 disc box)-The greatest music Cooke ever made.
3. Let
It Bleed, The Rolling Stones (ABKCO)
4. God
and Me, Marion Williams and the Stars of Faith (Collectables)-The
redoubtable Williams's best album plus 12 additional tracks.
5. None
But the Righteous: The Masters of Sacred Steel (RopeADope)-As
smooth as shaving with a new blade and with similarly cleansing
results. That the music world only recently opened itself to
this remarkable and venerable gospel offshoot reflects a silly
intellectual phobia against religious culture. Now the great
Calvin Cooke and the (inexplicably absent) Robert Randolph have
Warners-distributed albums in the works
6. The
Genius of the Electric Guitar, Charlie Christian (Columbia
Legacy)-So great that a construction crew that only listens to
country and metal heard it through a wall and asked what the
great sounds were.
7. "Sad & Dreamy (The Big 1-0),"
Alejandro Escovedo from The
Bottle Let Me Down: Songs for Bumpy Wagon Rides (Bloodshot)-When
Escovedo and Michael Fracasso did a songwriting workshop with
Austin gradeschoolers a couple years ago, one kid informed them
that since he was about to hit "the big 1-0," "candy
doesn't taste as good anymore." That rough rhyme and a variety
of similar thoughts became this song. Its poignancy (which also
comes across in Fracasso's live version) spells out childhood
facts of life no other song I know gets to. Charming, beautiful,
smart, true.
8. Nothing to Fear, A Rough Mix by Steinski
(bootleg)
9. The
Rising, Bruce Springsteen (Sony)
10. Jerusalem,
Steve Earle (E Squared)
11. Dirty
South Hip-Hop Blues, Chris Thomas King (21st Century
Blues)
12. The
Lost Tapes, Nas (Columbia)
13. Revolverution,
Public Enemy (Koch)
14. The
Naked Ride Home, Jackson Browne (Elektra)
15. When
Lightnin' Struck the Pine, Cedell Davis (Fast Horse Recordings)
16. 8
Mile, Eminem (Shady/Interscope)
17. "The
Talking Sounds Just Like Joe McCarthy Blues," Chris
Buhalis (chrisbuhalis.com)
18. The
Year of the Elephants, Wadada Leo Smith's Golden Quartet
(Pi Recordings)- (Box 1849, NY NY 10025)
19. Johnny
Otis Show-Cold Shot / Snatch and the Poontangs (Ace UK)-Brilliantly
filthy-minded R&B, including two versions of Otis's great
"The Signifyin' Monkey," and stuff like "Two Time
Slim" that's essentially a West Coast answer to the Last
Poets, thus a late '60s prefiguration of hip-hop.
20. Bluegrass
and White Snow, Patty Loveless (Columbia advance)-Best
bluegrass Christmas album ever.
Dave Marsh coedits
Rock and Rap Confidential.
Marsh is the author of The
Heart of Rock and Soul: the 1001 Greatest Singles.
He can be reached at: marsh6@optonline.net
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