Eminem is telling us something - don't censor the messenger

Do Eminem’s rhymes make Eminem the person violent, homophobic and misogynist also? Maybe if the real Slim Shady finally did stand up, we’d understand him better. Indeed, it’s Eminem’s power to contradict himself, his fans and the popular culture landscape that makes him so fascinating.

While moral entrepreneurs attack him, fellow musicians – from Sir Paul McCartney to members of The Corrs and Dido, whose track "Thank You" became a smash after being sampled for Eminem’s "Stan" – have anointed him pop’s chosen one. Even Sir Elton John, a well-known gay rights activist, agreed to perform with Eminem at the 2001 Grammy Awards despite arguments from various groups, including the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, that Eminem’s music "contains the most blatantly offensive, homophobic lyrics [the organization] has seen in many years". Ironically, Eminem’s ability as a composer has also been compared to that of gay icon Noel Coward, and his trip to Australia brought condemnation from The Australian Families Association – usually no friend of gays and lesbians – for his homophobia.

Like Madonna and U2 lead singer Bono (yet another fan) during the band’s Zoo TV and Popmart eras with his MacPhisto character, Eminem is a perpetually evolving series of self-referential personas that refuse to be contained. Marshall Mathers III has an Eminem album named after him, but Eminem is also Slim Shady, who is now working with the group D12 (short for The Dirty Dozen). Eminem’s raps are performed by these personas. "Slim Shady is just the evil thoughts that come into my head," Eminem says. "Things I shouldn’t be thinking about."

Eminem is a deliberate paradox, warning fans that they "should take my music with a grain of salt". "The Real Slim Shady" actually condemns the hate crimes he is accused of perpetuating, allowing him to rip contemporary culture open and let it bleed:

Yeah, I probably got a couple of screws up in my head loose
But no worse than what’s going on in your parents’ bedrooms
Sometimes, I wanna get on TV and just let loose, but can’t
But it’s cool for Tom Green to hump a dead moose …
And that’s the message we deliver to little kids
And expect them not to know what a woman’s clitoris is
Of course they gonna know what intercourse is
By the time they hit fourth grade
They got the Discovery Channel don’t they? …
Well, some of us cannibals
Who cut other people open like cantaloupes
But if we can hump dead animals and antelopes
Then there’s no reason that a man and another man can’t elope
(Eminem, "The Real Slim Shady")

Somehow, these lyrics get missed. It’s easier to be affronted than confronted by Eminem, but isn’t all powerful fiction based on personal experience to some extent?

In "’97 Bonnie and Clyde", the song which the fictitious Stan uses as inspiration for killing his girlfriend, Eminem raps about ex-wife Kim’s murder as he disposes of her body while their daughter Haile is in the car:

Baby, don’t cry honey, don’t get the wrong idea
Mama’s too sweepy to hear you screamin in her ear
That’s why you can’t get her to wake, but don’t worry
Da-da made a nice bed for mommy at the bottom of the lake
Here, you wanna help dada tie a rope around this rock?
We’ll tie it to her footsie then we’ll roll her off the dock.
Ready now, here we go, on the count of free … One … two … free … WHEEEEEE!
There goes mam, spwashin’ in the wa-ta.
No more fightin wit dad, no more restraining order

Eminem even recorded Haile’s voice to use on the track and one of his stage tricks involves throwing an inflatable dummy called Kim to fans, who tear it to pieces.

The argument here is not about free speech, but cultural double standards. Artistic license, character, metaphor and irony have always been part of popular culture. In a world where the boundaries between high and low art are continually blurred, it is increasingly inappropriate for a set of artistic criteria to be applied to one art form, but not to the other. Why are novels granted such freedoms, while pop music must be taken literally?

Like Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho "’97 Bonnie and Clyde" and "Kim" grapple with one of our last great cultural taboos. They climb into the head of a killer and force the listener to adopt his persona. The Dixie Chicks' country hit "Goodbye Earl"depicts the premeditated murder of an abusive husband by his wife and female friend and features a video in which the killing is played out as comedy! Johnny Cash and Nick Cave have been singing about killing people for years and no one takes them literally.

But of course, that’s the fear – that we’ll produce a generation of Eminems. According to John Howard, "You cannot have these constantly gratuitous exhortations to violence and not expect some impact, some consequences, some spin off". At the time of Eminem’s visa controversy, Liberal Party MP Peter Slipper argued, "There is no way the Australian government should allow those who pray on the disenchanted and disillusioned youth of Australia to visit our country and promote a culture of drugs, violence and foul language."