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

The riots and rapes at the Woodstock ’99 concert and the tragedy of Jessica Michalik who died of injuries sustained in the mosh pit during Limp Bizkit’s 2000 Sydney Big Day Out performance are compelling evidence of music’s power over youth and should not be ignored. The media does affect people in powerful ways. Otherwise, advertisers wouldn’t spend billions of dollars doing what they do. However, Eminem’s music has also been credited with waking someone from a coma. People consume popular culture because it gives them pleasure, yet the positive effects of media on behaviour are rarely, if ever, researched.

To claim that listening to Eminem, Limp Bizkit, Marilyn Manson, or anyone else causes anti-social behaviour neglects what has made young Australians so disenchanted and disillusioned in the first place. Mr Slipper may be surprised to learn that his government’s policies could have contributed. Similarly, John Howard coming across like a bad parody of South Park’s Mr Mackie ("Drugs are bad, m’kay") will only add to the cultural cache of Eminem songs such as "Purple Pills" and "Drug Ballard". Editing the chorus and changing the title of "Purple Pills" to the radio- and parent-friendly "Purple Hills" will turn it into a classic.

As a result, Eminem is turned into a scapegoat while the very social problems that give his music symbolic power receive, at best, lip service, and at worst, are ignored.

Merchants of Cool, a documentary recently screened on SBS demonstrates how a fortuitous mix of legitimate generational change and marketing savvy have allowed rage rock, gangsta rap and its exponents such as Eminem, Limp Bizkit, Pappa Roach, Mudvayne and Insane Clown Posse to emerge as mainstream performers. Hip-hop’s primary audience is white middle-class teens who want something to be angry about. Eminem fulfills the need for an icon of "white-boy-rage" perfectly.

It’s a story as old as rock itself and started with Elvis – the incorporation, commercial exploitation and enslavement of black musical celebration and protest by white culture. Eminem is no Elvis, and he’s a million miles away from Vanilla Ice, but the fact that Eminem is the best-selling rap artist in history makes a poignant statement about corporate media racism.

In his groundbreaking 1979 book, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige posits that youth culture is always a complex mix of the authentic and inauthentic, the commercially corrupted and the pure. Eminem is no different. Culture, marketing and politics have conspired to create a monster that fuels genuine youth rage, but at the same time helps sustain an increasingly global and homogenised record industry.