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February 22, 2001
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Eminem, aka Marshall Mathers, may have won only a few consolation prizes at the Grammys yesterday, but clearly the white rapper behind "The Marshall Mathers LP" has created the Album of the Year in every other sense. Em is the hottest property not just in the music business, but in pop culture itself, and, like Big Gay Al, aka Elton John, who sang a duet with him on stage, no one — the fans, the press, the critics, the police,
the Vice President's wife — can leave him alone.
Especially, of course, the gay rights activists, two hundred of whom picketed the Staples Center in protest at his "violently homophobic lyrics" (and what they saw as gay Elton's "betrayal"). Afterwards, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation solemnly expressed "gratitude" that Em was not awarded Album of the Year, but complained that the three minor Grammys awarded Eminem showed that "Academy members were willing to place their stamp of approval on lyrics that promote hate, prejudice and violence."
Amen. But the rather important point that the protestors appear to have overlooked is, Sure, Em's music is violently homophobic. It also happens to be violently homosexual. The two facts are not necessarily in contradiction of each other. Actually, in the world beyond the Care Bear sexuality of GLAAD, they're inseparable. It might even be the case that the Grammy didn't go to Em precisely because his lyrics are too queer.
To understand this you just have to pay attention to the music instead of the press releases. Sodomy never sounded so seductive, or seditious. When fellow Detroit rapping duo Insane Clown Posse wittily renamed Slim Shady "Slim Anus" on their last album, the squeaky blond bombshell responded quickly and explicitly. "Slim Anus? You damn right Slim Anus / I don't get fucked in mine like you two little flamin' faggots," he retorts on a track on "Marshall Mathers," the CD that lost the Grammy. But then in the track "Ken Kaniff," he all-too-enthusiastically impersonates the voices of the ICP frontmen engaging in lip-smacking fellatio complete with very convincing grunts and groans and backed by cheesy porno Muzak: "Fuck yeah! Suck it! That's good!" (ICP have since placed a downloadable track on their
website featuring an Eminem-on-poppers-soundalike getting reamed by his hip-hop producer, Dr. Dre.)
Am I the only one who got aroused by all this "homophobia"? I suspect not. After all, sodomy — and graphic sodomy at that — is really the only sex you'll find on Em's record-selling CD, whether in the form of invitations to the listener to "suck my fucking dick, you fucking faggot" or dismissing his critics as bitter queens: "He's just aggravated because I won't ejaculate in his ass." If Em really is the "New Elvis," it seems that "Jailhouse Rock" is his starting point (which would at least explain his prison punk look). Even when he leaves the violent sodomy alone for a moment and turns to romance, it's of a rather queer kind, as in the hit single "Stan," in which a fan sends a series of unrequited love letters to his rap-star hero — the song Eminem chose to duet with Elton John with at the Grammys.
Em himself "comes out" and acknowledges his obsession/passion in another skit on "Marshall Mathers" in which a furious record exec complains that he can't sell his records because instead of rapping about his wide-screen TV, Eminem is "rapping about homosexuals!" (Of course, the joke here is that Eminem's records "about homosexuals" could hardly sell better.)
Now, if all this "fuckin' homo" stuff seems adolescent, that's probably because it is. It's meant to be. Adolescence is a time of hormonal anxiety about identity for boys, but nowadays it's not just a phase, it's a career. And what is it that boys are supposed to grow into these days? Masculine certainties have vanished, in many cases, along with dad, family and blue-collar jobs. The only certainty left to bastard boys like this is that they are "not a fag." It's a negative identity that can't sustain a sense of self, let alone sustain one in a world which has made boys useless — i.e. faggots — by making mature masculinity redundant.
Rapismo like Eminem's articulates that frustration, then soothes the anxiety the articulation produces. Eminem's own story (now the stuff of legend) is instructive. A poor, pretty, blue-eyed white boy growing up in a depressed black area of Detroit without a dad, he left the house the definition of "different." He claims that he was neglected by his mother, which she vigorously disputes. Perhaps the truth is that, like
many sons of single mothers, he was spoilt and fussed over and then ended up hating his mother for turning him into a sissy: "I used to be mommy's little angel at twelve" he sings in "I'm Back."
To avoid complete emasculation, he rebelled against his mother and chose to be fathered by pop culture, in the form of hip-hop and the humongous phallus of black street culture. To Eminem (and other "shady" white boys of uncertain paternity from better homes) the world seems like a post-feminist nightmare where Mom is the law — and political correctness is merely "wash your mouth out with soap" writ large. He's South Park's Kyle, ten years down the line plus plenty of drugs and disappointment. In this world, homosexuality isn't only emasculation and weakness, it's also the ultimate machismo, and the ultimate rebellion against "bitches" — as well as a contradictory solution to the problem of being fatherless, easing as it does the ache for male intimacy. But easing that ache means acknowledging it. And that means weakness. So homosexuality has to be constantly "stabbed in the head," to use one of Em's more infamous lines, even as it is constantly being evoked.
Every stab just leads to another target. After all, homos are everywhere nowadays in pop culture. And the blatancy of male passivity in a world where males are sex objects only makes this "stabbing" more imperative — even when you're not, like Eminem, a pretty bottle-blond boy with "cock-sucking lips" (to quote ICP) and more than a passing interest in having your picture taken. "All I see is sissies in magazines smilin'" groans Eminem. "Staring at my jeans, watching my genitals bulging / (Ooh!) That's my motherfucking balls, you'd better let go of 'em / They belong in my scrotum, you'll never get hold of 'em." Look at the pictures of him in his book Angry Blonde (interesting spelling, that), skim past the one of him in blond pigtails to the ones where he is surrounded by a crowd of Shady clones looking at him with shining, hungry eyes. Has pop culture ever looked more disturbingly queer?
Slim Shady is famously a character Em invented to express his "dark thoughts." But maybe Slim is himself just a screen. This is not to say that Mr. Mathers is "really gay" (just as he clearly isn't "really straight"), but just "really fucked up." Perhaps the "real" Em is as neurotic, mother-identified/mother-hating, homeless, vulnerable, narcissistic and passive (aggressive) as the lyrics and the picture of him on his album cover suggest. In other words, all the things that make a great star, from Elvis to Lennon to Cobain.
And, alas, he's all the things that can make young men these days who will never be stars sad and sullen, sometimes suicidal. A seventeen-year-old white Eminem fan in Devon, England recently threw himself in front of a train. Apparently he was depressed by the "dissing" he'd experienced from friends after a gay boy said he fancied him at a party. The liberal coroner thought the lad's anxieties foolish and misplaced: "He appears to have been unusually worried over his sexual orientation which really should not affect people a great deal either way." Maybe. But Eminem and the sexually shady, not to say confused, world of white hip-hop show that such a preoccupation is anything but trivial for many boys today. It's all they have left. 
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Commentarium (55 Comments)
i think i enjoyed this article. i think. though its author seemed to have a few too many targets in mind. the one i hoped he would eventually get to -- in an overt way -- is that regardless of eminem's psychological make-up or even his sexual orientation, his lyrics foster intolerance of gay people, plain and simple. let him say what he wants, but let's worry ourselves with what he is saying, not with why we think he's saying it, because whatever his intentions are, he is responsible for what he says.
Eminem is the saddest excuse for an "artist" I've ever seen. Neither his music nor his lyrics are even remotely creative. There are teenage boys all over America who have said all the same things; we just don't know about them because they're in detention.
I think I missed the point of this article. Or perhaps the author did? Does he even know what his point is? There is too much phychobabble 101 in here. I agree that there should be concern over the lyrics that Eminem sings, but I haven't yet heard one single discussion that acknowledges him for what he is. Musically and rythmatically, he is amazing. He sends out a disturbing message, wrapped in a whole hell of a lot of art.
Great article. It hits at the heart of the matter (or Mather): Regardless of what Em's sexuality might or might not be, he grew up culturally queer, a self-confessed "timid" boy in a rough neighborhood. That's why his work can't be easily dismissed according to the usual sexual/cultural paradigms. His music, his brilliant, demented music -- screams of vulnerability and fear in a genre where bravado rules. No, I'm not excusing him. I'm saying he deserves to be called on his homophobia, which he has been, and then looked at a little more closely for what he is: A pure, conflicted reflection of the world we live in.
fantastic...damn good insights!
Cool article. Why hasn't anyone said this before? And re that post from someone disappointed because there was no happy ending: surely the point of the piece is that you can't reduce life and art and subjectivity to reassuring Public Service Announcements?
AMAZING!!!!!!!!
The article was a witty and thrilling expression of what caused Em's homophobia.
Peace!
Great perspective, although I take it a few steps further...
I put Eminem and others who use "faggot" and "dyke" to emasculate men and masculinize women in the same category as Bob Knight of the Family Research Council. Bob Knight's life is totally obsessed with gay male sex and gay male sex culture-- he writes and publishes about it, goes into lavish details when he goes undercover at sex clubs, and his entire life is consumed by how awful and wrong it is. Eminem does it too, although his stems from resentment that he was teased and taunted as a "faggot."
There is 'something' about sex between people of the same sex that both repulses and titilates men like them. They think it's sick. (The whole lesbian sex fantasy isn't a fantasy if the women aren't playboy bunnies or if they're thought to really be "dykes"-- then it's gross.) It doesn't mean that Eminem is gay or that Bob Knight is gay either. But to be so preoccupied with sexuality that they claim is not their own is quite weird and hints at a latent interest or curiousity in the very acts that they claim to revile so deeply.
finally! jesus this needed to be said. If ever anyone was giving someone like Paglia fuel to shoot at liberals, it was the p.c. establishment's hand-wringing over this detroit white trash's personal issues. People with sensible shoes do not need to go around whining about how rocknroll is america's secret adoption agency. Eminem dueting with Elton Fruitcake was a fucking brilliant coup, I'm glad he acted stoically yet sublimely with that. I was in an argument about him and I called Eminem "A gay anti-hero" - thank God someone in the press elaborated on that point. Cheers. -lil'a
extremely interesting article.
its nice that someones finally figured out that eminem is confused about who he is.
The author obviously has nothing better to do with his time. So he thought he'd drum-up some weird-ass tabloid-style allegations of Em being gay that he'd never be man enough to come out and say to the guys face just so anyone leisurely browsing through the web would be like "What!? Em gay!?" and bother to give his page a Web Hit.
The author is also obviously a closet racist. Why does Hip-Hop and Rap have to be a "black phallus" or a black anything for that matter.
I can remember being called a "nigger-lover" as a kid because I liked HipHop/Rap. I can also remember being an outsider in dances and gatherings based around HipHop/Rap because when we were kids "white america" disaproved of it. And this racial tension caused the other racial groups to not respect and see white kids as quite the equals.
There were a lot of people that came before Em to push-open the doors to the Dance Halls and let us make our way to the DJ booths, etc. And now as an adult (born in '69) it makes me feel good to see groups like Eminem and ICP get their just deserved recognition. They're not "good rappers" / being white.. there just "dope MCs" case closed, end of story.
People like the author have earned the moniker of being called "Player-Haters". An individual or group that attacks another due to a secretive internal envy
ALL GAY MEN LIKE TO THINK OTHER MAN HAVE SOME HOMOSEXUAL TENDENCIES.THEY ARE FULL OF SHIT AND SO IS THE WRITER OF THIS ARTICLE.THE WRITER IS REALLY STRECHING.MAN WHO LOVE WOMEN FIND HOMOSEXUALITY REPULSIVE .THE BELL CURVE DOES NOT EXIST IN SEXUALITY.
Ditto JSM.
I belive Eminem and his lyrics are disturbing, but this author obviously has a chip on his shoulder and I would love to knock it off for him. Homosexuality, no matter what contemporary culture smears in our face every single day, is deviant behavior. The fact still remains that violence to anyone that is homosexual, or different from ourselves, is deplorable and idiotic not to mention dangerous to our society!
I do believe that much of hip-hop(RAP) is disturbing and pretty much crap, but if you look closely there are some really good tracks and artists.
fuck u motherfucker
I am quite agreeable with author this article. I lately was discerning this freakery in Em's behavior and song.
Thank you for your work in this field.
With best regards,
D.
People have a tendencie to take him way too seriously. I find that funny. He is a pop icon. That's it. Yea I'm sure he's had a hard life. Who hasn't. But it's a show. Dre, picked him up on his label cause he has talent. Other then that he was built up to be what we see. If you look back there has always been the token white raper. And he's the new one that's all. He is just getting noticed more.
What an intelligently written and interesting article.. I will look at Eminem in a different way now..
Where can I read more by Mark Simpson...
Bonjour from Montreal !
That was the stupidest article i have ever read. Whatever happened to education accompanying the ability to write. I hope Nerve posted that article to elicit meaningful responses about a more equal world out there and not because they actually support ANY of the crap i have just had the unpleasentry to read. ~Cherise (Bi fem in Chicago)
Sophistocated and very well-written insights (that I agree with entirely). What else does this author write, where does he publish? RSVP
Talk about overanalying. What a lot of crap about non-music.
So many words to belabor the obvious. Show me a man who constantly professes his hatred for "fags" and I'll show you a homosexual.
Best thing ever written on eminem
Re those asking about the author and where to find more of his stuff: he's a Brit writer. I don't know what US publication he writes for, but his by-line often appears in British broadsheets and style mags. His website is at www.marksimpson.com.
Well, Cherise, to me, that "crap" is a relief. To finally hear a mixed response. It was my girlfriend and I bopping around to Slim Shady while we debated the seriousness of the homophobic remarks that I never saw reflected in anyone's commentary - why can't you like music and find it obnoxious at the same time? Aren't those contradictions part of life? As a gay hip-hop fan I've gotta know that there's a lot of people I admire who don't have similar respect for me. But I can and do respect the work of people who differ with me and even discredit me. I'm just gonna keep disagreeing and keep listening and keep living and talking back. - 20-something dyke in Philly
mark simpson.. .you are my pagan god
This is a little confused, and confusing. Tell you what, so was Herbert Hoover, and while that has turned to a fabulous joke it doesn't mean squat in terms of his virulant and deadly homophobia. Same with this nit wit, and I don't mean the author. I mean Mathers.
Below, I have attached what i think is a more appropriate idea of Mathers as not gay but as queer theorist:
Eminem: Queer Theorist
First off, I wish to make a bow to the way that budding queer theorist Eminem has broadsided duality in his very name while remaining within, and critiquing, a history of white rap. Almost the Wallace Stevens of our day, he has suggested that there is an M in the M, but also a delicious M&M in the mix. But just one tantalizing M&M, not an entire bowl of primary-colored, white Mickey Mouse gloved, Baldwin-tricking candies
duh, I meant J. Edgar...
JTP wrote: 'Show me a man who constantly
professes his hatred for "fags" and I'll show you a homosexual'
Nice, concise summary of the argument of the article, J--you are to be congratulated on your exegetical skills. Of course, the fact that it is a totally ridiculous premise, emanating from a ludicrous homosexual fantasy about the whole world really revolving around THEM (i.e., ANY attention to the issue of homosexuality, however oppositional, is IN REALITY just suppressed homosexuality--one wonders just how full of themselves a group of people can possibly BE in order to read the reactions of others in this way?) is another matter.
Ahh, what a load. Eminem talks about faggots and dykes because it gets people's attention. see, now he has every damn body's attention. So many men in this country call someone a faggot on a daily basis. I don't think it is so much because the world is chock full of latent/bi-curious guys, it is just another (and quite obvious) way of singling people out for being different. People called me a faggot when I was a kid because I was the one black kid who listened to Metallica and Frankie Bones... I don't think too many people thought I was gay, it was just an expression of suspicion and envy for my will to be different. Eminem has probably experienced something more or less like this, and is probably aware that the best way to get under the average American male's skin is to say that he is weird, i.e. a faggot.
PS that thing about the giant black phallus is ridiculous.
what a bunch of crap. was there even a point to that? i don't think the author even convinced himself of anything and the only insight was that Eminem "is fucked up". which is self-evident and Not worth Nerve paying for.
Very well written. Very well said.
Who cares if he's gay or not. He's rich and that's what is all important to our society. If he's found a way to make stupid people lay down money for his foul mouth lyrics and drama, good for him no matter what he sticks in his mouth. What concerns me is that this kind of "SHOCK THE MONKEY FOR THE MONEY" SHOULD be a wake up call for a soceity that lives for money, sex and shocking our fellow idiots.
Do you think you could pick a original topic to write about, you are only the 7 millionth person who has done the same story. Look anaylizing his lyrics like it's a therapy session is retarded. Do you really think Marilyn Manson goes out to lunch dressed like that, no freaking way. It's called shock value and it sells records.To take Eminem literaly would be like electing Andy Kaufman president, it's absurd. I would like to clear something else up as well. When you call one of your friends a fag, for example "hey you just stepped on my foot fag" That dosen't mean that im saying you embody everything about a gay person, gay people or gay males are almost exactly like straight people except for one difference. GAY MEN HUMP EACHOTHER IN THE ASS! Now im a whatever floats your boat kind of guy but to me and other straight males that is absolutly revolting. So when you call your friends a fag it's really just an abbreviated version of saying you hump other men in the ass. If gay men can't understand that that is off putting without getting offended well there just to damn sensetive.
I have my own feedback with this ol' fucked up article that will pretty much sum of every ounce of bullshit that some of you put on here.... "YOU HATE HIM BECAUSE YOU AIN'T HIM!!!" Fuck all of you who have something bad to say about Em!! Did you learn when you were younger that "Jealousy gets you NOWHERE!!"
yikes.
Jesse,
Read this! It's actually really interesting - especially toward the end, when the author gets into a discussion about how Eminem's "homophobia" is really just a manifestation of his own poor sense of "masculine" identity, and how it reflects in the more generalized sense that so-called "crisis of masculinity" unfolding today. Very very telling :)
Mark Simpson simply doesn't know what he's talking about in "Melts in Your Mouth."
He begs us to see homosexuality as "seditious" and "seductive." Unfortunately, the example he cites is neither. In the existing social milieu, homophobes call one another "fag" as an insult. That's exactly how Eminem took it, and it's exactly how he responded in kind to Insane Clown Posse. How, exactly, has any of this helped to bring about the dissolution of the homophobic society we live in? How, exactly, does Eminem's parody of gay sex (Simpson clued out about the irony in Eminem's lyrics, either purposefully or ignorantly) portray cocksucking as "seductive"? Maybe if this were Pansy Division. Not if it's Eminem.
Simpson asks us to understand that the only sex on Eminem's albums concerns gay sex. He's right. But he's wrong in assuming that Eminem is somehow approving of homosexuality. I suppose if Eminem fills an album with heterosexual rape, then we could apply Simpson's logic to this fictious album and say that Eminem is simply talking about the real beauty of hetero-sex. Except that this is the most egregious double-speak I've ever heard.
Simpson clings to "Stan" as the song by which we should interpret the rest of Eminem's work. Again, this logic is so twisted it looks like Cher's hair after a tornado. Would anyone suggest that we interpret Francisco de Goya's "black" period paintings SOLELY in the light of his earlier aristocratic portaits? Would anyone suggest that we dismiss The Beatles' "Abbey Road" because "I Love You (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)" is mindless pop pap? Simpson suggests that we do.
To the contrary, it seems more reasonable to interpret "Stan" in the light of the rest of Eminem's work -- which is to say, "romantic" (sic) song and tune aside, "Stan" is probably a song more about the sickness and perversion that Stan feels than a truly forthright portrayal of a male fan in lust/love with a rock star.
The heart of Simpson's piece is really a chapter lifted right out of Susan Faludi's "New Yorker" article on the straight porn industry (c.1995). To wit: Men feel so de-masculinized in the post-modern age that they hyper-masculinize themselves in order to "find a role" in society. Part of that involves demonizing others -- women (in Faludi's article) and gays (in Simpson's article). Gee, thanks for reading Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Mark Simpson; she said this years ago.
Simpson's primary excuse for Eminem -- and notice that it's not redemption, just a rationale for the homophobia -- is that Eminem's just bashing gays in order to build himself up. Poor little lamb: We're supposed to smile and tsk-tsk quietly while Eminem seeks to "find himself" in this feminized world.
What Eminem's REALLY doing, however, is setting up a straw man and then tearing him down. Like the semi-fictional Roy Cohn in "Angels in America: Millennium Approaches" -- who put it much more simply and eloquently -- gays are "homos." It doesn't mean they suck cock and fuck each other in the ass. It means they're politically impotent, culturally insignificant, powerless, passive, weak. It's everything Roy Cohn -- and supposedly Eminem -- don't want to be.
Eminem buys into this ad nauseum. He sets up this straw man over and over and over...hence, albums replete with references to homosexuality (listening, Mark Simpson?).
Unlike Cohn (who made himself powerful despite taking his lover to "meet Ronald Reagan"), Eminem feels powerless in the face of Faludi's "backlash." So what does he do? He beats up on this "weak, passive, femme" homo. He fills his lyrics with invective directed at the "fags," and preens and puffs up and struts as he shows how he lords it over them, dispossesses them, defeats them, stops them from doing "whatever it is" they want to do (to him, notice; yet another attempt to make his wounded ego more important than it really is).
Simpson invites us to pity poor Eminem: Poor Eminem is just as "neurotic, mother-identified/mother-hating, homeless, vulnerable, narcissistic and passive" as the faggots he murders in his lyrics. We're supposed to smile wanly and be dismissive of Eminem as he (as my 5th grade teacher used to say) "tears others down to build himself up."
Only, Mark Simpson misses the whole point. Eminem isn't just "tearing down" someone else. He's advocating death, dismemberment, violence against a group of people who are, still, defenseless and powerless. Even as some segments of our society are beginning to see that the Roy Cohn stereotype of homosexuals is false, Eminem builds it back up again and tells us it's not a stereotype -- it's really how those pussy fags are...leering after me (and your kids, too!), bitchy, whiny because I'm not barebacking them, femme (women are up next for the attacks, I suppose), etc.
And then Eminem takes his logic to the next level: Do as we've always done. Take back the night, men! Go bash a few faggot skulls in! Be manly again! Just ONE Matthew Shephard? Hell, every fence in Am-fucking-merica should have a dead faggot tied to it every mile-post! BE A MAN! Ridicule those pansies! TAKE BACK YOUR MASCULINITY! Crack some faggot bones! "If they beg, make 'em pay" -- not $50 every day, but with a little hetero-masculine castration! Yeah, that's the ticket!
To which Mark Simpson invites us to tut-tut and be dismissive because it's all just "neurotic" Marshall Mathers trying to weakly lay claim to a lost, forlorn masculinity that belongs to the 19th century.
Maybe Mathers is royally fucked up. Maybe he's unable to come to terms with modern masculinity, and he doesn't know how. Neither did two boys in Wyoming. Mark Simpson wants us to be dismissive of this. I don't think we should be.
Interesting. Your essay on the proposed homosexuality of Marshall Mathers raises some serious questions. An informative and insightful read, but are you condemning him for his homophobic (and supposedly self depreceating) verbal assaults or are you condemning his critics for failing to see the truth behind them? Anyway, thanks for the essay.
you just a hater don't hate on this mans skills. so you don't like it but whats the hell that got to do with silm. he don't give a fuck about you but you all in his girll. shake them haters off
Listen you assholes, Eminem is not gay and all you people that think he is gay just want a piece of him (all puns intended) Dont you have anything better to do with your time than sitting around saying how Eminem is gay because he raps about homosexuals, I mean really the word 'Faggot' is used as often as "Whats up" It dosen't have a meaning anymore-fuck walk down the street and you hear it constantly not to the homosexuals but to anyone, it's almost a form acceptance in our culture. Now people who sit around saying Em is gay because he raps about homsexuals, says the word faggot is downright stupid. why dont you sit around and write about how he's a wife beater too now, He does Kill his Ex-wife Kim in his Song "Kim" No ones giving a repulsive review to that so far. Everyone needs to calm the fuck down and stop judging him all because of his lyrics. If he has the guts to sing the kind of songs he sings I give him fucking Props, no one has had the guts to do that and look at Eminems success because of it. I think everyone is jealous of Eminem, he has bank and is fucking famous. And as for him making that "Ken Kannif" Skit, He just dosent like ICP, damn How can anyone sit around and say he's gay or quote "confused" about his sexuality-he has a daughter people HELLO! and his Ex-Wife... now how about we turn the tables and start shit with Nsync but no-no we couldnt do that! because half of you assholes have "daughters" who LOVEEEE them dont you... But I really would like to turn the tables on Nsync. I say they're GAY-5 white boys in a "boy band" you know they get it on everynight! Pretty Boys... They look gay...and you know that if eminem wasnt as famous as he is you people would not give a fuck about what he was saying. And as they say THE ONE WITH THE MONEY HAS THE POWER-EMINEM HAS PLENTY OF BOTH! So I think you guys need to back off, you can have your opinion I DONT CARE- but dont call Eminem gay when you dont even know him or know anything about him, and when Eminem gets wind of this.. watch he rips you in a song too-All Props to Eminem, and for all you out there that dont like it Kiss my Ass!
A real great essay, with some interesting thoughts. I dont feel I am able to judge if eminem is gay or not, but I think that the reactions of some of his fans (first 2 feedbacks) are really interesting. Why the hell are these guys so furious about an article? They imply beeing called a homosexual is a kind of attentat. They dond't give arguments just insults. It is like they themselve have been threaten.
At last. Mark Simpson has found his oeuvre! This is a brilliant analysis of Eminem, and requires re-reading because of its complex cross-cultural themes, the interpretation of homophobia as a form pro-gay erotica and the modern slant on the Oedipus Complex with Mommie Dearest the single mother being responsible for screwing her blue eyed angel UP!
Very interesting. I think Simpson should forget that silly glib book about Morrissey he brought out last year and write a brilliant biorgraphy of Eminem continuing and broadening out the analysis in this piece. Eminem is really the male-madonna, well the only male-madonna we're going to have in this generation, and I think the impact of his image/music on Western society and its implications are very important. So Mark, dip your quill in the ink well and get scratching!
Very fine sleuthing, Sir. Making sense out of such a confused subject is praiseworthy and a valuable contribution.
What a bunch of bull! Young people with brains, a little money and a lot of determination can make a good life for themselves. Women in this country pushed themselves up out of subservience to stand equally among men who used to rule. If men think so little of themselves without the upper hand then they all deserve each other. It's time for guys to dump some of the testosterone and learn to be comfortable with their masculinity, comfortable with their women, and do some attitude adjusting. If sexual pleasure is "all they have left", then let them get hemroids and Aids. THIS is all they'll have left.
ok... is it just me or is everyone that's read this article still in high school?! I'm am slightly disappointed that so much attention was given to such a disgusting non-musician, but Simpson does have real insight. bravo.
I think Simpson has raised some very valid points about the way we view homosexuality. However, it simply is not fair to judge the artist by the art. You don't know the man.
I challenge anyone who doesn't consider Em an artist to give his lyrics a concerned read the way you would, say, Cicero, or Shakespeare. Be sure to take into account that they come from life experiences that are probably radically different from your own.
As to the social responsibility involved I have a question: Does anyone really believe that a different soundtrack would have saved the life of a person so disturbed they threw themself in front of a train? I don't. Em didn't make the world the way it is, he just reflected a part we would rather not look at in his art. What's more he has done it in a powerful, thought-provoking and highly marketable way. Mad props and love for the catalyst of discussions like this. Without them we never will overcome homophobia. Rant on Slim.
Media is gay.
fuck that shit.you fuckin faggot.you sick & twisted fuck!
fuck nerve! a bunch of brady bunch cocksucking dykes.What the fuck makes you think that shit about eminem.My opinion
every fucking faggott should be shot in the fucking head.you fucking faggs take this shit too seriously.just because, eminem uses those words doesn't give you motha-fuckers the right 2 judge his ass like some piece of shit.
FUCK NERVE!
REMEMEBER!this is my opinion.But, someone should shoot that fucking fagg mark simpson.
oh fuck u u stupid faggot
go suck a dick pussy!!!
This is pretty interesting stuff...YOU FAGGOT! Just kidding. I'm a journalist, too. This is a clever take on the unbelievably talented kid. With tight-assed Army major wife and 13-year-old son, saw Eminem in concert recently. They went crazy over him. He was the most dynamic performer I've seen since Elvis at Hilton, seems like a hundred years ago. Anyway, good piece...gayboy.
Hayden Parker imissparis@aol.com
I think a LOT of people missed the point of this article! It doesn't matter what Eminem's sexual identity is. As the author points out he is not 'gay' by our cultural definitions and never will be. BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER. Simpson brings up compelling points about the revealing subtext of his lyrics that point to a sense of discomfort in his own masculinity. Fascinating.
I am a huge Eminem fan and I would like to say that the main problem is a total misinterpretation of his lyrics.People just don't make any difference when he is joking and when he is not.
I am a female and I have studied Eminem's lyrics.I can tell you that he is not homophobic nor mysoginistic.He often expresses his feelings of the moment.
Eminem's music is his theraphy.It helps him to work out his problems.
hGx7LU Thank you very much! I took it for myself too. Will be useful...
Now you say something