Grammy Bashing

By Crispin Sartwell

Gay organizations and women's groups have protested Eminem's four Grammy nominations, as well they might. The chorus of the first song on "The Marshall Mathers LP" goes like this: "Bitch I'm gonna kill you; you ain't nothin but a slut to me." Or try this, from the last song: "Hey it's me, Versace. Oops, somebody shot me." Of the members of the boy group N'Sync, he says, "I can't wait till I catch all you faggots in public." Eminem can be seen as validating attitudes that lead to hate crimes.

Nevertheless, he deserves the Grammys. His album is a twisting journey through a twisted soul, and it is an artistic tour de force.

Art can be both great and hateful. Leni Riefenstahl's documentary Triumph of the Will, a Nazi propaganda film from the early 1930s, is one of the most innovative and beautiful films ever made. In a way, that simply makes it more morally disgusting, its message more seductive. Yet it should be seen and studied not only in order to understand the craft and aesthetics of film, but to understand what Germany was like under Hitler.

The bizarre autobiography of the great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, is a delusional tirade that includes a chapter titled "Why I Am a Destiny." In my view, it is the product of diseased mind, and Nietzsche went completely mad soon after he finished it, signing his letters alternately "God" and "The Anti-Christ." But though Ecce Homo contains bizarre ideas, it also contains ideas that have helped re-shape the intellectual landscape of the twentieth century.

You see my point: we can deplore Eminem's sentiments or question his sanity and still celebrate his album. Eminem in the most compelling way shows us the dark side of ourselves, of the culture we have made together. That culture will not be improved by silencing Eminem but by using what Eminem shows us as material for self-reflection. Do you ever have violent fantasies? Do you ever say or think "faggot"? I wonder whether you really believe our situation is improved if we all pretend we don't.

In some ways, in fact, Eminem's case is far better than Riefenstahl's. Her films were a very direct embodiment of Nazi ideology, whereas Eminem stops far short of any sort of political program of hate. Furthermore, it is not implausible to think of "Slim Shady" - the rapper - as a character that Marshall Mathers created, based in part on something he sees within himself: as Richard Wright, for example, created the killer Bigger Thomas. Most things that he describes on the album obviously never happened. Mathers is in the business of letting his demons out in words, but it is absolutely pivotal to keep in mind that a cd, even one that describes assaults and murders, is not itself an assault or murder, but an act of expression. As a matter of fact, he appeared at the MTV Music Awards with N'Sync, and there was no problem.

"The Marshall Mathers LP" is not violence, but a transfiguration of violent impulses into art. In that it resembles many of the greatest works of art of the Western tradition.

A lot of white boys have an intense identification with Eminem, and that could be one of the factors leading to an act of gay-bashing. On the other hand, it could relieve some kid of his pent-up aggression. I don't think we can know what the overall effect is. But either way, Eminem is someone we absolutely must hear.

We've rarely heard what's actually happening in the head of someone like Eminem - the rage, the pain - and now that we have, we'd better listen. What is perhaps most extraordinary about "The Marshall Mathers LP" is its self-consciousness. His dominant theme is the identification of fans with an artist and his responsibility for their actions. He marched into the MTV Awards with dozens of look-alikes, emphasizing both his effects and his constituency. "Don't you want to be just like me?" he rapped on his first album, "tie a rope to your dick and jump from a tree?" On the recent single "Stan" he describes a fan who takes his album seriously to the point self-destruction and murder. "Don't you know that I say that shit just clowning, dog?" he asks.

That level of awareness - along with astounding verbal and narrative agility and extreme intensity of expression and self-revelation - are what make "The Marshall Mathers LP" art. I listen to it with a clear conscience and I'm going to continue to do so. And I'll be rooting for Marshall on Grammy night.

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