Reconstruction 8.4 (2008)
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"God sent me to piss the world off": Eminem, "Psycho"-Machia, and the Morality Vice / James Keller
<1> The term psychomachia, drawn from the title of Prudentius' fourth century work, dramatizes the "struggle for the soul of man by the personified forces of good and evil" (Bevington 117). In morality plays such as The Castle of Perseverance (circa 1400-1425), the embodiments of vice and virtue engage in a mock military conflict to win the allegiance of humanity. However, the difficulties of staging mock battles in limited space with a limited cast resulted in the evolution of the psychomachia intrigue plot where the figure of wickedness tempts the representation of humanity to embrace evil and reject good (Spivack 152, 170). Of course, the psychomachia served as the organizing principle for many of the morality plays, the chief form of popular drama between 1400 and 1550. Eventually, the psychomachia structure evolved, forming the nucleus of Tudor drama where the contest between contrary forces obtained a more realistic and secular context. The Elizabethan history plays, for example, adapted this structure to illustrate the dialectical influences on a king, conflicted by the leverage of good and bad counselors. What I have identified as Eminem's "psycho"-machia is a variation on the same structure that became early modern drama. Here the soul and allegiance of America's youth is the prize in a contest between Eminem's "wicked rhymes" and the moral guidance of parents and social institutions, the rapper himself becoming the comic trickster and/or devil figure of morality drama whose infectious humor and artful intrigue drove the narrative and popularized the art form, winning the audiences' complicity in his audacious villainy.
'Psycho'-machia and "Guilty Conscience"
<2> The most obvious manifestation of Eminem's flirtation with this medieval dramatic structure can be found on his first (major label) CD--The Slim Shady LP (SSLP hereafter). The track "Guilty Conscience" dramatizes three separate instances of the struggle between wholesome and wicked influences on mercurial and impressionable youth. Interestingly, Eminem's mentor and producer, the notorious Dr. Dre of NWA, Aftermath, and Deathrow Records fame plays the good conscience while Eminem promotes criminal behavior. In the first scenario, Eddie plans to rob a liquor store, but as he enters, Dr. Dre, identifying himself as Eddie's "motherfucking conscience," invites him to "consider the consequences." The good angel urges sympathy for the victim as well as self-preservation: the "clerk" is "older than George Burns," and the neighborhood knows and will expose the perpetrator. Eminem, the (self-) destructive side of Eddie's conscience, urges reckless selfishness: "Fuck that! Do that shit! Shoot that Bitch!/Can you afford to blow this shit? Are you that rich?" In this particular instance, the good conscience convinces the perpetrator to abandon his plans; however, it is his only triumph.
<3> In the second tableau, Stan meets a girl at a rave party and "things start getting hot and heavy" when "his conscience comes into play." The wicked persona encourages him to rape the girl since she is drugged with Rohipnol, and when Dre reminds Stan that the girl is "only fifteen" and that he might be charged with statutory rape, the evil influence invites the subject to determine whether the girl has pubic hair, and settling that question, he encourages Stan to "fuck that…and bail." In this instance, the final argument is given to the bad conscience, the conclusion of the debate suggesting that Stan follows through with his lawless predation.
<4> The third dramatization involves Grady, a 29 year old construction worker who comes home from work early to find his wife in bed with another man. The disposition of the bad conscience has degenerated from the playful villainy of the previous scenario to unmitigated rage, while the good conscience is clearly shaken, but pressing for calm. Here, the techniques of the good angel are particularly reminiscent of the morality vice, the personification of "human weakness" (Cushman 63), who entices humanity to embrace iniquity and who often does so by ridiculing the benign influences of the good angel. When Dre cautions Grady against reckless violence, Eminem reminds him of his (Dre's) own indiscretion in slapping the reporter Dee Barnes. The veteran rapper responds with rage and threats of violence. The evil influence, having exposed the hypocrisy of the good and turned reason to wrath, triumphs in his success and, for a brief time, becomes the ironic advocate of patience:
Uhhh-aaahh! Temper, temper
Mr. Dre? Mr. N.W.A.
Mr. AK, coming straight out of Compton; y'all better make way?
How the fuck you gonna tell this man not to be violent?
This time the bad conscience overwhelms the good with the expected result of two murders. At the end, even the good conscience urges Grady to kill the adulterers, two shots ringing out at the conclusion of the track.
<5> "Guilty Conscience" introduces some interesting variations on the traditional dialogue between the good and bad angels of the psychomachia. The conflict is embellished to include a debate between youthful exuberance and sober maturity. Dr. Dre, during his NWA and Deathrow periods, was representative of the violent, sensual, misogynistic, and profane excesses of Gangsta Rap, a musical genre which NWA innovated and popularized. Dre was a colleague of murdered rapper Tupac Shakur, whose death erased the boundary between violent entertainment and violent acts, and the producer of Snoop Dog, who was tried for murder but acquitted in a separate incident. Dre's persona in the song at first reveals a temperament mellowed by age and experience. He is willing to wait on explanations for the indefensible, and when he realizes there are none, he still hesitates, considering the negative impact of a murder conviction. Meanwhile, the "harebrained Hotspur," the younger Shady, demands rash, thoughtless, and aggressive action. The dispute is clearly both a defense of the mock violence of hardcore rap and a concession to social pressures that demand responsible entertainment. Although the youthful bad conscience succeeds in persuading the mature and the good to concede defeat, the argument, nevertheless, makes an important point about personal responsibility. By personifying and dramatizing the internal processes of the mind, the rappers reveal that their words can only influence the subject; they cannot cause him/her to act. Each individual must be personally responsible for his/her own actions. The impulse toward criminal behavior occurs in the mind, not on the CD, radio, or television. At the same time, the voicing of the good conscience, particularly by an entertainer who has learned some difficult lessons about violence (mostly vicariously), suggests that the rap music industry may have stopped to consider the cultural impact of its work. The song could even be read as a facetious effort by an experienced rapper to encourage a younger to clean up his lyrical content, to become more socially responsible. Of course, the conclusion of the lyric suggests that the older rapper cannot break the cycle of violence or permanently repress his rage. Although Dre urges responsible behavior, he eventually surrenders to baser instincts.
<6> The image of the seasoned African American producer/performer debating the younger white rapper generates an interesting allegory of cultural influence, one that burlesques the imaginary erasure of boundaries between art and reality. Eminem/Shady plays the starry-eyed fan who takes the lyrics of rap music seriously, assuming that the feigned violence of NWA and Deathrow is sincere and gleefully embracing the anti-social behavior that is largely performance. The racial difference of the two speakers illustrates the commonplace notion that much of the fan base for rap music is white adolescents who enjoy the rebellious impulses of the music and the culture it inspires, who want to believe in the legitimacy of the rebellion portrayed therein, and who are not easily dissuaded from their assumption that rap violence is authentic. However, the interaction between the two speakers becomes at least temporarily didactic, instructing the Shady figure in the performative qualities of the music and reminding the young fan that the gangsta persona is a façade and that gang violence can only be put into practice with the most disastrous consequences. Within this interpretive framework, Shady who appears to be the instigator of mayhem becomes the embodiment of the ruined white teenager whose sweetness has been poisoned by gangsta rap and who poisons others in his turn. Briefly the good/evil binary is deconstructed, each becoming the other until they embrace over the issue of adultery. Dre who pushes for rationality reveals a reluctance to make his artistic violence substantive until he is provoked by a hot-headed neophyte.
<7> The dialogue between good and evil inverts the binary of hip hop. Because rap has been a largely African American art form for three decades, the criticism of the music's negative influence on youth culture has been directed mostly at young black males who have been blamed for the escalating gangland violence and mischief. "Guilty Conscience" reverses the stereotype that African American males are singly responsible for the problems associated with hip hop culture. The African American male is the voice of reason and discretion in the song, and the Caucasian the instigator of mischief. This reversal of racial stereotypes has significance in the tradition of the morality plays as well. In his article "The Origin of the Figure Called the Vice in Tudor Drama," Francis Hugh Mares reveals that the representations of weakness were occasionally played in black face (29), suggesting a longstanding cultural bias against black, the same that is being subverted in Eminem's role playing.
The Vice
<8> The above mentioned vice figure from the medieval morality drama and from the subsequent mature plays of the early modern period is an illuminating context through which to view the extraordinary popularity of the rapper Eminem whose work is so successful that even those who despise his sexism and homophobia often buy his CDs. The rapper's most savage and histrionic work, The Marshall Mathers LP (MMLP), is one of the fastest selling albums ever released—1.8 million copies sold in the first week. Eminem evolved into a lovable villain whose clownish violence and youthful mischief cannot be taken seriously, but whose social commentary occasionally strikes a direct hit at the heart of the American establishment, his satire holding a particular appeal for adolescents.
<9> Similarly, the vice figure of medieval and early modern drama—a character that embodied human wickedness and deceit—was, despite his determination to destroy humanity, wildly popular with audiences. He was usually the star of the show, instigating and directing the action of the play, and was consistently personated by the leading actor in the troop (Bevington 79-80). In Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil, Bernard Spivack attempts to explain the popularity of this 'shady' figure on the early modern stage: "…vice[s] became morally seductive" and "because of their comic and dramatic vitality, became theatrically fascinating" (122-123). The vice is a "practical joker and clever fool, delighting the audience by his satirical wit, his frequent grossness, his antics (both physical and verbal), and above all his consummate artistry in deceit" (198). The forgoing description of the vice's appeal could serve equally well as an explanation for the popularity of Eminem, whose lyrics and antics invoke the longstanding popular tradition of the "homelitic showman and satirist: a nimble trickster, dissembler, and humorist on the side of evil" (Spivack 132).
<10> Spivack argues that the primary "purpose of the vice is to illustrate his name and his nature" (134). "The vice says: 'This is what I am, and now I will show you what I can do to frail and foolish humanity'" (126). The names given to the vice figures in medieval drama are frequently allegorical, but seldom are the characters named for a particular deadly sin. Instead, they tend toward more generalized disruptive qualities (Cushman 63), and the names often reveal the centrality of the vice to the narrative: Mischief in Mankind and Magnificence, Subtle Shift in Clyomon and Clamydes, Common Conditions in Common Conditions, Misrule in Impatient Poverty, Jack Juggler in Jack Juggler, Iniquity in King Darius, Nichol Newfangle in Like Will to Like, Politic Persuasion in Patient and Meek Grissill, Desire in Tom Tyler and his Wife, Inclination in Trial of Treasure, Ill Report in Virtuous and Goodly Susanna, Merry Report in Play of the Weather, and Riot in Youth, to name only a few.
<11> The morality vice recites his criminal dossier to illustrate his name and his proficiency with deceit and murder, among other infamies. In Youth, Riot boasts that he narrowly escaped hanging when the rope broke, yet he stole a man's gold shortly thereafter:
I came lately from Newgate
Verily, sir, the rope brake,
And so I fell to the ground…
By the way I met a courtier's lad
And twenty nobles of gold in his purse he had.
Mankind's Mischief admits that "Of murder and manslaughter I have my belly full" (both qtd. in Cushman 136). The trend toward bragging self-satisfied villains continued into Shakespearean drama. Those of Shakespeare's characters most heavily derived from the vice tradition include Iago, Richard III, Aaron, and Falstaff. After a long catalog of his infamies, Aaron of Titus Andronicus concludes:
But I have done a thousand dreadful things,
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed,
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.
(V. i. 141-144)
When Barabas of Marlowe's The Jew of Malta asks the moor Ithamore how he has spent his time, the latter responds with a lengthy dossier of his malefactions:
In setting Christian villages on fire,
Chaining of eunuchs, binding galley slaves.
One time I was a hostler in an inn,
And in the nighttime secretly would I steal
To travelers' chambers, and there cut their throats:
Once at Jerusalem, where the pilgrims kneeled,
I strowed powder on the marble stones,
And therewithal their knees would rankle, so
That I have laughed a-good to see the cripples
Go limping home to Christendom on stilts.
(II.iii.207-216)
Interestingly, both Aaron and Ithamore are Moors, their racial and ethnic difference a constant visual analog to their anti-social activities. With Othello and Iago, Shakespeare reverses the hierarchical racial binary positing the greater good with Othello, the Moor; this carnivaleque yet anti-racist inversion is the same that is will be constructed in Eminem's "Guilty Conscience."
<12> Self-identification and flaunting of one's criminal dossier are qualities so common to the hardcore rapper's posturing that they almost defy illustration. Similar to the morality vice, the players adopt allegorical stage names that suggest mischief and mayhem. Eminem's crew D12 includes Swifty, Kon Artist, Kuniva, Proof, and Bizaare. Eminem has also worked with characters such as Rukus, Xzibit, and ScamZ. In most of these examples, the name signifies a disruptive and criminal nature: some (Kon Artist, Kuniva, and ScamZ) allude to the deceit and dissimulation fundamental to the vice's character. In the tradition of naïve allegory, the names emphasize abstract qualities or individualities, the rappers signifying the generalized traits in socially marginalized, urban youth. They speak for the chaotic potential in this disenfranchised subsection of the population; however, the appeal of rap also extends to the white bourgeoisie, and Eminem's role in the industry has been to broaden or resuscitate the appeal of Gangsta or Thug Rap, marketing it to the white middle class kids.
<13> Beyond its role as mere identification, the name of Eminem's primary alter-ego "Slim Shady" suggests the spiritual, social, and moral condition of the character. Shady is obsessed with self-labeling, and some of Eminem's most well-known tracks are show pieces for this process: "My Name Is" (SSLP), "The Real Slim Shady" (MMLP), and "Without Me" (The Eminem Show or ES). Perhaps the character's self-introductions are intended to signal that the most disreputable persona within Marshall Mathers' repertoire is about to regale the audience with another histrionic catalog of his perfidies, or perhaps the constant self-identification is derivative of the vice's penchant for bragging about his exploits, ensuring that he is admired for his cleverness, or maybe Slim Shady is identified by name to signify that the subsequent chaos is not necessarily advocated by or the responsibility of Eminem/Marshall Mathers. [1] Shady's appearance suggests that the lyrical content is turning toward gallows humor and should not be taken entirely seriously.
<14> "Shady" is both a name and a moral disposition. The title of the track "I'm Shady" (SSLP) is a pun simultaneously referring to the characters name and behavior. The lyrical content of the song itemizes Shady's nefarious exploits:
Who came through with two glocks to terrorize your borough (Huh?)
Told you how to slap dips and murder your girl (I did),
Gave you all the finger and told you to sit and twirl,
Sold a million tapes and still screamed "Fuck the world"?
(Slim Shady) ….
The track concludes with an affirmation of his identity: "I told you I was shady/Y'all didn't wanna believe me/I'm Shady/And that's my name." Similarly, in the cut "I'm Back" from MMLP, Slim brags of his return and offers more proof of the connection between name and conduct:
It's a sick world we live in these days.
"Slim, for Pete's sake, put down Christopher Reeves' legs"…
And that's where I get my name from, that's why the call me
Slim Shady, I'm back; I'm back….
Raps that do not specifically name Shady, nevertheless, continue the character's comic mayhem. On the SSLP, the rapper mocks the idea that he could be taken seriously as a role model when he urges children to imitate his criminal high jinks: "Now follow me and do exactly what you see/Don't you wanna grow up to be just like me?/I slap women eat 'shroom and O.D…." His checklist of malignant activities is so extreme that he burlesques the notion anyone would choose to emulate him:
I'm not a player just an ill rhyme sayer
That'll spray an aerosol can up at the ozone layer
My rap style's warped; I'm runnin' out the morgue
Witcha dead grandmother's corpse to throw it on your porch
Jumped in a Chicken Hawk cartoon with a cape on
And beat up Foghorn Leghorn with an acorn
I'm bout as normal as Norman Bates …
("Role Model")
<15> Eminem regards the Slim Shady persona as a composite of his most sociopathic tendencies, but he also more broadly considers the character as an impulse toward non-conformity and mayhem in the general populace: "And every single person is a Slim Shady lurkin'" (The Real Slim Shady MMLP). In the chorus of the same track, Shady attempts to distinguish himself from his legion of imitators: "I'm Slim Shady. Yes, I'm the real Shady/All you other Slim Shady's are just imitating…." And in the concluding remark, he adds, "…guess there's a Slim Shady in all of us. This universalizing of the Shady character traits reinforces Spivack's observation that the vice "dramatizes the evil that springs from within" (132) and is the "personification of a fault in human nature" (157).
<16> The morality vice was particularly proud of his ability to deceive humanity: "free from human passion and responsibility, his residual emotion is a limitless, amoral merriment, heightened by his jubilation of the success of his intrigue" (Spivack 195). In the morality play King John, Sedition brags, "Is not this a sport," and Hypocrisy in Conflict of Conscience celebrates similarly: "Such chopping cheer as we have made, the like has not been seen" (qtd. in Cushman 141). Shakespeare's Richard III boasts of his unexpected success in the seduction of Lady Anne, "Was ever woman in this humor woo'd/Was ever woman in this humor won?" (I. i. 227-228).
<17> The vice's penchant for boasting is evident in Eminem's lyrics and is closely allied with pride in his ability to inflict harm, perform, recruit fans, and sell CD's. Indeed, much rap music is focused on bravado related to the same subjects. [2] While one could find examples of Eminem crowing of his successes in virtually any of his songs, the vaunting seems particularly strong on The Eminem Show, the third CD on a major label and the work of the rapper at the height of his fame. In "White America," he boasts of all the "turbulence" he has caused in American culture, particularly in the government. He adds that his followers are legion, "…like an army marching in back of me." In "Business," he boasts of his consummate verbal skills:
You're bout to witness hip hop in its
Most pourest, most rawest form flow, almost flawless
Most hardest, most honest, known artist….
He also identifies his swarming fans:
People stepping over people just to rush to the set
Just to get to see an MC who breathes so freely
Ease over these beats and be so breezy….
The entire premise of the song is quite immodest. He portrays Dr. Dre and himself as Batman and Robin, respectively, who have been summoned to rescue hip hop which is "in a state of 911." They must get rid of the rap "criminals," not because of their multiple villainies, but because they are not proficient musicians and lyricists. The idea that Eminem is a superhero defending wickedness and childish mayhem is a recurring subject in his music and videos. The same sense of self-importance is manifest in "Without Me," where he once again brags of his indispensable contributions to the music industry:
A visionary, vision is scary, could start a revolution
Pollutin' the airwaves, a rebel…
I'm interesting, the best thing since wrestling
Infesting in your kids' ears and nesting….
<18> The boasting of the vice is related to his oft touted intimacy with his audience. One of the most common gestures is the "sneering witty asides" to the audience in which he mocks the foolishness of humanity and reveals his satisfaction with the effects of his deceit (Spivack 148, 167; Happe 27). The audience responds positively to his honesty and his skill in dissimulation. This aspect of the tradition has a complicated manifestation in Eminem's work. There is no doubt that the rapper's fans love him, and they are (in the most obvious sense) his audience; however, the musician's career viewed through the conventions of the medieval morality dramas reveals a more interesting relationship with the public. Frequently, he speaks directly to parents and detractors about the kids whom he is presumably corrupting, and these asides constitute gloating. As he delights his (pre)adolescent and twenty-something fans with the carnival merriment of his zany, violent music, he occasionally pauses to offer a commentary to the adult world. In some cases, the direct address may be nothing more than curses hurled at his detractors: "Fuck you, Ms Cheney/Fuck you, Tippur Gore" ("White America"). In the above quotation from "Without Me," the second person possessive pronoun, 'your,' is directed at the parents ("Infesting in your kid's ears and nesting"). Similarly, in the song "Who Knew" (MMLP), he addresses the establishment (parents, critics, activists, and government officials), urging them to "get a sense of humor":
Quit trying to censor my music. This is for your kids' amusement.
But don't blame me when little Eric jumps off the terrace.
You should'a been watching him. Apparently you ain't parents.
Slim Shady exposes the hypocrisy of those who blame the popular media for America's social problems along with their similar assumption that entertainment should act as a babysitter. The direct address to the parents suggests that they are complicit in the moral degeneration of their children, and this too is an element of the vice, whose intimacy with his audience signifies their shared culpability (Taylor 170). The difference here is that the parents are not willing participants. The rapper speaks to the parents in the last verse of "White America" where he mockingly embraces his reputation as the fountainhead of adolescent corruption: "So to the parents of America/I am the damager aimed at little Erica/To attack her character" (MMLP). Here the rapper facilitates adolescent rebellion, not through his chaotic example, but by directly ridiculing and reviling the hovering parents who restrict and censor their children's entertainment. Speaking as a proxy for the discontented youth, he teaches them to rebel while he simultaneously broadcasts the mutiny against domestic authority.
<19> Cushman asserts that "satire is the vice's strongest trait" (85). As in the above example, Eminem's satire is concentrated on the exposure of hypocrisy within all facets of the establishment, but particularly among those who have the audacity to criticize his work. [3] He has been particularly vociferous in his denunciation of authority—parents and politicians. At the conclusion of "Cum on Everybody," he admits, "…I only cuss to make your mom upset" (SSLP). The satire becomes most bitter on MMLP where he responds to his detractors, unleashing an unparalleled vituperation to repudiate those who objected to SSLP. On the track "Who Knew," the rapper absolves himself of blame for the problems of youth violence and profanity by identifying a lack of parental supervision as the true culprit:
And last week I seen this Schwartzenegger movie
Where he's shootin' all sorts of motherfuckers with an uzi;
I seen these three little kids go up in the front row
Screaming "Go!" with their 17 year old uncle.
I'm like "guidance?"
Ain't they got the same moms and dads that got mad when I asked if they liked violence?
(MMLP)
The lyric suggests that children are influenced by a variety of social forces; he impugns parents for allowing their adolescent daughters to wear makeup and school bus drivers for cussing at the same children with whose safety they have been entrusted. He insists that it is unfair to scapegoat his work when many of the worst offenders are those explicitly charged with the supervision of youth—uncles, parents, and bus drivers.
<20> He aims many of his satiric barbs at the government: "I'm sorry; there must be a mix up/You want me to fix up lyrics while the president gets his dick sucked?" ("Who Knew" MMLP). He is understandably sensitive to the accusation that his work (and that of his colleagues) is in some way responsible for the Columbine rampage, once again lampooning Bill Clinton for blaming rock stars and song lyrics in the wake of the catastrophe:
Came home, and somebody musta broke into the back window
And stole two loaded machine guns and both of my trench coats…
And them shits reach through six kids each
And Slim gets blamed in Bill Clint's speech to fix these streets?
("Remember Me" MMLP)
The rapper's incredulity at the scapegoating in the President's speech is fraught with irony. He inadvertently blames the gun industry, who supplied so many guns to two sixteen year olds, and the parents, who were oblivious when their teenagers began stockpiling weapons. Interestingly, this satire might be too subtle for the youngest portion of the rapper's audience, and thus, once again, he may be directly addressing, not his fans, but their parents and other detractors. Slim Shady's disputations with the government also extend to the efforts to censor his music. In the powerful track "White America" from The Eminem Show, the rapper (w)raps himself in the American flag and protests that the efforts to stifle his music violate free speech. He triumphs that he is "in trouble with the government" because he has "shoveled shit all … [his] life/And now he's dumpin' it on/White America." His delight in the turbulence he has caused is reminiscent of the vice's own self-satisfaction and amusement at the upshot of his villainies.
The media is also subjected to Eminem's critique:
And it seems like the media immediately
Points a finger at me…
So I point one back at 'em….
("The Way I Am" MMLP)
Of course the finger that he points is his extended middle finger, his trademark gesture and an expression of his disdain. Here again, a portion of the satire is rather subtle. The suggestion that the media is "full of shit too" implies that the industry is in no position to blame others for exploiting (for money and ratings) the public's interest in violence and sex. Ultimately the media perpetuates the same violence that it pretends to deplore.
<21> Slim Shady's criticism of religious institutions has been relatively muted. He speaks frequently about going to hell for his wickedness; most of the time, however, this commentary seems to be in jest. The most direct repudiation of religious hypocrisy appears in the track "Criminal" from MMLP. After deriding gays and lesbians for their complaints about his lyrics, he mocks the nemesis of that same community, Southern Evangelical preachers. In a thick Southern drawl, he lampoons the hypocrisy of religious leaders who, as Shakespeare so eloquently observed, show us "the steep and thorny way to heaven" while themselves "the primrose path of dalliance tread":
Please Lord, this boy needs Jesus
Heal this child; help us to destroy these demons
Oh and please send me a brand new car
And a prostitute while my wife's sick in the hospital.
He obliquely attacks religious institutions by his indifference to their sanctimonious directives, particularly on D12's Devil's Night, where he and his colleagues revile religious doctrine by embracing the devil and his disruptive agenda.
<22> The vice is frequently critical of the sacraments, particularly of marriage (Cushman 87). Riot, from the morality play Youth (1513-29), attempts to dissuade the titular character from marrying: "A wife? Nay…/The devil said he had liever burn all his life/Than once to take a wife" (qtd. in Cushman 87). Ambidexter in Preston's Cambises (1558-69) also discourages marriage: "…I have heard some say/That ever I was married now curse the day" (qtd. in Cushman 88). Of course, like the vice, Eminem is extremely misogynistic, and his own marital difficulties are notorious. The ongoing conflict between Eminem and his girlfriend/wife/ex-wife (a different role for each LP) has been a continuous source of inspiration for his lyrical invective. He kills, insults, assaults, and/or humiliates her on each of his albums.
<23> The morality "vice acts as a presenter and a chorus, introducing the other characters to the audience and commenting on them" (Mares 14). This function allows him to be the spokesman for the play's homiletic argument (Spivack 132). Vindice of Tourneur's Revenger's Tragedy (a revival of the morality tradition in England's Jacobean age) introduces the family of the lascivious Duke as though they were a pageant of the deadly sins:
Duke: royal lecher: go, grey haired Adultery
And thou his son, as impious steeped as he
And thou his bastard true-begot in evil
And thou his Duchess that will do with devil:
Four ex'lent characters!
(I.i.1-5)
After a lengthy celebration of his own proficiency in villainy and an account of his plans to destroy those who stand in his way to the throne, Shakespeare's Richard III marks the approach of the very person whose overthrow he has been plotting: "Dive, thoughts, down to my soul, here Clarence comes" (I.i.41). Mischief in Mankind (1461-85) marks the approach of charity: "Tydyngs, tydyngs, I have a spyede one:/Hens with your stuff" (qtd. in Cushman 141). In John Bale's King John (1530-36), Sedition makes a similar observation: I trow here cometh some hogherd calling for his pigs" (qtd. in Cushman 142). In Respublica (1553), Avarice warns of Time's daughter Verity: "A daughter eke he hath, called Verity…/She bringeth all to light, and some she bringeth to shame" (qtd. in Cushman 140). These incidents reveal several tendencies of the vice in his introduction of other characters—a gesture of concealment or dissimulation at the approach of virtues or rivals, an element of ridicule, and an effort at moral condemnation.
<24> Some of Eminem's songs begin with the rapper serving as an announcer, notably "Business" (ES) where he mimics a carnival sideshow crier, "White America" (ES) where he delivers his mocking patriotic address, and "As the World Turns" (SSLP) where he moralizes on the "trial and tribulations" that people "must go through." However, his role as presenter has other dimensions, ones that are even more vice-like. Following the tag-team diatribe with D12 in "Under the Influence" (MMLP), Slim Shady introduces the other rappers to emphasize the allegory of immorality signified by their names and their touted actions:
D12 … Dirty motherfuckin' Dozen\
Nasty like a skank slut bitch with thirty fucking husbands
Bizarre Kid
Swifty McVeigh
The Kon Artist
The Kuniva
Dirty Harry
Haha, and Slim Shady
These introductions follow the dramatization of their degenerate behavior and their roles as urban villains in their respective lyrics. Kon Artist brags about his skills as a grifter ("I signed to a local label for fun/Say I got cancer, get dropped, take the advancement and run"); Swifty, whose name suggests thievery, is snatchin' every penny, his victims actually handing him their bracelets; and Bizarre's behavior is indeed bizarre: "Jackin' off my dick on a bed of barbed wire … I'm ripped, I'm on an acid trip…/It's gonna cost me 300 dollars to get my pit bull an abortion…." On D12's CDs, Eminem punctuates the commentary of his colleagues with choral verses, marking the divisions between speakers. He acts as the E-MC for a collection of MC's.
<25> Ironically, within the morality tradition, the instigator of mayhem and damnation is the character picked out to offer warnings about the negative effects of vice (Happe 28; Spivack 111). In other words, the vice warns against his particular nature either by word or by example. In "The Kids" (an alternative track from the clean version of MMLP), Shady is introduced to an elementary class as their substitute teacher. In this instance, he combines the role of presenter with that of the homiletic spokesman, introducing three exempla of wicked living and encouraging the kids to avoid the fate of the already fallen. First he introduces Bob: "But first I would like you to meet my friend Bob;/Say, 'Hi Bob.'" Shady informs the kids that smoking marijuana turned Bob into a rapist and a serial killer. He hangs out at the local diner where he attacks waitresses "off the clock" and 'drags' them "straight to the chopping block." The second lesson involves Zack, who destroyed his spine taking ecstasy and whose "back starts to look like the McDonalds arches … so that's the story of Zack the ecstasy maniac." In the final caution, he offers himself as an object lesson in a sermon about the evils of drugs. Slim warns against magic mushrooms, which he refers to as "fungus," which will cause the children to see things that "aren't really there/like fat women in G-strings with orange hair." Each illustration is followed by a sardonic caution against illicit drugs, and Shady, in the gesture of the vice, warns the kids against emulating him: "So don't do drugs, and do exactly as I don't?"
<26> Eminem/Shady repeatedly cautions his audience against regarding him as a role model. In the track of the same name from SSLP, he mockingly invites children to emulate him; however, the encouragement is clearly tongue in cheek as he articulates increasingly self-destructive practices that no one would want to replicate: he willfully sleeps with women infected with HIV; he contracts "genital wart" and gonorrhea; and he "tie[s] a rope around [his] penis and jumps from a tree." The final direct address ("You probably wanna grow up to be just like me") is intended to emphasize the improbability that anyone would want to be 'just like him' and to ridicule those who believe that children's behavior is influenced by his comically self-annihilating antics. He concludes the track "I Still Don't Give a Fuck" (SSLP) with a description of himself that is less than enviable: "My worst day on earth was my first birthday/Retarded? What did the nurse say? Brain Damaged?"
<27> The role of the rapper as presenter and lecturer is parallel to the theatricality of the vice who was the instigator of the dilemma that creates the tension and crisis within the morality drama. Spivack observes that the vice is the "playmaker whose histrionic deceits and beguilements create the action of the play…" (191). Shakespeare's Iago, the most well-known of the Elizabethan vice derivatives, sets the tragic events of Othello in motion with his lies, and he resuscitates and nurtures his malignant plot each time it starts to go awry, leading inevitably to the destruction of himself and several other characters. Even before the $100 million grossing film 8 Mile, Eminem's work was highly theatrical. His CD's are littered with tracks identified as skits, most of which glorify his erratic and violent behavior. They include phone messages from his lawyer asking him to tone down the violence and profanity in his records, feigned meetings with label executives repudiating his work ("Paul"), and phone calls from both fans ("Ken Kaniff") and detractors ("Bitch"). Some of the songs include fragments of dialogue between characters, and still other cuts constitute musical theater. The work that first garnered Eminem notoriety is "'97 Bonnie and Clyde" (SSLP) in which Slim Shady has already killed his girlfriend and put her body in the trunk of his car and is preparing to take his infant daughter with him to the beach to dump her mother's body. The song is a dramatic monologue replete with sound effects from Eminem's actual daughter, Hailie Jade. In "My Fault" (SSLP), the rapper dramatizes the mayhem and panic that results when he accidentally gives his date, Susan, too many magic mushrooms. In the hit song "Stan" (MMLP), he stages a brief morality play intended to warn his fans not to take his lyrics literally or his antics seriously. The epistolary lyric includes missives from an obsessed fan who also longs to and does kill his girlfriend. Perhaps the most disturbing of all the theatrical tracks is the prequel to "'97 Bonnie and Clyde," titled "Kim" (MMLP) in which the speaker kills his girlfriend and stuffs her in the car trunk. And, of course, the previously discussed track "The Kids" should also be included in this category.
<28> The vice enjoys ridiculing the good, particularly human piety. In Youth (1513-29), Pride upbraids the titular character for abandoning riotous living in favor of religious devotion: he would "…Make you holy ere you be old…/Thou wert a stark fool to leave mirth." In Nature (1490-1501), Sensuality complains, "Where ys your lusty hart becom…/I have great marvell how ye may/Lyve in such mysery" (qtd. in Cushman 93). Eminem's Slim Shady is equally contemptuous of virtue. He mocks those pop stars who maintain a wholesome public image and does so most memorably in "The Real Slim Shady" (MMLP) where he derides Will Smith who "don't gotta cuss in his raps to sell records;/Well I do, so fuck him and fuck you too." Slim Shady has aimed his poison darts at other squeaky clean pop stars such as the members of N'Sync and The Backstreet Boys. Moreover, in the track "I'm Shady" (SSLP), he parodies his own iniquity by offering a false report of his salubrious demeanor:
I like happy things, I'm really calm and peaceful;
I like birds, bees; I like people;
I like funny things that make me happy and gleeful…
He concludes his mockery with images of pollution, self-destructiveness, and statutory rape that undermine the sincerity of the previous account, leaving the audience with the conviction that he is not peaceful, and he does not like people.
<29> Rap music's tradition of boasting and battling (Rose 25, 36) creates an analogue to the vice's inclination to struggle with other personifications of wickedness (Cushman 117). The contentious nature of the rap music scene is notorious. The egotistical bluster of rappers has been translated into actual murders and gun play, involving some very high profile deaths. Eminem's best friend and a member of D12 was killed a bar fight in Detroit in 2006. 50 Cent boasts of having been shot nine times, wearing his scars like a red badge of courage. Most of the time, Eminem seems to have avoided the potentially dangerous practice of insulting the hardcore rap stars, focusing on less threatening targets—family, pop stars, etc. However, he was briefly drawn into 50 Cent's battle with JaRule and the label Murder Inc. In addition, Eminem inherited a dangerous quarrel with Deathrow Records when he contracted to work with Dr. Dre, who was once a member of the same, but who fell out of favor with the organization when he decided to leave. Byron Williams, Shady's former bodyguard, describes numerous unpleasant encounters with the gangsta soldiers of Deathrow (53-61). On a lighter note, Eminem maintained a playful combat with Dr. Dre (his producer) whom he kills twice on The Marshall Mathers LP: "And Dr. Dre said…Nothing you idiots/Dr. Dre's dead; he's locked in my basement" ("The Real Slim Shady"). In the song "Criminal" from the same CD, he holds and AK-47 to Dre's face and pulls the trigger. Moreover, the very structure of battle raps, dramatized in the film 8 Mile, in which multiple speakers try to outstrip each other with insults and accounts of their own violent activities, implies a confrontation between various representatives of wickedness, and Eminem began his musical career in just such an environment by participating in the battle raps of the Detroit, Hip Hop club scene. One of the most fractious disputes was maintained between Eminem and the Insane Clown Posse (ICP—Shaggy2Dope and Violent Jay), whom he ridicules and humiliates on MMLP. Eminem was accused of brandishing a firearm to threaten ICP's tour manager on the same day that he pistol whipped a club bouncer whom he believed was cuckolding him (Williams, Bizzness 160).
<30> In nothing does Eminem more resemble the morality vice than in his verbal dexterity. The vice amuses the audience with
Insults, scabrous language, profanity, long speeches of pure fustian, puns, malapropisms, garbled proclamations, double-entendres, elegant foreignisms, and endless jests about anatomy, virginity, marriage, and the gallows. (Spivack 117)
Since a portion of the actual music in hip hop is sampled from the preexisting recordings and the remainder often produced by innovative sound technologies, requiring little or no instrumental dexterity, the art of rap must lies in the cleverness of the lyrical content and the artist's ability to "spit it." The above quotation could easily substitute as a summary of Eminem's writing and an explanation of his wit and popularity. On the other end of the verbal spectrum, the vice's tendency to speak nonsense (Cushman 108) is emulated by Eminem: "Chigga, chigga, chigga" ("The Real Slim Shady" MMLP); "I told you it's OK Hai Hai, wanna baba?/Take a night-night? Nan-a-boo, goo-goo-ga-ga?/Her make goo-goo ca-ca? Da-da change your dai-dee" ("'97 Bonnie and Clyde" SSLP); "shoobie-do-doo-wa/Skeebie-ba-be-wop, Christopher Reeves ("Who Knew" MMLP).
<31> Consistent with medieval literary techniques, the vice's language includes frequent alliteration and assonance: Haphazard in Appius and Virginia (1559-68)—What culling and lulling…what tugging, what lugging, what pugging"; and Hypocrisy in Wever's Lusty Juventus (1547-53)—"What hurly burly is here,/Smick smack … You go tick tack" (qtd. in Cushman 109). Eminem would generate few rhymes without assonance. The quality of his rhymes is dependent largely upon the succession of like vowel sounds: "Cuz this is what happens when bad meets evil/We hit the trees like Vietnamese people/He's evil and I'm bad like Steve Segal ("Bad Meets Evil" SSLP):
Picket sign for my wicked rhymes, look at the times
Sick of this mind, of the mother-fuckin' kid that's behind
All this commotion, emotions run as deep as oceans explodin'
("Cleaning Out My Closet" ES);
And "I'm interesting, the best thing since wrestling/Infesting in your kids ears and nesting/Testing, 'Attention Please…'" ("Without Me" ES). Eminem refers to this verbal repetition as the "inside rhyme" through which he attempts to harmonize multiple vowel sounds in a single line (Elrick 9).
<32> The rapper also invents puns and employs euphemisms. On the track "Criminal" (MMLP), he baits the gay community for their incessant protests against his hateful lyrics, [4] this time lampooning the murder of Versace:
Hey. It's me, Versace
Woops, somebody shot me!
And I was just chekin' the mail
Get it? Checkin' the "male"?
The title of his track "Cum on Everybody," is a play on words suggesting both ejaculation and an invitation to engagement. In "Without Me" (ES), the rapper puns on the word "nuisance," implying both annoyance and a new sensibility. Of Course, Eminem's work is loaded with euphemisms many of which involve an equation between his genitalia and a knife: "I put wives at risk with a knife like this" ("Who Knew" MMLP) and "So bring the money by tonight /Cause your wife says this is the biggest knife/She's ever saw…" ("I'm Shady" SSLP). The equation of the dagger to the penis is a cliché, but it has a particular resonance within the morality play where the vice brandishes his "dagger of lath" to drive the puny mortals before him (Happe 20).
<33> Despite its allegorical association with human wickedness, the vice's role within the morality drama is largely comedic. His machinations employed in the ruin of mankind inspire laughter as opposed to hatred or dread. The same can be said for much of Eminem's work, which has established a new low in the standard of filth, profanity, and hatred in the recording industry, and yet he has been wildly popular, sometimes even among those who are targets of his derision and satire, and the only explanation for this paradox is the humor that he brings to his subjects. He exposes the amusing foibles of a variety of individuals and special interest groups. Feminists have been particularly vociferous in their criticism of the rapper because his works seem to promote rape and other forms of violence against women. Yet in some of these instances, the violence is partially mitigated by their cartoon-like qualities. For example, "As the World Turns" (SSLP) dramatizes a chase and brawl between the Slim Shady persona and an obese woman. The combat begins in a laundromat and ends in the woman's bedroom. During the fray, he shoots her "five times, and every bullet bounce[s] off her." She reciprocates by swallowing his "leg whole like an egg roll" after which he is "hopping around crippled." He decides that he will have to "fuck that fat slut to death," so he pulls out his "go go gadget dick," which "hit[ting] the ground" creates an "earthquake and power outage." While any practice that has a tendency to legitimize violence against women or any minority group is repugnant, it is, nevertheless, difficult to take seriously the farcical activities described in the above lyric. In the same song, Slim Shady describes himself as "a rapist and a repeated prison escapist," but his actions are satiric. He is the rambunctious meddler who delights audiences with his energetic and spontaneous villainies, whose invectives have pierced the hide of many sacred cows. He encourages his listeners to laugh at many of the same subjects about which they, understandably, have no sense of humor and demonstrates that wickedness is always more entertaining (not to mention appealing) than virtue.
<34> The recurring signal within Eminem's lyrics which reveals his role as satirist rather than hatemonger is the sound of his laughter. The vice's laughter echoes through the morality tradition (Spivack 161). The vice is so entertained by the success of his machinations that he must pause to enjoy the ensuing chaos. Slim Shady, likewise, stops to appreciate his handiwork. He is amused at his ability to exasperate his detractors. At the conclusion of the provocative tracks "White America" (ES) and "Kill You" (MMLP), he pauses to laugh and reassure his audience that his poison is all in jest: "Hahaha! I'm just playin' American; You know I love ya…" and "Hahaha, I'm just playin', ladies; You know I love ya." In "I'm the Real Shady," he laughs after telling the audience that he has killed Dr. Dre and locked him in the basement (MMLP), and at the end of "Under the Influence" (MMLP), he laughs as he introduces himself and his collaborators.
<35> While the similarities between the medieval morality traditions of the vice and Eminem's artistic persona, particularly Slim Shady, are too numerous to ignore; it is not the intention of this discussion to suggest that the marginally educated gangsta rapper is consciously invoking an archaic theatrical practice, but, instead, that he has inadvertently tapped into a formula for popular entertainment, perhaps one that spoke specifically to the disenfranchised and disempowered of its own age (as rap does today), invoking their desire to break free of the rigorous class system that held them down. They delighted in the triumph of chaos over order. Eminem may be informed by the manifestation of the morality narrative in other cultural processes. He admits that he derived the idea for the struggle between good and evil in "Guilty Conscience" from the film Animal House (1978) in which one of the characters is tempted to sleep with an unconscious woman after a party. The puckish behavior of Eminem's stage persona can be construed as the natural outgrowth of the censure he has received from critics on the political right and left. He discovered that controversy sells, and the creation of Slim Shady constitutes the mechanism for the production of lucrative conflict.
Works Cited
8 Mile. Dir. Curtis Hanson. Universal, 2002.
Bevington, David. From Mankind to Marlowe: Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1962.
Cushman, L.W. The Devil and the Vice in the English Dramatic Literature before Shakespeare. New York: Halle, 1900.
D12. Devil's Night. Interscope, 2001.
Edwards, Viv and Thomas J. Sienkewicz. Oral Cultures Past and Present: Rappin' to Homer New York: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
Elrick, M.L. "Eminem's Dirty Secrets." White Noise: The Eminem Collection. Ed. Hilton Als and Darryl A. Turner. New York: Thunder Mouth, 2003. 1-16.
Eminem. The Eminem Show. Aftermath Records, 2002.
---. The Marshall Mathers LP. Interscope Records, 2001.
---. The Slim Shady LP. Aftermath/Interscope, 1999.
Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.
Happe', Peter. "Theatricality in devils, Sinnekins, and the Vice." Cahiers 53 (1998): 1-12.
Keller, James R. "Shady Agonistes: Eminem, Abjection, and Masculine Protest." Studies in Popular Culture 25 (April 2003): 14-24.
Mares, Francis Hugh. "The Origin of the Figure Called 'the Vice' in Tudor Drama." Huntington Library Quarterly 22 (1958): 11-29.
Marlowe, Christopher. The Jew of Malta. Ed. N.M. Bawcutt. Manchester, UK: Manchester UP, 1978.
Poole, Ralph. "I'm the Worst Thing Since Elvis Presley: J.T. LeRoy, Eminem, and the Art of Hate Speech." Anglistik & Englischunterricht 66 (2005): 171-198.
Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1994.
Rosen, Ralph M. and Donald R. Marks. "Comedies of Transgression in Gangsta Rap and Ancient Classical Poetry." New Literary History 30.4 (1999): 897-928.
Rosen, Ralph M. and Victoria Baines. "I Am Whatever You Say I Am." Classical and Modern Literature 22 (2002): 103-127.
Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Ed. David Bevington. 3rd Edition. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1980.
Spivack, Bernard. Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil: The History of Metaphor in relation to his Major Villains. New York: Columbia UP, 1958.
Stephens, Vincent. "Pop Goes the Rapper: A Close Reading of Eminem's Genderphobia." Popular Music 24 (2005): 21-36.
Taylor, Andrew. "'To pley a pagyn of the Devyl': Turpiloquium and the Scurrae in Early Drama." Medieval English Theatre 11 (1989): 162-174.
Tourneur, Cyril. The Revenger's Tragedy. Ed, Brian Gibbons. New York: Norton, 1967.
Williams, Byron. Shady Bizzness: Life as Marshall Mathers' Bodyguard in an Industry of Paper Gangsters. Detroit: Big Willz Records/Manage Me Productions, 2000.
Williams, Christopher G. "Losing Himself in the Music: Will the Real Marshall Mathers Please Stand Up?" Popular Culture Review 15 (2004): 79-89.
Notes
[1] In a previously published essay, I discuss the various personifications that Eminem performs within his poetic canon as well as their relationship to his notorious misogyny and homophobia: "Shady Agonistes: Eminem, Abjection, and Masculine Protest." Studies in Popular Culture 25 (April 2003): 14-24. G. Christopher Williams also examines the rapper's personas, concentrating on the role of the postmodern artist in blurring the lines between the real and the simulation, in following T.S. Eliot's aphorism that "the artist should experience an extinction of the self": "Losing Himself in the Music: Will the Real Marshall Mathers Please Stand Up?" Popular Culture Review 15 (2004): 79-89. [^]
[2] Much attention has been given to the relationship between Rap music and the tradition "signifying," in the African American cultural tradition. One manifestation of this is "boasting" and/or "threatening." Ralph Poole addresses this idea as it relates to the controversies over Eminem's so-called "hate speech": "I'm the Worst Thing Since Elvis Presley: J.T. LeRoy, Eminem, and the Art of Hate Speech." Anglistik & Englischunterricht 66 (2005): 171-198. More generic discussions of the African origins of African American oral traditions include Henry Louis Gates' The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford UP, 1988). Tricia Rose in Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America addresses the same issue as it relates specifically to rap music, particularly in her chapter "Soul Sonic Forces: Technology, Orality, and Black Cultural Practice in Rap Music" (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1994. 62-98). Viv Edwards and Thomas J. Sienkewicz's Oral Cultures Past and Present: Rappin' to Homer addresses the subject of African cultural traditions on rap music (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1991.) [^]
[3] There have been two studies relating Hip Hop satire to that of the Classical literature, such as the satire of Juvenal and Horace. Ralph M. Rosen and Victoria Baines identify multiple layers of correspondence between Eminem's and Juvenal's burlesques, including the development of a specific intimacy with their audiences, the perception that the world around them is so corrupt that it demands ridicule, the argument that they are mischaracterized by their enemies as excessively vicious, and the confusion of the actual satirist with the roles that he plays ("I Am Whatever You Say I Am." Classical and Modern Literature 22 (2002): 103-127). Ralph M Rosen and Donald R. Marks make similar arguments about the relations hip between Hip Hop in general and the genre of Gangsta Rap, citing the problem of separating "the real from the pretense" (898), the assumption of a "scandalized audience" (902), and the predominance of hostility toward women ("Comedies of Transgression in Gangsta Rap and Ancient Classical Poetry." New Literary History 30.4 (1999): 897-928.) [^]
[4] Eminem's homophobic lyrics have been the subject of previous scholarly studies, including my own "Shady Agonistes…" (2003), which relates his hostility to a particularly strident performance of masculinity common among working class males—"masculine protest." Vincent Stephens, in "Pop Goes the Rapper: A Close Reading of Eminem's Genderphobia" (Popular Music 24 (2005): 21-36.), maintains that Eminem's antagonism toward gays and lesbians might be more accurately termed "genderphobia" than "homophobia" since he "uses homophobic language to critique gender performance, not sexual orientation." [^]
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