Is 8 Mile the Purple Rain of the Aughties?

And then there's the Kim Bassinger connection! No, she wasn't in "Purple Rain," but she *WAS* in "Batman," which Prince scored!!!! THINK ABOUT IT! IT ALL COMES TOGETHER!!!!!

!!!

---------
go.to/stevek

Let's hope it is!

Don't put that image in my head. Try insulting the man instead.

Yeah - and Prince was in Kim Basinger, too!

"What 8 Mile offers is surprisingly banal given the media-fomented controversy
surrounding its star, the white rapper Eminem (Marshall Mathers). This is the least
provocative hiphop movie I’ve seen–which figures, since Eminem is primarily a
figment of the white media’s imagination: he had to be invented to rival the cultural
impact of numberless black rap artists who cornered the market on righteous,
rhythmic indignation. And with his goofy horrorcore-comedy and limited subject
matter, his importance as a rapper is sheer fantasy. Eminem gives those whites who
desire their own Tupac/Ice Cube a color-coordinated poster boy to fit their segregated
emotional environment.

Pop culture always has pretenders, biters and frauds who latch onto popular trends,
but Eminem might be the first who exploits an audience’s sense of entitlement more
than their taste in music. (After all, Elvis could really sing.) The sense of alienation that
white youth feels (that’s been marvelously voiced by groups from Cheap Trick to the
Replacements, Social Distortion to Metallica, and many others) gets bollixed up in
Eminem’s personal turmoil and is nowhere onscreen in 8 Mile. The script by Scott
Silver uses Eminem’s working-class Detroit background as a setting; but the life
shown there is as vague/ sketchy/insipid as Eminem’s lyrics. He’s a teenage father
called Jimmy Rabbit, bored at his auto plant job, lives in a shoddy trailer camp with
his slatternly mother (Kim Basinger) and–here’s the hook–he wants to be a rap star.

Not only dramatically vapid, it’s also morally insulting; a Hollywood movie finally deals
with white working-class life, but only as a pretext for selling the notion of celebrity and
fame. It’s the same deception as Brown Sugar’s romantic lies, but how many
people will see through Eminem’s bio to the malarkey at its core? Once again, hiphop
is marketed without principle. It’s shown to be a way to get paid, but not as the
landmark articulation particular to the experience of late-20th-century youth. Director
Curtis Hanson has no feeling for how kids find words and rhythm to deal with
out-of-reach politics and at-hand deprivation. (Where’s Boaz Yakin when you need
him?) Eminem’s stardom obscures rap’s unifying potential and replaces it with
self-absorption. As an actor he gives no clues to his inner thoughts, just a wild-eyed
stare that’s intended to pass for anger, withdrawal, alertness, shyness–it’s a
performance as one-note as his raps.

8 Mile needs to succeed foremost as a musical (it’s patterned after Prince’s
Purple Rain), but musicals provide release and uplift and Eminem’s music is
nothing if not emotionally deadening. (You don’t have to think hard to imagine an
ecstatic movie musical made from the De La Soul catalog.) "Lose Yourself," 8
Mile’s theme song, is the most offensive pop record since Destiny’s Child’s
"Survivor." Using relentless, repetitive beats, both songs flaunt the vocalists’ business
plans. Craven commercialism disguised as self-improvement. "You better never let it
go!/You only get one shot!" Eminem hollers in his typically strained,
pay-me-what-you-owe-me delivery. It’s the same record as "Survivor," an anthem to
careerism. The only difference is Eminem’s macho privilege; the pretense that he’s
fulfilling himself–that he is destiny’s child–is a male prerogative older than the Rocky
movies.

But 8 Mile’s not primal like Rocky; its struggle-against-oppression
story–essentially a white-vs.-black confrontation as Rabbit opposes and beats all
Detroit’s black rappers (his black friend Mekhi Phifer constantly running behind him
calling him "a genius")–is mitigated by the way Eminem twists hiphop culture into
something inauthentic. Like Eminem’s records, 8 Mile is a collection of marketing
tropes predicated on racially distorting hiphop music. Black desperation and dissent
become white petulance. Watching a millionaire mythologize himself and rapping
rags-to-riches cliches is insufferable. The real story would be a switch on the old Sam
Phillips/Elvis Presley legend about selling a white man with a black sound, using
Eminem’s mentor Dr. Dre as a protagonist with Machiavellian calculations. (However,
anyone who thinks Dr. Dre has produced great tracks for Eminem needs to go back
and listen to Dre’s "California Love" for Tupac–one of hiphop’s most magnificent
moments. Get the pop remix, specially designed for mainstream airplay and open to
the widest American interpretation and enjoyment.) Eminem’s records are narrow.
His self-produced "Lose Yourself" is loud but monotonous–ripping off Busta Rhymes’
"Fire," it’s just noise that non-adepts mistake for dynamism. And as a rapper Eminem
never grooves; he raps ahead of the rhythm as if trying to ignore it.

8 Mile is constructed to ignore the advantages that accrue to whiteness in America.
It misstates the peculiar tension between Detroit’s working-class blacks and whites
that Kid Rock, a truly radical white rapper, gets right. (Hanson’s unclear that 8 Mile
Road is a racial demarcation line of Detroit’s white flight.) The way Rabbit’s MC
competitions are rigged in his favor is no fun, it only confirms the film’s Great White
Hope formula. I don’t trust 8 Mile encomiums by those critics who would never go to
a hiphop movie like Paid in Full, but who go for this one because its hero is white.
8 Mile’s detestable drama sells the myth that it’s tough for Rabbit/Eminem to
overcome the black world of rap–signified by Detroit at its grimmest. That’s
self-aggrandizing sentimentality. Wanna bet black country & western singer Charley
Pride had it harder?"

"What 8 Mile offers is surprisingly banal given the media-fomented controversy
surrounding its star, the white rapper Eminem (Marshall Mathers). This is the least
provocative hiphop movie I’ve seen–which figures, since Eminem is primarily a
figment of the white media’s imagination: he had to be invented to rival the cultural
impact of numberless black rap artists who cornered the market on righteous,
rhythmic indignation. And with his goofy horrorcore-comedy and limited subject
matter, his importance as a rapper is sheer fantasy. Eminem gives those whites who
desire their own Tupac/Ice Cube a color-coordinated poster boy to fit their segregated
emotional environment.

Is he even a rapper now? More like an Oprah guest.

lol so otm

Kinda otm, but ignores how freakishly talented he could be at times. Like... he murdered Jay on his own shit.

yeah I would still say em is one of the most talented emcees of all time

I know that review in question isn't guilty of this, but tbh I am sort of sick of all this revisionist "Em was never a talented rapper" shit. I think there are plenty of valid complaints about his gimmicks and tired formulas without even getting to how much he tarnished his own legacy over the last 5 or so years, but I feel like some of these people anxious to bury him are willfully "forgetting" just how amazing he was for a couple years there.

Not really aimed at anyone in particular, but since Relapse came out I've heard quite a few irl people trying to claim that he was never worth the hype.

hes totally talented -- i was just otming that particular paragraph which doesnt say anything abt his talents specifically

well hold on clearly we're talking about CURRENT DAY eminem

who is like the most insufferable rapper of the past 5 years

the paragraph kind of suggests that talent didn't play a large part in his success which is...not really obvious to me

Pop culture always has pretenders, biters and frauds who latch onto popular trends, but Eminem might be the first who exploits an audience’s sense of entitlement more than their taste in music. (After all, Elvis could really sing.)

I figured since it was from an 8 Mile review, we were speaking about his larger career. I think we can all agree on the last five years though.

let's remember that armond white has a lot of retarded ass opinions

and White can't evaluate an artist without (a) settling a score (b) insulting the rubes who fell for him in the first place.

J0rdan, you may be talking about current-day eminem, but White isn't.

i was talking about alfred's oprah guest zing

the paragraph i posted is otm about eminem's career as a whole

the paragraph rev quoted is not

nah, that AW piece is bullshit. he's trying to paint em entirely as a tool of power, as the "white media's" intentional (and at least tacitly racist) co-option of a legitimate black art form. he's trying to annihilate em there, to deny that he ever had any skill, relevance or honorable reason to exist.

minem might be the first who exploits an audience’s sense of entitlement more than their taste in music. (After all, Elvis could really sing.)

no, fuck you

which is not correct because its not ENTIRELY true, but it is partly true

particularly the part abt the white media hyping him despite the fact that what he was saying wasnt that interesting -- who cares abt crap like 'cleaning out my closet' or 'white america' rlly

he had great style & is really entertaining but basically anything 'meaningful' he had to say abt the world was blown up into this prophet of the white american underclasses b.s.

well yeah, totally. shit was pretty funny at the time, though.

agree that he was hyped way beyond reason

Are there any movies about/starring at-some-point-seen-as-transgressive music stars that don't go to great lengths to show how sympathetic the figure is, and that it's actually their elders that are fucked up? Purple Rain, Hard Day's Night (Paul's grampa is the naughty one!), this, your sappier Elvis movies...

like is there a movie where the bad-ass rock star who just doesn't give a fuck can spend two hours just not giving a fuck?

I guess Performance kinda counts

pink floyd the wall? but yeah, that had a lot of "you made me what i am!" crap...

forgetting sarah marshall

fittingly, we meet aldoux snow's crappy parents in Get Him To The Greek

i was so angered when i found out that jonah hill played the same 'character' in 'get him to the greek' as he did in 'forgetting sarah marshall' -- i would've preferred if they had just pretended that he was never in the first movie -- hell, he put on enough weight

um, he didn't play the same character

man, I remember how white America embraced Eminem when he was getting really big

um, he didn't play the same character

― da croupier, Monday, September 27, 2010 11:45 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

alright cool -- i haven't seen the movie, so i got bad info

he played bascially the same character if the character in FSM was a little smarter, had a real job, and had a girlfriend fyi

right okay

like is there a movie where the bad-ass rock star who just doesn't give a fuck can spend two hours just not giving a fuck?

― da croupier, Monday, September 27, 2010 9:32 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

face in the crowd