Re: eminem (was: Good Dog Bad Dog classic album)

[John Paul Davis <johnd at antioch-college_edu>]

Now you've got me thinking about my minstrel show comment a little more...

Don brought up "Bamboozled" (an excellent movie, IMHO) and also Eminem's 
gratefulness to the many, many black folks he owes for his career. If 
he's so grateful, can we call it a minstrel show? Spike Lee's take on 
gangsta rap, and Tommy Hillfiger commericals was that there was this new 
kind of minstrel show - one where black performers wore a new kind of 
blackface - based on racial/economic sterotypes like 
"young-black-male-as-predator" etc. I think though that there are still 
*white* performers doing the minstrel show thing, and Eminem is one of 
them - a white kid apeing the modes of representation he learned from 
black performers who were themselves donning a steretype as a mask. It's 
worse in Eminem's case though, because, as is typical, he's profiting 
far more than most of his (mostly black) forebears in hip hop. It comes 
out looking like black folks did all the hard work making up hip hop, 
populrarizing it as a genre, and then here comes this white kid on the 
shoulders of all those giants, his money bag open, ready to rake in the 
dough for doing the same shuck-and-jive as everyone else.
And it works. He's rolling in money. He's talented, but is he *more* 
talented than Dr. Dre? Or Mos Def? Or RUN-DMC? He sure makes a whole lot 
more money than any of them do or did. Why? Is it because white kids 
have thier hip hop Elvis, a white guy who'll do the music they like, 
mimicking the performers they like, but who is "safer" because he's white?

- John

np: "Lonely's the Only Company" - Maxwell



John Paul Davis
Center for Community Learning
Antioch College

++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ned Flanders: Let's just agree to disagree
Principal Skinner: I don't agree to that
Mrs. Krabapple: Me neither
++++++++++++++++++++++++++

---------------
Unsubscribe by going to http://www.actwin.com/OtR/