In other words, it's not about making music, expressing
the condition of the alienated working class in
Detroit, but about making money. Eminem said this
precisely in his attack on Napster. He's marketing
hate to kids for money. It's that simple and not
that different in kind from tobacco advertising - which
could be defended on artistic and 1st amendment grounds
as well, and indeed has been by the tobacco industry's
hired guns.
Eminem's lyrics are a kind of premeditated
infantilism, but not a healthy regression toward the
polymorphous perverse, but a summons to the thanatic
impulse, a call for division, repression, an
invocation of the very forces that have divided
the working class for decades. He serves the interests
of the State. The idea that Eminem might be "censored"
is a ruse, and a tired one, and an insult to those who
have truly been censored. Cross the powerful, question
the System and you risk censorship, lawsuits, SLAPP
suits, beatings, harassment or worse. As long as
Eminem remains a whore for the corporations, he
will continue to accumulate wealth and be shielded
from the censors of the state. And he is a corporate
mercenary, whether it's flacking for Nike or for the
music industry's trade association, the Recording
Industry Association of America.
Although rock and/or roll and its associated
"rebellion" overtones have been effectively assimilated
by corporate interests since Bill Haley first rocked
around the clock, I like to imagine the final nail
in the coffin being the moment we started laughing
at the Who for becoming a beer commercial rather than
with them about their "The Who Sell Out" album.
