Arrested Pulse

On February 21, 2001, gay pop diva Elton John dueted with belligerant rapper Eminem at the Grammy Award ceremony in Los Angeles. The event infuriated gay activists, who responded with a frenzy of harangues. “This duet should not go ahead unless Eminem makes a clear public statement condemning homophobic discrimination and violence,” declared Peter Tatchell, director of the British gay activist group Outrage! “If Eminem cannot express support for gay human rights, Elton should call off the collaboration. . . . Elton should have nothing to do with him.”

Gay marshals in all the major American cities flipped off the spin. Jeff Epperly, former editor of Boston’s GLBT weekly Bay Windows, articulated the commonly held belief (promoted by gay writer Michelangelo Signorile) that John was motivated solely by self-interest: “Let me say this for the record about Sir Elton: I love his music, even if John himself is a self-serving hypocrite who’ll sell out his dead friends and his principles in a desperate attempt to seem hip to Eminem’s record-buying fans.”

Incensed activists counted 18 uses of the word “faggot” in Eminem’s album, The Marshall Mathers LP, which won three Grammys at the event. Jim M. Garry, Executive Director of GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), issued this media alert: “We are disappointed that Sir Elton John will be performing with Eminem at the Grammy Awards. . . . GLAAD is appalled that John would share the stage with Eminem, whose words and actions promote hate and violence against gays and lesbians.” In their widely distributed “Open Letter to Elton John,” Robin Tyler and Adam Thayer were less diplomatic: “By agreeing to appear on stage as back-up singer to Eminem, [Elton John] is spitting on the grave of Matthew Shepard and every hate crime murder victim.”

Activists Go Too Far

Elton as sellout, traitor, deserter. Cynthia Hoffman, responding in the Bad Subjects blog on March 10, 2001 to specific criticism leveled at Elton, offers an alternative view that makes a lot of sense:



Sorry, Cynthia. Ideological social activists tend to caricature anything deemed hostile, politically dangerous, and incorrect. Doing so makes it easy to malign and trounce its enemies. While radical philosophers call for the deconstruction of social texts that are based on binary opposition—this/that, black/white, good/evil, etc.—their disciples on the political front do just the opposite and end up promoting the “dominant paradigm” they allegedly want to subvert. Their mantra is: You are either with us or you are with them. Sound familiar, eh?

Eminem vs. Social Activists

Activists accuse Eminem of hypermasculine posturing. But most don't understand that this posturing is, well, a posture--a caricature that shouldn't be taken so seriously. And many don't seem to even read Eminem's lyrics. Consider this passage from “My Daddy’s Gone Crazy,” in which he raps:



Come on now, really. Do these lyrics reek of heterosexuality and hypermasculine posturing? Consider the alleged “hardness” of words associated with manhood. “Brawn” doesn’t refer to a masculine body-type but to that geekiest of human organs—-the brain. And those “brass balls” are “bronzed” as a result of being cut off and “pickled . . . in a glass jar”! Is Eminem’s and Dre’s heterosexuality verbally demonstrated here by way of attacking gays? I think not. And while Elton John’s gayness is alluded to, he is represented through objects (sunglasses and a framed autograph displayed on the rapper’s wall) that speak primarily to his status as a renowned pop star.

Eminem is not a conformist to the political agendas of the powers that be. Eminem, even during his classical period, wasn't about bashing so much as he is about bashing back. Consider this allegedly “homophobic” reference from “Bitch Please”:



O the homophobia! (And homoeroticism!) Question: who’s the “you” Eminem is addressing in this excerpt? Faggots? No. It’s the people who are on his case about using the word “faggot.” He’s not attacking gay men but the attitude of activists that have labeled him "antigay." Check out this so-called homophobic and misogynistic diatribe (from “I Remember”) that has whipped activists into a frenzy:



That folks take these laughably silly lyrics seriously is beyond me. Taken out of context, it would be easy to use this excerpt to demonstrate Eminem’s virulent homophobia and misogyny. But the “you” here is Erick Shrody, a.k.a. Everlast, who like Eminem is a straight white male rapper. Shrody verbally bashed Eminem and the ever-sensitive Eminem is bashing back. While he uses terms that traditionally excoriate women and gay men, the object of Eminem's attack is neither gay nor female. This is significant. By not using these words to refer to what they commonly signify—-women and gay men—-I submit that Eminem inadvertantly broadens their meanings and helps subvert their power to classify, define, and hurt.

I’ll ignore my urge to draw on semiotic theory here and instead offer a personal example. In 1971, at the recording of his hateful song “How Do You Sleep?” peacenik John Lennon was videotaped calling Paul McCartney a “cunt” (this can be seen in the Lennon documentary Imagine). That was the first time I ever heard this term applied to a man, and from then on, in my mind, “cunt” has been a much less stable and gender-specific invective. While activists wring their hands and decry Eminem's vitriolic vocabulary, I encourage everyone to follow his example and start calling obnoxious straight guys (when appropriate, that is) “bitches,” "pussies,” “faggots,” and "cunts." Now, that would be a real revolution.

Elitists on the left

The language and ideology of the dominant class has always been used to demonize those who don’t speak or subscribe to it. When, as in the case of Eminem, that language-—and the entire ideology it supports—-is threatened, the true conservatives run to the rescue. In order to make an uncomfortable phenomenon fit into their world view and vulnerable to critique, ideologues employ reductionist tactics like stereotyping. Hence Eminem is a "bully," an “abuser,” a “misogynist” and "homophobe" who “advocates” the rape of women and “promotes” violence against gays. But is Eminem really all these things? Again, let’s go the texts—in this case, from the rap "Just Don't Give A Fuck":



Is this the voice of a misogynist advocating the rape of women? Or is it the voice of a fucked-up, substance-abusing, working-class kid who, while high in eighth grade, has a brief adolescent fantasy? Is this the voice of a tough-talking bully, this self-described “caged demon,” a “fiend” with “too many mental problems” who snorts coke, smokes weed, shoots up, has “headrushes,” and is “clinically brain dead”? The persona Jackson and other activists construct of Eminem and treat as ineffable, along with its “hypermasculine posturing,” is hard to see here. This guy has bounced the curb and is driving on the median not because he’s a hypermacho hot rod. He’s just zoned out of his freaking mind.

Check out his so-called misogyny: “I can't take the pressure, I'm sick of bitches / Sick of naggin bosses bitchin while I'm washin dishes.” Because he uses the word “bitches,” language-police are quick on the draw and swift with the trigger: A misogynist! But is Eminem referring to women here? As I’ve demonstrated, Eminem doesn’t use this word exclusively for females. How do we know these “bitches” aren’t asshole men in a position of authority over the dishwashing persona of this rap? After all, in the very next line it’s the “bosses” who are “bitchin”—and the vast majority of bosses in the economic sphere, as feminists rightly point out, are men.

The Real Radical

Jan Waclaw Machajski, a long-forgotten Polish revolutionary, argued in his 1911 The Intellectual Worker that socialism was not representative of the laborers and workers but of the intellectuals from the middle class. He perceived the progressive movement of socialism as a quarrel between the "educated bourgeoisie" (the Left) and the "bourgeois aristocracy" (the Right). The former produces technicians, academicians, administrators, journalists-—what he called "the intelligentsia"—-who would come to constitute the great joint stock company of the State, and become, collectively, a new privileged position over the working class.

His theory lumps together what we in the United States have been told are opposing sides in an ongoing "Culture War." Despite the arguments and namecalling, both sides embrace a utopian idealism that conveniently factors out all that does not contribute to the imagery associated with that idealism. If Eminem did what Jackson Katz wants him to do ("Marshall Mathers would actually be much more of a rebel if he rapped about supporting women's equality and embracing gay and lesbian civil rights") he'd be a boon those on the left of the this so-called "culture war." But Eminem is not a sellout to the ideological expectations of anyone. His is an open range. Whether they live down the road from his multimillion dollar mansion in Oakland County, Michigan, or hang on the streets of 8 Mile, Detroit, where he grew up, everyone is fair game. He is at war and that war, like much rap, is frequently against the provincialism of the dominant classes in American culture.

Often in music, as in politics, opposites do attract. Despite their enormous dissimilarities, Elton John and Eminem have a lot more in common than meets the eye. Both do not use their real names (Reginald Dwight and Marshall Mathers) and frequently perform from the point of view of a persona. Both were born into working-class homes and brought up by single mothers. Both have used drugs and alcohol and endured the effects of addictive behavior. Both have been maligned by the press, dissed by fellow musicians, and yet have retained—much to their detractors' dismay—the respect of their peers and a huge following of fans. Perhaps it's due to these shared experiences that the two of them felt compelled to defy convention and share the stage for one brief moment that said: gay, straight, polite, vulgar, young, old, hip, geek—it doesn't matter. It's just a show devoid of the politics and cultural assumptions imposed on it by segments of an uptight public. It shows how two extremely different musical artists can, for at least five significant minutes, make music together.

If anything, Elton John should have been praised for his ability to do something that the many social activists apparently can't-—bridge the huge gulfs that exist between people who occupy opposite ends of the cultural spectrum and everyone they represent. At the time of his duet with Eminem, popular images of gay men were mostly white (Will and Grace), fashionably hip (Queer As Folk), and upper-class (Queer Eye For the Straight Guy). Still, ultra-bourgeois Elton showed an understanding of a predominantly urban-black musical style and empathy with its curious bravado and street influence.

I believe that social activists on both the right and left need to take off their ideological blinders and cease critiquing cultures and subcultures they don't belong to and haven't made much of an effort to understand. They would more effectively influence an increasingly skeptical and harried public if they stopped approaching all cultural phenomena as an exercise to be shared with like-minded thinkers who subscribe to the same values and assumptions.

Elton John did it. Are there any other radicals out there?