Zonta 16 Days, Day 8
8/16 December 2, 2009
Emminem, Misogyny and the Sounds of Silence Jackson Katz, June 5, 2009
Huffington Post Excerpted from:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jackson-katz/eminem-misogyny-and-the-s_b_211677.html
Eminem is back and once again looming large over the pop cultural landscape. On the occasion of the release of his new album, Relapse, his full-length, full-color image appears literally larger than life on billboards in major cities from New York to Los Angeles, not to mention cities all over the world. Although the album itself has received mixed reviews, the elite arbiters of cultural taste and artistic merit have given the rapper's return the red carpet treatment.
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Despite a five-year hiatus, there is no doubt that Eminem remains a popular artist. Relapse debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 608,000 units in its first week of release. For those of us who had hoped that his cultural moment had passed, the return of Eminem forces us to confront the disturbing reality that our society remains in deep denial about misogyny and its myriad manifestations in the art and commerce of everyday life. Misogyny (the hatred of women) in rap preceded Eminem and has thrived in his absence. And in fairness, the fact that he is white makes it easier for this writer and other whites to criticize him than it is to call out Black artists whose work is similarly sexist and oppressive. These racial dynamics are important issues to examine in another time and place.
Nonetheless, the evidence of our culture's unwillingness to address the reality and ubiquity of men's violence against women is not merely contained in the lyrics on Eminem's new album, which when they're not exploring the depths to which the artist's drug addiction had taken him, characteristically communicate a deep contempt for women and a violent rage at them. This unwillingness is most clearly seen in the music reviews and overall media coverage of the rapper's comeback.
It is not what they say that is cause for concern, but what they studiously avoid. With a few notable exceptions, such as Alan Ranta on the web site Pop Matters calling Relapse "chauvinistic hate-speech," the high priests of cultural criticism in the journalistic mainstream seem to have decided that Eminem's virulent misogyny is no longer even worthy of a mention, much less an appropriate subject of extended commentary and critique. Is it truly possible that women's lives have been so thoroughly devalued that a multi-platinum musical artist with nine Grammy awards to his name can sing multiple songs about raping and mutilating women and hip sophisticates can't even bring themselves to utter the words "woman-hating?"
It is as if critics have decided that 1) there is (still) nothing wrong with one of the most celebrated musical artists in the world devoting multiple songs to verbal attacks on women and girls, as long as there's a catchy beat and the content is rationalized as "dark comedy," or 2) homicidal misogyny has become so commonplace in entertainment media that there is no further need to discuss it.
A survey of recent articles about Eminem in several major media outlets yields plenty of lines like "a stunning return to form from the man who is arguably rap's most talented lyricist," (Entertainment Weekly), but a near-absence of criticism directed at Eminem or Interscope/Universal Music Group for releasing an album with lyrics like the following from the song "Stay Wide Awake":
[Ed. Note: the lyrics will not make it through most e-mail filters; go to the piece at Huffington for the lyrics.]
No thoughtful person would argue that music lyrics themselves cause men to be violent: that is the sort of simplistic argument which defenders of Eminem and other misogynous rappers and rockers raise and then ridicule whenever anyone mentions the possible "real world" effects of artistic portrayals. But just as it is reductive and problematic to draw a causal link between lyrics and actual behavior, it is similarly nonsensical to deny that the production and reception of art always has a social dimension. Popular art succeeds, at least commercially, precisely because it resonates with a certain audience - for whatever reason - in a given cultural and historical context.
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The silence of mainstream music critics on the possible societal effects of misogyny in popular music has been deafening. If an artist's job is sometimes to be provocative and push boundaries, isn't it a critic's job at the very least to ask questions like: What does it say about our culture that Eminem's lyrics resonate with millions of American men, and even many women? How can we discern the difference between artistic revelation and crass exploitation in Marshall Mathers' art? Does his vaunted lyrical virtuosity provide us with any insight into the larger belief systems - along with individual motivations --- that lie behind men's sexualized brutality toward women? Is he a brilliant artist exploring important artistic terrain, or is he merely going for cheap voyeuristic thrills at the expense of women, knowing full well that no one will hold him - or his record company -- accountable?
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The corporate media have played a crucial role in Eminem's highly lucrative career in part by defining the parameters of how he can be criticized. As Jon Pareles writes in The New York Times, Eminem "quickly became an offensive scourge to those who took Shady's fantasies literally, or worried that others might." Note the narrow range of possibilities the writer offers to describe those who might be "offended" by Eminem's art. Conveniently left out are Eminem's detractors who possess a more complex understanding of the effects of violent, misogynous lyrics than whether or not people (men) take them literally.
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For women and men who work in the trenches of the sexual and domestic violence fields, and see daily the brutal results of male socialization played out on the bodies of girls and women (and other men), bearing witness to the continued success of Eminem, Inc. can be an emotionally excruciating experience. I know plenty of people who would prefer to crawl under the covers and pretend that none of this is really happening.
But those of us who take seriously the feminist idea that rapists teach us something about the society that produced them have no choice but to pay attention to Eminem -- both the content and context of his art, and how critics and others describe and make sense of it. With rare exceptions, men who rape are not anomalous monsters. They are products of their socialization and the deeply misogynist norms that prevail in their societies. In the long term, the only way to reduce dramatically the incidence of men's violence against women is to change the social norms that help to produce abusive men - which includes critically examining what sort of art we choose to celebrate, and why.
In domestic violence advocacy, there is a term used to describe a situation where people contribute to an abusive man's behavior by their conscious actions, by their minimization of his crimes, or by their silence. It is called "colluding with the batterer." It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a society where radio stations continue to play Eminem's records, people continue to buy them, and critics continue to write about them while leaving out any condemnation of their vicious sexism, is a society that is in profound collusion with the batterer.
"If you want things to be different, perhaps the answer is to become different yourself."
- Norman Vincent Peale