The other day I was out for a walk and happened to hear someone blasting Eminem. That’s right, Eminem. You know, the once popular rapper that more recently has sought – like so many these days – relevance and acclaim by casting himself as a card-carrying member of the so-called “resistance”. Did you know Eminem once had the ability to see into the future?
Call me crazy, I know, but in this day and age in which a woman can be trapped inside a man’s body and vice versa, it shouldn’t be that hard to watch Eminem’s 8 Mile and understand that it was a glimpse into today’s hyperhysterical flavor of liberalism.
For those that haven’t seen it, 8 Mile came out in 2002. Eminem plays the role of “B Rabbit” because apparently when one is a white, gangsta rapper in Detroit, being “B Rabbit” affords one street cred. His shorty (aka, girlfriend) is a relatively cute blonde named Alex. More about her in a moment. The plot, if one can call it that, is that B Rabbit engages in a rap contest at a local dive bar called The Shelter versus his nemesis Papa Doc.
The first bit of the future Eminem reveals to us is the millennial male You see, B Rabbit works in an auto parts plant. It’s depicted as gritty and grimy because most leftists think all instruments of capitalism are gritty and grimy. B Rabbit asks his boss for extra hours but the capitalist overseer laughs at him and says no; B Rabbit you see is habitually tardy. B Rabbit’s boss unfortunately never knew that in a few years Democrats would introduce things like “job lock”, the idea that working multiple part time jobs was the wave of the future that would replace traditional full time, head of household economics, and that the “Fight for $15” was lurking right around the corner. Eminem knew that though, so he put it in his movie.
So, a dejected – B Rabbit is almost always either angry or dejected in the film – strives to rap against Papa Doc at The Shelter. Papa Doc was an interesting choice for Eminem. The real Papa Doc was Francois Duvalier of Haiti. Duvalier was into things like ethnocentrism and totalitarianism; his politically motivated Tonton Macoute death squads inculcated an unparalleled level of fear among ordinary Haitians. How Eminem could know in 2002 that not only would ethnocentrism be seen as the cool and hip thing to do by 2018, but that a group calling itself Antifa would be permitted to push a particular political agenda.
As B Rabbit struggles to get his life together, his shorty Alex thinks she can help things out by banging some dude in a recording study. Eminem was particularly clairvoyant with this part of the movie. As the scene plays out, there she is, getting pounded by some guy in hopes that it will advance B Rabbit’s ambitions. Kind of like a certain New York Times reporter that recently was caught sleeping around with Congressional staffers that leaked information to her so that her career could advance. In Alex you see the #MeToo movement and the vagina hat crowd a full 16 years before they ever existed. 8 Mile never tells us whether contraception is used in the sex scene. Eminem left that part vague because a) Sandra Fluke hadn’t come along to tell us that without Obamacare she had no available birth control options, and b) why wreck a movie full of dejected angry wrath with the hint that Kermit Gosnells were lurking in our future.
The sex scene leads us to the climax (pun if you want it) of the film. B Rabbit gets to face off against Papa Doc. Eminem must have known cultural appropriation was going to become a big deal because that’s what the face off is all about.
B Rabbit you see is white. And he’s poor. And he’s angry and in the hood. On top of that, he raps.
Papa Doc you learn, is black. From a stable, middle-class two parent household. He too raps.
So B Rabbit, in Eminem’s depiction, is culturally appropriating the musical style and stereotypes of African Americans. Papa Doc is culturally appropriating the stereotypical white person’s lifestyle.
The crowd of course is biased. Because Papa Doc is from a certain background, he ranks lower on the progressive stack than B Rabbit. In true 2018 fashion, the crowd shuts Papa Doc down. Had the scene been set differently, and Papa Doc was trying to order a pork chop at the Red Hen, the scene would have come across just as perfectly.
photo credit: Excerpted from: EMR – Eminem 1 – Lollapalooza 2011 via photopin (license)
