Wait, no, I’m not that mad at Anthony Hopkins. I’m mad at fans of '70’s blood rock and slasher films. I’m mad at Eminem, the critics who defend him, and now I’m mad at jarbabyj.
Anthony Hopkins makes me ill, but he’s not the one making my blood boil. Maybe “Hannibal” is a good movie. I refuse to see it–ever–but maybe it is.
Aargh–I don’t start Pit threads, 'cos they seem like such a waste, so I’ll just try to redirect all this furious negative energy elsewhere.
Remember also that most actors’ roles are written by other people. That makes the division between them and their characters obvious. But Eminem, as far as I know, writes everything himself and populates his work with real people in his life. And, as has been pointed out, other singer/songwriters do the same and it often is autobiographical. It does not strike me as strange that people think the same of Eminem.
To be fair, Anthony Hopkins always find a little of himself in the roles he plays, especially that of his most famous role as that of Lecter. The intensity and dedication he puts into his roles has been known to cause his relationships to break up. People think that Christopher Walken is, well, really out there.
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Too bad we have to deal with that pesky 1st amendment thing.
He makes a good point in “The Way I Am”. Why is everything his fault? Parents and society don’t have to take responsibility for anything?
I listen to his music, and guess what? It’s nothing I don’t already hear every day at school. I go to a pretty decent school. It’s a reality. The people who don’t like it are usually the ones who can’t handle it.
“Where were the parents at?”
FTR, I listen to Eminem and I like it. Mainly because I don’t take him completely seriously. And also because sometimes it feels good to be ANGRY just for the sake of being ANGRY. Especially for people like me, who tend to not get too emotional over anything.
Example:
“Yesterday”-At the time Paul McCartney was in a very good relationship with Jane Asher.
“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”-I can promise you, Paul McCartney never beat anyone to death.
The entire Please Please Me album, just pure, fun rock n’roll.
I could go on, but I don’t think I need to. Some songs are auto-biographical. Some songs are not.
I remember one time I was watching an interview on MTV, or something, and he didn’t seem like a bad guy.
No one ever said it wasn’t. If you’ll read down my post a little more, I said:
Basically, some DO use it to pretend to be someone else but fans may have a harder time distinquishing between what a songwriter is showing as his true self and what he may be pretending to be.
What? Wait…how did you get mad at me? I’m totally lost…you’re mad because I posed a question? I’m not defending Eminem or Anthony Hopkins. I said right at the beginning that I didn’t like him. I was holding him up as an example.
BunnyGirl, sorry, I framed my sentence wrong. I guess what I was trying to say was…“Why is it so hard for people to believe that songwriters are pretending to be someone” And it wasn’t pointed at you…it was… i suppose, the general populace.
Guinistasia said:
OK, well, this is the sort of evidence I’m looking for that says he’s really a dick…and I’ll admit that perhaps Eminem is not a good example of “fictional music”, but I still think there’s a tendency to immediately believe that a song is true, while we always believe a movie is fiction…unless it’s implicitly stated otherwise.
jarbaby
So artists have to curb themselves because their fans may be a little slow on the uptake?
Even if he is a racist, homophobic, wife-beating, bigot, he still has a right to sing about it. And you have the right to not listen to it. Is it offensive? Obviously. Do people really think crap like this? Absolutely. Do you have to listen it? Obviously not. Does anybody expect you, or any reasonable person, to think this way? Absolutely not.
As Eminem raps in Who Knew, “How much damage can you do with a pen? … who woulda thought Slim Shady would be somethin that you woulda bought”
I think It’s pretty obvious from just those two lines that he is saying it is an act. I’ve listen to some of his songs, and I like the ones that aren’t offensive. It seems obvious to me that Slim Shady represents all of the rage and hurt he feels. Slim is his personal demon whispering in his ear. In his songs he says expressing all the bad thoughts he has makes him feel better. He shares his violent fantasies with his listeners instead of a shrink. This should be obvious to anyone who hs actually taken the time to read the lyrics.
If you don’t like it, don’t listen to it.
I am absolutely appalled by foolsguinea’s uncommitted attitude towards freedom of expression. I am also a little surprised by the logical inconsistency I have seen in much of the above discussion. Observe.
A) Eminem sings about homophobia, misogyny, hatred, etc.
B) Eminem has been “keeping it real”. He has quarreled with his estranged wife and behaved like a general jackass.
C) Therefore Eminem is every bit as bad as his songs would have you believe?
This is shoddy. Surely instant fame and wealth had nothing to do with his bad behavior. No one else in the history of popular music has ever been corrupted.
Eminem may in fact be an asshole. But that does not imply that his art is in any way autobiographical. The consonance between life and art could be purely coincidental for all observers can tell. It is supremely arrogant to believe that you can divine a person’s nature from his art.
Yes, art is self-expression, but it is of a much more subtle kind than most people expect. I think I will start a thread about it, as a matter of fact.
This is utter nonsense. An artist has no other responsibility than to create art. The masses may do with it what they will.
The “people” have no data either, unless you count assumptions based on purely circumstantial evidence.
Take it to the pit and I will personally hand your ass to you and make you eat it.
Are you serious? Are you still looking for the Stairway to Heaven?
MR
Woah. Maeglin. I’m on YOUR side in this argument. The whole point of my OP is basically that all art should be treated equally.
But, if Rammstein wants to write a song about killing little kids on a playground…the national media assumes that THEY ACTUALLY KILL LITTLE KIDS ON A PLAYGROUND, or at the very least, advocate such behavior, rather than assuming they’ve created a character and a world in which this happened.
If Stephen King writes a story about killing little kids on a playground, it’s a gripping look at the inner workings of a serial killer.
I ALWAYS think songs are ficitional, unless I specifically hear the artist tell me the story behind the song.
I also agree an artist should never be required to “explain themselves” before releasing their art upon the world.
and finally, I still want to know why foolsguinea is mad at me.
jarbaby
Sorry bout that, jarbabyj. Yer cool. You were just pointing out that most people are idiots, not that you are. 
I think foolsguinea is mostly angry at “70s blood music and slasher films fans.” I, for one, am waiting expectantly to hear why.
MR
I’d like to make a couple of points/comments/insane madman rants:
Most people are simple-minded. A good number of them can’t make the distinction between the performer and the performance. Why should we believe that Marshal Mathers is a hardcore gangsta’ and not a white kid from the suburbs any more than we believe Anthony Hopkins eats people or Matt LaBlanc (Joey from ‘Friends’) picks up girls by saying “Howa YOU doin’?”
Celebrities/performers are just people who have a gift for doing one (or several) things really well. Some of them are cool. Some are jack-offs.
Controversy just brings attention to your work. It does not replace talent. By the same token, if no one listened, there wouldn’t be any controversy. For every Howard Stern, there are 10,000 jerk-offs in some morning zoo radio show trying to get recognized with bathroom humor and boobie jokes.
I like a couple of Eminem’s songs. ‘Hi My Name is’ is kind of funny in a twisted sort of way and ‘Stan’ is a thought provoking tale about a stalker (and not a call to put your girlfriend in the trunk of your car and drive off a bridge). If I met Slim in real life, he would probably annoy me to the point where I’d want to kick his ass.
Books like Steven King’s works and movies like Hannibal have received criticism for their violence. Music tends to be more pervasive, though, so it gets more attention. You can always not go to the movies or read a book. How often have you not heard Emimem on the radio?
To the average soccer-mom and commuter-dad with the house and SUV in some gated comunity in the suburbs, the visual of Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and the rest of NWA comin to their neighborhood straight outta Compton scares the shit out of them. The fact that Junior and his friends listen to them and their protiges (Eminem, Snoop Dogg, etc) is even more disturbing.
Well, I don’t think Eminem should be denied his right to say what he pleases. BUT…should he be APPLAUDED for it? Should MTV play his music, then a few minute later show a Stop the Violence Campaign with a picture of Matthew Shepard?
In SOME ways, not ALL, I agree with foolsguinea that if it’s really a character, why does he act like such a shit. I DISAGREE, that he shouldn’t be allowed to publish. He should-BUT…why should people be praising him for being an asshole?
Since he seems to ACT like the character in his songs, I’m inclined to believe he doesn’t have very much imagination. If he DOESN’T, it seems more like he’s just doing it for attention. I don’t find his songs very entertaining-Kim made me want to vomit and it gave me nightmares-literally.
(I dreamed that night that Eminem was hunting me down, trying to kill me for something I said.)
And, has anyone HEARD Kim? He says it’s a JOKE. Hmmm…I wasn’t laughing.
Yeah, the Beatles sang songs that were sometimes violent-Run for Your Life and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer (which, was about a guy named Maxwell being a killer.)
However, I can’t believe that Eminem is anywhere NEAR as talented as the Beatles. John Lennon took the line for Run for Your Life from an Elvis song, I believe he stated.
And besides, I’m gonna say that Lennon himself admitted to having a temper and having to work on his anger. He tried to defuse it through music. Eminem just seems to want attention.
I’m sorry, I don’t think the guy’s an artist. How creative is saying “fuck” and “faggot” every other second?
I think that the premise itself might be flawed. There are some who condemn the outright violence within Hannibal. They protest Showgirls for the nudity. They ban Twain because he uses the word nigger. A lot of times they’re the same people. Maybe they aren’t blasting Hopkins for his portrayal, but they are objecting to the final product of his work. Who knows what they may do come Oscar time?
Also, length is important too. The longer it is, the more time you have to justify your “wrong” idea. Haikus about men sleeping with 13 year old girls aren’t going to go over too well. Lolita, however, is considered a classic.
It’s still protested though. Not everything is justifyable to everyone no matter how much time you have.
It was acutally lifted from a Chuck Berry song.
If you look at the lyrics of “Run For Your Life” it sure looks autobiographical.
“You know that I’m a wicked man and I was born with a jealous mind…”
I don’t doubt that they did, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that everything they rapped about was meant to be taken as literal truth. For instance, in “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” Chuck D (or, perhaps more precisely, the protagonest of the song, who is voiced by Chuck) is sent to jail for evading the draft, and then breaks out of prison killing a female Corrections Officer in the process. Are we meant to understand that as an actual autobiographical event? Persumably not. In “Fuck Tha Police”, by NWA, Ice Cube and MC Ren talk about beating and shooting police officers as something that they have done (as opposed to something that they want to do), but there is no evidence to suggest that is true.
Of course, those are songs that are easy to see as fictional or semi-fictional narratives simply because if anyone is in doubt they can check and find out no such events occured. But then, that’s also the case with such Eminem songs as “Stan” or “Kim”. I don’t particulary understand the criticisms leveled against him for “Kim” since it so clearly a fictional narrative (albiet one involving a real person, his wife). It is possible that the song represents his feelings for his wife, but the mere existance of the song certainly does not prove that.
Somewhat harder to dismiss are the comments he makes in songs that are not necessarily fictional, such as his verse in “Bitch Please II” that includes:
So, is the above an accurate representation of his feelings, or is it part of an act? I don’t know.
And as I’ve said in the past, a lot of what he says is not particulary new to the rap genre, he just has received a lot more attention for saying it. Back in 1992 Akinyele rapped in his song “I Luh Her”:
Fortunately for Akinyele (or maybe unfortunately, considering that contraversy almost certainly increases album sales) his works weren’t famous enough to attract protests from NOW.
I don’t get it. I’ve listened to much of Eminem’s work, and I wouldn’t describe it as misogynist or homophobic unless I was using very loose definitions for those terms. Hell, Bloodhound Gang is much more misogynist and homophobic, if you take them literally (which I don’t).
I knew it was from somewhere, PLG. For the record, we do know that John was a violent man. HOWEVER, he did at least try, through his music, to make himself better.
Huh-uh. It was Elvis, Baby Let’s Play House, by Arthur Gunter. The complete lyrics are [url+'http://www.rockabilly.nl/lyrics1/b0001.htm"]here. The lyric he took appears in the final verse:
*Now listen to me, baby
Try to understand.
I’d rather see you dead, little girl,
Than to be with another man.
Now baby,
Come back, baby, come.
Come back, baby, come.
Come back, baby, I wanna play house with you. *
The Chuck Berry lift was when he took a line from You Can’t Catch Me: “Here come a flat-top, he was movin’ up with me” became “Here come ol’ flat-top, he come groovin’ up slowly.”
Perhaps people feel justified in condemning Eminem because he’s so…easy to hate. He arouses animosity because of what he says. Thus, it’s easy to criticize him on the basis of his homophobic, misogynist lyrics. However- someone else brought up the novel Lolita- I’ll use that as an example- while Lolita involves pedophilia, etc.- most people also recognize that it is a well-written classic and won’t criticize it based on content. And the same goes for other controversial novels. But it’s just that many people think Eminem, and automatically conjure up images of a horrible evil person.
Similarly- Anthony Hopkins is a well respected actor, and Hannibal is the sequel to what many consider a classic horror movie (or book if you prefer). So it’s easy to feel secure putting down Eminem while defending Hopkins.
Not that I listen to Slim or am comparing him to Lolita- I in fact am anything but a fan of him. And I don’t think an artist has to explain his/her work to the public. My point is just that people tend to judge things on face value.