What's the difference between Eminem and Anthony Hopkins?

Whoa, i think you’re missing the point here! The question is not whether the music is fictional or not, it’s whether the music is sending a message or contains a certain theme. While not all musicians do this, there are a lot that do, here are just a few examples:

-Snoop Doggy Dog is “high on weed” 24-7 and his music glorifies pot.
-Rage Against The Machine are political activists and their music carries a theme of hatred for these damn fascist Americans.
-Stryper are annoying Christians and their music is a form of annoying witnessing.
-Beastie Boys are sex-crazed, drunken, druggies and their music is mostly about sex, alcohol, and drugs.

Now, not all musicians are theme-based. Sometimes, many are wrongfully accused of something just because of a stage show or a couple lines from a song taken out of context. Whether this is the case with Eminem, i do not know, because (IMO) his music sucks and i do not listen to it. But, wasn’t he arrested for pulling a gun on someone? If his music is meant to show the obsurdities of violence, he sure is a hypocrit.

If Stephen King has a theme to his books, it is the supernatural, not evil. He has written many books from the perspectives of good/evil/mixed/neutral characters, most of which contain some aspect of supernatural phenomenom.

Anthony Hopkins shouldn’t even be in this conversation, he didn’t write the part for Hannibal. However, i heard the movie took some flak because some people were saying that it was glorifying violence, and the same for Oliver Stone and Natural Born Killers. So movies are definitely not immune to protest.

So to answer the question: “So when bands or rappers like Eminem sing about murder, or rape, or abuse or demeaning women, why do we not accept that it’s a character these song writers and performers are portraying?”

It’s because sometimes the performers are NOT portraying characters.

Damn those socially concious Buddists, they’re all a bunch of sex-crazed, drunken junkies. :rolleyes:

:After we get done trying to help free Tibet, lets have an orgy! With lots of alcohol! And drugs!:

Would you like to back that up? Citing things from their private lives of course, that PROVES that they are sex-crazed, drunken,druggies. Otherwise, I’ll maintain that their MUSIC is about that…but not the performers themselves.

And why does presenting a theme automatically mean that they’re endorsing said theme? I think Thomas Harris is projecting a theme of eating other human beings, so I should assume that he eats human beings in real life?

No, he’s an actor who created the character Hannibal and that’s exactly why he’s in the conversation. (Specifically because not all bands or rappers write their own songs.) On stage, Ozzy Ozbourne creates a scary, violent character, and offstage he lets it go…just like Anthony Hopkins does when given the script of Hannibal. The problem is, we accept that Anthony Hopkins does that, and with Ozzy we do not. We (and whenever I say we I mean the ‘general populace’) assume that Ozzy is off eating rat heads and pouring blood on himself.

Were those people saying that Woody Harrelson should be arrested for murder since he portrayed it in the film, it must be his real life persona!

And how do you know which is which?
and that leads us back to my original point:

jarbaby

I realize you are against this point of view Maeglin, but this just about sums it up for me. I don’t think Eminem is capable of irony. I’m not convinced the man could even spell “irony”. This has nothing to do with his economic background. I have known many bright and sensitive “trailer trash punks”, and Eminem does not resemble them at all.

Now, perhaps Eminem is not really an idiot. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that his problem may instead be mental illness or drug abuse. But I don’t understand how anyone could fail to see that there is something severely wrong with the man.

The fact that he writes such brilliant lyrics is prove in itself that he is a very intelligent artist. His lyrics are sometimes off-color, but you can’t deny the fact there is a message in them, and quite actually a wholesome message. The song “Guilty Conscience” goes through the steps of a man battling with his consciense, in an example of humanity. He tells kids in all his lyrics, not to what he does, that it’s wrong.

Eminem is purposely satirical, yes purposely, of his behavior, he pokes fun at himself and those like him. He obviously does have a heart, soul, and intelligence to write such powerful lyrics, and he has been totally misunderstood.

It’s simple: The actor usually does not write his lines.

Generally, I think singers are allowed less freedom for expression because they actually vocalise the words that they themselves write. Sometimes they even write music to underscore what they are saying, be it good or bad.

I’m not saying it’s inherently right or wrong though. Nothing is.

— G. Raven

Has it ever occurred to anyone that “Stan” is an attempt by Eminem to out himself or at least discuss precarious sexuality? I never saw a video or listened to a song which suggested latent homosexuality to me more than Stan. The whole thing is so obvious that it almost undermines attempts to safely accuse Emimen of outright homophobia.

But if “Stan the fanatical fan” is just another of Emimem’s creations it must be said (as I think it was in the Los Angeles Times) that the pervert in Steely Dan’s song Janie Runaway is just one of Donald Fagen’s or Walter Becker’s creations. Don’t Take Me Alive is another of their songs written from a criminal’s point of view. I used to love Steely Dan’s music so much and I still do. My Old School and Bad Sneakers are among the best rock songs ever written. But Two Against Nature sounds like a bad parody to me. You can’t go home again.

G. Nome-Eminem could be a closet case and STILL be homophobic. It’s called self-loathing.

It might be proof if his lyrics were really brilliant. I do not think they are. You are free to disagree, but don’t expect to convince me of the man’s intelligence by citing his lyrics.

Even if he really is a reasonably bright human being that would not be proof of his good moral character or his sanity.

I wish I could believe that he has been misunderstood. But Eminem’s behavior, not his lyrics, has proven that he is an immature, dangerous, violent, and vengeful man. He should be in therapy, but instead the whole world is applauding his disturbed fantasies.

Do my additions to Monocracy’s statement make it clearer?

Anyway, I think this “How are we supposed to know that this is fictional?” stuff is often pretty silly. Some people on this board were complaining that Eminem accused Christina Aguilera of performing oral sex on Fred Durst and Carsin Daly. Here’s the quote from “The Real Slim Shady”:

Is it really all that difficult to figure out that this is fictional? Do people think that he has a time machine that he used to find out what Daly and Durst would be talking about? Are these the same people that think that The Offspring’s “Cool to Hate” was an endorsement of hate and that The Cure’s “Killing an Arab” was really an endorsement of killing Arabs?

I think the reason musicians tend to get this sort of flak more than authors or actors is that music is more emotional than intellectual. I read something like “Lolita” I spend a good amount of time trying to parse out exactly what the author is trying to say with this contorversial material. When I listen to music, I don’t get much more critical than “It’s got a good beat and I can dance to it.” I think most people react more or less the same way, so when something like Eminem comes along and spews out all this stuff about killing gays and women, most people don’t bother to deconstruct the lyrics for irony or subtext; they just take it at face value. It doesn’t help if the style of music is one you don’t like from the beginning. I don’t like rap myself, which is one reason I don’t have an opinion about Eminem one way or the other. I don’t have enough understanding of the genre he’s working in to comment on his songs. I do know, however, that most of the great works of art we cherish today were originally attacked for being to controversial. Like I said, I don’t know jack about rap. For all I know, Eminem may be the hip-hop version of James Joyce. Or he may be the latest incarnation of Vanilla Ice. I’ll let the fans and artists of the rap community decide which.

One thing I do wonder, though. Do you think Eminem would be half this controversial if he were black?

Once more I have said something misconstruable and because this has resulted in so much trouble in the past I will risk boring the pants off everyone by trying to rectify it now. I am not saying Eminem’s Stan personality is perverted or criminal because of his possible latent bi or homosexuality. He put his wife in the trunk of his car - he abused his wife. That’s all. Incidentally, someone was showing off their newish car to me the other day when I noticed how roomy and luxurious the car’s trunk (or boot) actually was. I found the carpeted interior and lighting downright inviting. The mafia (and Eminem, presumably) must surely have different models.

Yeah, i believe they were directly quoting Brahma when they wrote, “I did her like this, i did her like that, i did her with a wiffle ball bat.” :roll i’s:

While Eminem presents an unlikeable image to a lot of people through his music not many people would be able to judge how similar that image is to his true self. How many people actually know him as a person? Strangely, though, the entertainment industry is full of people who are accepted by the public as wholesome, caring individuals when, in fact, their politics and personalities are often revealed as suspect. It’s easy to be taken in by appearances. When I bring Eminem I mind I think of his vaguely delicate features and strokable teddy bear hair cut. May be that’s a sign.


The fact that he writes such brilliant lyrics is prove in itself that he is a very intelligent artist. snip He obviously does have a heart, soul, and intelligence to write such powerful lyrics, and he has been totally misunderstood.

Wow! I’ve never before seen such a throughly delightful case of self deception! You’re saying… he’s SO brilliant that NOBODY understands him? Due to the modern media, he is recognized ONLY because of his extremity. Most brilliant people (in any field) ARE recognized for their very brilliance. (Fermi, DaVinci, Curie, Bach, Sousa, Cohan, Gilbert & Sullivan, Alexander the Great, any of these names ring a bell?) This may or may not occur in their lifetime but it does happen. Will his “brilliance” ever be heralded in a museum or hall-of-fame? Don’t hold yer breath!

Geez, that album was out when I was in high school, 14 years ago, when the Beasties are drunken teenagers. Of course, we all know that people never, ever, ever change, even in 14 years. It’s physically impossible.

Monocracy
Have you listened to anything they’ve done in the past decade? It is obvious that they have changed, and as you can see from the quotes from this NME article that they regret writing those lyrics in the first place.

And I think we all remember the tragic aftermath of the “RIGHT TO PARTY” War of '88. I’ll never look at a cream pie the same way again. :slight_smile:

jarbaby

I got called Socratic in some thread the other day and while I’m not sure if I was supposed to pick up Forrest Gump connotations or not I’d like to reiterate the point I made in my last post by asking another question. What is the difference between Eminem and Frank Sinatra? I love that joke that goes "Frank Sinatra saved my life in Las Vegas last night. Three goons were beating me to pulp and Frank said, “That’s enough boys.” Thousands of people who knew Frank Sinatra had a shady background and understood the joke too well, paid to see him perform without letting morality stand in their way. So I suppose what I’m asking is: isn’t it a kind of selective morality which finds fault with Eminem’s lyrics but not with what could have been found in the trunks of Frank’s friends automobiles?

Holy shit … i just wrote a HUGE reply which was articulate and made a lot of sense, but i didn’t realise my ISP disconnected and i lost the whole fucking thing when i pressed ‘Preview Reply’ … why does this page insist on refreshing when i press the back button?

Anyways, to condense everything i said to a few sentences … pldennison and LunaSea supported the argument i was making in my other post. The character of musicians can affect the themes of their music. When the Beastie Boys became ‘enlightened’ and turned into Buddhist hippies, the lyrics that they wrote and the themes of their songs also changed.

And jarbabyj, it’s not whether a song is fictional or real, it’s whether the music contains a theme or message.