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.