Whatever You Say I Am_ The Life and Times of Eminem - Anthony Bozza [17]
8 Mile was the jewel in the crown, a showcase for Eminem’s considerable acting skills, before only seen in his videos. But, above and beyond the end product, the film was a stroke of public-relations genius, effectively distancing and differentiating Marshall Bruce Mathers III from his life on record better than any disclaimer of his or any critic’s analysis had. It allowed Eminem the space to express a range of emotions at once and in the eye of the public, so that he became, in playing a real, rounded person, a character, once again. The result is like watching a well-executed interview, conducted and edited by the subject. After so much self-defense, it was the rapper’s only recourse to clearing up the misconceptions about him. As with film reinterpretations of classic literature or world history, 8 Mile became, for those who weren’t already fans, the story of Eminem. It accomplished what Eminem had been trying to do all along: show the world where he came from so that everyone would understand who he was and, maybe, why he felt the way he did. In short, it focused the story for those who couldn’t see it through the music.
To paraphrase New York Times contributor Neal Gabler in his 1998 book, Life the Movie, Americans are so enslaved by cinematic and televised entertainment that we are no longer satisfied watching it on a screen, we want to live on that screen. So at the turn of the millenium we took a logical next step—we brought the screen to us and made entertainment out of our lives. From the billion-dollar beauty industry (including Botox and home chemical peels) at the ready to make anyone appear more like a celebrity, to the continued popularity of America’s Funniest Home Videos, Real TV, and the bushel of other reality programs that dominate prime time on the major networks, it is clear that, in one way or another, Americans want to be on the screen any way they can be.
Eminem is an example of the next level: a celebrity turning his life into entertainment before the public can. He does so, as it happens, while mocking the same trend. He’s the reality-TV music star, one whose series was expanded into a film after its third season. He exists as a whip-smart wiseass sitting in his own living room, watching his life unfold on the tube and laughing at it with his friends. Eminem’s view isn’t the gritty documentary eye of hip-hop’s best-known black lyricists such as Nas and Tupac. Eminem’s stance is in the control room, reveling in the camera angles, re-creating, in his image, the hours of television watched and comic books read as an antisocial introspective child.
8 Mile puts a twist on Eminem’s reality art that echoes fictionalized celebrity biographies past, all of which gained an advantage in the retelling. The film adaptation of Howard Stern’s autobiography, Private Parts, brought out the New York shock-jock’s sensitive side, portraying him as the odd, sex-obsessed nerd whom radio listeners knew him to be, but more empathetic than his years of berating strippers could allow. Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come, starring reggae artist Jimmy Cliff as Ivan O. Martin, is an example closer to 8 Mile. Inspired by a legendary Jamaican 1950s gangster named Ivanhoe Martin, Cliff’s character was a more loosely veiled version of Cliff than of his gangster namesake. Set in the early seventies in Jamaica, the story starts with Cliff’s character leaving his family’s farm for the big city of Kingston with dreams of becoming a reggae star. Like the character he plays, Cliff spent his early years struggling against the corruptions of payola and poverty before making a name for himself, though the heightened international fame Cliff reaped from the role can’t compare to Eminem’s big-screen rewards: a seven-time platinum album, a five-time platinum film soundtrack, and an Oscar win for “Lose Yourself” in the best song from a soundtrack category.