Border Patrolling and “Passing” in Eminem's 8 Mile
2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/07393180500201686
ISSN1529-5036
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoThis essay argues that the semi-biographical film 8 Mile represents Eminem as being both racially distinctive and as possessing universal commercial appeal. 8 Mile accomplishes this paradoxical construction by portraying “Rabbit” as “white trash,” a discursively “dark” (white) object, and as an American mythological white subject. The film makes whiteness hyper-visible by subjecting it to raced and gendered struggles. Through real and symbolic violence, Rabbit battles “dark” villains and grapples with “dark” women, initiating a rite of passage. The film grounds Eminem's hip hop authenticity in Rabbit's discursive darkness, but attaches to this image the marketable allure of mythic whiteness. I conclude by contemplating how the film's conservatism reifies “blackness.”
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