8 Mile

by Shari L. Rosenblum

"I'm bout as normal as Norman Bates,
with deformative traits
A premature birth that was four minutes late
Mother.. are you there?"
-- Eminem : Role Model

"Now you probably get this picture from my public persona
that I'ma pistol packin drug addict who bags on his mama"
-- Eminem : Hailie's Song

More people know that Eminem (M&M, Marshall Mathers III) is despicable than have ever heard his music. More people who have heard his music like it than actually discuss it with their friends and neighbors. And all of both kinds of people are going to Curtis Hanson's 8 Mile, Eminem's first movie star turn, with a sort of defiance. They are counting on Mr. Mathers, or the real Slim Shady, to prove them right.

And he does, sort of. Though the film does not actually confirm for us the misogynistic homophobe presumptions about the man Lynn Cheney and GLAAD infer from his lyrics, it does not defend, excuse, or apologize for him or them, either. Hanson and screenwriter Scott Silver seem to get it and give it to us straight. Eminem is an angry young man with a violent edge -- and he is merciless in his skewings. But what he's about is getting it out. "Bitches," "homos," "whores," and "dykes" aside, his energy seems less about what he hates than that he hates. Less about them, about us, than about him.

8 Mile, though not exactly a biography, is about him, too. Set in 1995, it tells the story of white boy rapper Jimmy Smith (Eminem) nicknamed Rabbit, or B. Rabbit, or, mostly by his mother, Bunny Rabbit, making his way in the rap black world of Detroit -- area code 313, the dark side of the city's 8 Mile Road. We first come upon him right before a battle, trying to effect a beat and hand jive in a rap club's seedy bathroom mirror before going on stage. We watch as he throws up from nerves, gets dissed by the club's black bouncer, and then, money on the line, fails to the street's unforgiving rhythmic beat: choke, choke, choke. It is an auspicious start.

Rabbit is just out of a relationship with a girl who claims to be pregnant, living out of a garbage bag, relying on the hospitality of his very unreliable trailer park mom (Kim Basinger, gorgeously desperate and sleazy), and connecting with a new girl (Brittany Murphy, with bad girl smudge eyes and invitation voice) who lacks even his mother's fineness. (The film's female characters are all far off the pedestal, but the camera shows itself remarkably un-judgmental as it sweeps across their clay feet). He has friends who honor him, by which I mean revere him, foes who challenge him, by which I mean insult, scorn, and beat him, and women who want him, by which I mean . . . want him. And you don't get the sense he's looking for a way out as much as a way up. To him, they're not the same thing.

Filmed in Detroit by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who previously captured the down and gritty of Mexico City in Amores Perros, 8 Mile has the feel of reality. And the sound is authentic -- it carries you along unless you actively resist it. Fairytale though the premises seem, there's something palpable here. Despite a few star-is-born cadences that threaten purple rain or flashdance idealism, 8 Mile sidesteps the cliché for a more shaded message: the politics of culture. It's not afraid to acknowledge black and white. Nor does it seem hellbent on denying the tensions.

Urban literacy, Motown style, is a schoolbook prerequisite to catch the film's many and varied references, from 8 Mile to the area code battle lines, Cranbrook to the Shelter, Russell Simmons to Ice-T, Elvis (that other white boy who took black music into the crossover) to the Beaver (that other Mathers boy), and a home "Sweet Home (Alabama") Lynyrd Skynyrd riff performed for comedic relief by Rabbit and friend (the suggestively named) Future (Mekhi Phifer, in an excellent performance). There's even an almost throwaway scene for the film aficionado: the camera lights momentarily on a television screen in the trailer where Rabbit's mom is watching Imitation of Life (the title of that film itself a sort of inside joke about the film we are watching). The segment is brief, but contains the seeds of at least two main details that run through Rabbit's tale: racial passing, and mother resentment. And I'll be damned if there isn't a little wistfulness, too.

Rated morally offensive by the Catholic Bishops, and R by the Motion Picture Association, 8 Mile's violence is somewhat attenuated, its blood minimal and its sex discreet -- or at least discreetly filmed. The language and the imagery are that of rap somewhat tamed. And even the angers are toned down.

But Rabbit is not a hero for our times, or a Babs for the rap generation. He's a study in contradiction: trailer park kid from the right side of the tracks, mother-hating mama's boy, white wannabe in a black man's world. His story is not about winning, discovering himself, or proving himself to the world -- though each of these coming-of-age features feature. It isn't a story with a moral to guide us. In fact, despite a fantastically climactic rousing near the end, the film actually closes on anti-climax. It's not Rocky calling to Adrian, battled and better for it. It isn't about I'll show you, or I'll show them. It's about this is me; it's about I am whatever you say I am, if I wasn't then why would I say I am?

Rabbit's parting shot, which the film captures as a visual homage to Eminem's "Role Model" lyric, is the raised up middle finger wave. It's what you give 'em if they can't take a joke. And then it's back to the factory.

©2002 Shari L. Rosenblum
CineScene