`8 Mile' a crossover success for Eminem
By C. SPENCER BEGGS
Scene Editor
Unlike other TRL darlings' jump from music to movies, Eminem's first foray onto the silver screen is surprisingly good.
The multi-platinum selling rapper has ruled the radio waves and spotlight for the last few years with his intense mix of provocative content and virtuoso talent as a rapper. Unlike the rest of the TRL gang that writes bubble gum pop that ambiguously applies to anybody with a pulse's life, Eminem has a certain honesty that, if questionable in his music, is verified on celluloid.
The purportedly semi-autobiographical film follows Jimmy Smith Jr. (Eminem), nicknamed "Bunny Rabbit," in his frustrated attempts to make it big in the rap and hip-hop industry. Born on the wrong side of 8 Mile, a geographical racial boundary in urban Detroit, Rabbit is a white man in a black man's world. After grueling hours at a bumper-stamping job during the day, Rabbit competes in "battles," a cross between a rap contest and a poetry slam, at a local rap club called The Shelter by night.
After breaking up with his girlfriend, Rabbit crawls back to his troubled trailer home and even more troubled mother (Kim Bassinger). While Rabbit struggles with conflicting drives to leap into his dreams or conform to the harsh reality of his situation, he must balance loyalty to his family and friends with his opportunity to get at something better.
One slight failing of "8 Mile" is the fact that Eminem plays himself. Eminem never gets past the "I'm extremely dark and intense" stoic look the rapper has mastered. So the idea that Eminem is acting is not quite true, he's just acting like Eminem.
And, as with the rapper's albums that exploit defining and redefining his political content, "8 Mile" throws a number of sucker punches into the film to soften Eminem's angry straight white-boy persona such as Rabbit's undying affection for his younger sister and his rap-battle defense of a homosexual co-worker.
It is unfortunate that these cheesy plot devices need to be included in the script to make Rabbit seem to be a redeemable character. Homophobes and misogynists that love their families are just homophobes and misogynists that love their families.
Director Curtis Hanson, rather than Eminem, is really what drives the success of this film. Of course, with other city-centric films under his belt such as the seedy side of '50 Los Angeles in 1997's "L.A. Confidential" and the sardonic depiction of Pittsburgh's academia in 2000's "Wonder Boys," getting the oppressive Rust Belt feel of urban Detroit is second nature to Hanson.
Despite any labels that can be applied to the underlying philosophy of the film, "8 Mile" makes a provocative point that is too often overlooked and not understood by pundits. There is more than one underprivileged class in the United States. While politicians fight like jackals for the urban black vote promising to end the racist system that keeps it segregated, nobody champions white trailer trash. In a society that truly has come to believe that white men are the source of all societal ills, impoverished white families can only be seen as being in their situation by a failing of their own.
"8 Mile" is a thoughtful look at race and class differences in the country. And though Eminem paints a picture that many do not want to see, he's got a point.
All Scene Stories for Thursday, November 21, 2002
