Transgender review of Eminem's use of bigotry in his latest song, Houdini
the first time i listened to this song i rolled my eyes. not because i was particularly annoyed that Historically Homophobic Harry said some things that got on my fee-fees, but because for him to do it in such a passe way was disappointing coming from thee Marshal Mathers. like, your name has meaning brother. you think im going to give my hate-attention to something this bland?
the next time i listened to it it made sense. nah, this dude KNOWS he's the joke. he's taking the joke that he is and telling it himself. the entire music video is him acting like an idiot and doing embarrassing shit, bumbling over himself while he randomly tosses in ad-libs from old songs of his like a parody of what his image is, even going out of his way to insult his own family to demonstrate that he was consciously showing ignorant and meaningless aggression. perhaps im giving the notorious buttery-complexioned MC a little too much credit here, but i think it passes the smell test. maybe not elegantly, but at least to me.
fuck i just hope his whole album isn't this. because to me, this joke can be told once effectively. you dont have to ditch the theme of self parody, but you can only be self deprecatingly coy about your very real bigotry so many times before "it's art" stops being a pass.
