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8
Mile is a flea-ridden bitch,
That
will scratch a lot of critics’ itch,
But it’s all about the bait and switch,
About a real as a game of Quidditch.
It
has become a theme lately… genre movies for people who don’t
like the genre. Punch-Drunk Love is an Adam Sandler
movie for people who hate Adam Sandler. Igby Goes Down is the teen anxiety movie
for people who don’t like teen anxiety movies.
And of course, Signs was the sci-fi movie for
people who don’t like sci-fi.
But 8 Mile takes contempt for its audience to
a whole new level.
Before
I go on, a point of order.
I’m going to avoid any spoilers for a while and write
in generalities and then, at some point that I will mark clearly,
I’ll fill out the rest of the story.
8
Mile is a movie about youth and race and sex and growth
that has no respect for youth, has a disturbing undercurrent
of hatred for Blacks, thinks all women are whores and for
which growth is as simple as not being too afraid to let your
voice out. I respect
the filmmakers, the actors and pretty much everyone involved.
But I think they are fooling themselves as much as
they are trying to fool you. The film is well directed, beautifully shot, well acted, well written,
well scored and well edited.
Taken piece by piece, it is a quality movie. But like a store full of candy, the enticement of those sweets is
easily overwhelmed by the upset stomach that acting without
real thought can bring. Of
course, most people don’t think about a movie any more for
any longer than it takes to get your car out of the parking
garage. I have had
a correspondence with one member of the 8 Mile family
that has shown real care and depth of thought.
Unfortunately, the film does not warrant such effort.
Without
going into specifics, I’ll explain why I think that 8 Mile
is a racist film. 1. No black person in the film succeeds and,
with the exception of one rapper who is visiting a local radio
station, no black people seem to have a real opportunity to
escape the Detroit ghetto. 2. Blacks and Whites do not mix sexually in
this film. The only
time they do, the black man gets beaten almost immediately.
That’s all I can write without creating potential spoilers.
Why
is 8 Mile misogynistic?
This one is simpler. With the exception of a 5-year-old and a lunch
truck rapper, every female character in this movie that has
lines is portrayed as a whore.
And I’m not saying that a female character who engages
in sex early in a relationship is a whore.
Or that a woman shouldn’t enjoy vigorous sex lives.
The movie is quite specific. Every key woman in this movie has sex for financial advancement.
What
does 8 Mile have against youth?
Well, youth is impetuous, filled with rage and lacking
ambition of any depth. One of the few characters that we find to be
well educated is mocked for not being real enough. The horror! An education!
Reverse “isms” are still “isms.”
The competition for who is more “real” is not a good
thing, any more than snobbery against people coming from financially
limited backgrounds. Education
is not a way out of the ghetto in 8 Mile. Only being a rap celebrity can save you.
And
what does 8 Mile have against growth?
Well, it just isn’t very demanding of its hero.
8 Mile is a lot like Lawrence of Arabia…
if Lawrence of Arabia ended with Lawrence riding out
into the desert to retrieve his lost servant.
Again, I can’t go too much further without creating
spoilers. Let’s just
say that for the Eminem character to have a real character
arc, 8 Mile would have to be the just first act of
a better film. One
of the main lies of 8 Mile is that the Eminem
is seeking his voice in the story of the film. But the movie starts, I will remind its supporters,
with his supportive friends already quite convinced that this
young man has a voice that can overwhelm all competitors. It is only his fears that define the first scenes of the film.
But this is a character, despite his poverty, who is
making choices in his life. More on this in the spoiler section.
8
Mile is a very attractive shell game. While it tells viewers that it is raw and gritty
and real, it seduces them with the beautifully built machinery
of Hollywood, manipulating the viewer into the kinds of lies
that make us all a little more comfortable.
Eminem is the film’s John Wayne… if he
does something wrong, the movie punishes him enough so that
we actually feel sorry for him, even though he brought his
pain on himself… if he takes action, it is right, even if
it is inconsiderate of anyone else’s rights… if he gives an
inch, the movie strives to convince us that he has given a
mile. And in the language
of Hollywood, that’s the norm.
But 8 Mile wants to be a white rappin’ revival
meeting. It wants us to believe the myth. I advise anyone who loves this film to stay
far, far away from the Brazilian masterpiece, City of God. Because while that film uses every movie tool
in the shed, it remains close to real truths.
Every
performance in this movie is solid.
The sex scenes are sexy.
The “battle” scenes, which is pretty much the closest
Eminem gets to a musical performance in this film,
are fairly clever. The
cinematography is gloriously gritty.
And Curtis Hanson’s work is top notch.
Still,
8 Mile is a hard slap in the face to the truth.
If you want the truth to come right to the surface,
compare the ads to the actual film. Nothing in the TV spots
is actually in the movie in the context presented.
Nothing. Why? Because
the lie is better. And
the more I think about the movie, the worse it gets.
Some
may think that I am demanding too much of this film.
But my movie rules are simple.
I expect from a film what it tells me to expect.
And 8 Mile tells me, over and over and over
again, that it’s going to be “real.”
Really clever at lying doesn’t cut the mustard.
AND
NOW,
THE SPOILER SECTION
If
you don’t want to know too much, see you next time...
If
you want to know more… read on.
8
Mile opens with Eminem’s character, Rabbit, unable
to find the words with which to “battle” in a dark basement
club. His silence is his humiliation. But what’s really behind the failure? Has Rabbit been unable to find his voice because
he hasn’t accepted who he is, as the argument goes?
Well,
when the movie opens, Rabbit has just left his girlfriend,
with whom he shared a car and an apartment, because she told
him that she thought she was pregnant. His buddy, Future, has entered Rabbit in the
“battle” because he knows that Rabbit can win.
The movie doesn’t tell us that Rabbit’s game fails
because it is too shallow, because he’s still working on the
surface. He simply fails to compete.
So,
if we want to, we accept this as a reasonable premise for
an entire feature film… that Rabbit is going to find his voice.
From the first moments of the movie, we know that he
is an irresponsible, fearful, weak boy.
So, the great achievement must be that he matures into
accepting his responsibilities, right? No. So,
he must find out that the support of others is important,
but that he has to be stronger for himself as well?
Nope. So, he
must learn that everyone in the world is just dead weight
on his bandwagon and no one is worthy of helping him in life?
There you go!!!
Women
– The mother, well-played by Kim Basinger, is first
seen in the film having loud sex on the living room sofa.
Turns out that she is sleeping with some jerk because
he is expecting to get a settlement check from a work injury.
She doesn’t love him.
She may not even like him.
He’s a payday. And the movie conveniently forgets that this
loud sex play is going on near her young daughter. What is the mother’s only success in the film? She wins at bingo. And why is it key to the storytelling? Because it lets Rabbit off the hook, so that his complete disinterest
in his mother’s eviction from her trailer home is okay.
The
Brittany Murphy character, Alex, is looking to get
out. And, it becomes
clear, she will do anything she needs to do to find her way.
But there is no depth to the character because, I guess,
she doesn’t have it coming. She is just another device. She’s there to provide a quickie in the workplace…
just minutes after Rabbit has been warned that one more screw-up
could cost him his job… a job that he might not be able to
replace given that he was recently fired from another, even
more menial, job. But you need that sex scene, so there they
go. And of course,
they are undiscovered… just like any Hollywood movie… except
they keep telling us how real this one is.
Alex
ends up screwing another one of Rabbit’s friends, a managing
wannabe. She screws him in an empty radio studio where anyone in the active
studio could be watching.
One thing is clear about Alex.
She is in control of her sex.
So when the boy having sex with her gets a beating
for engaging in this act, little of the responsibility falls
on her. In fact, the
“happy” ending finds her rooting Rabbit on, as though she
was not some slut who is going to have to screw her way to
New York and then screw her way up the ladder of success.
Rabbit’s
ex-girlfriend, Janeane, is not great shakes either.
Rabbit left her when she told him she was pregnant. But she was probably trying to trick him.
The movie never makes it clear.
The one thing we do know is that she seems to really
care about him, lashing out when he rejects her a second time
(the first on screen).
Is
there any woman good enough for Rabbit?
Only his little sister.
And
don’t even get me started on the obvious effort to rehab Eminem
with the gay community by giving him a scene where he defends
and then confides in a gay man. To me, that is the worst kind of manipulation
there is. It abuses
the gay character by allowing an accused gay-basher to patronize
him. Now, that couldn’t be more real.
Race
– Getting back to the sex beating mentioned above… this is
the only sexual connection in the entire film between a black
person and a while person. And while I am not a fan of screaming “racism.” It did strike me
that the black man was beaen by a white man for having sex
with a white woman. Do
I think that Curtis Hanson or Scott Silver or
Brian Grazer saw it that way? No. But
it is what’s in the movie.
The
closest the film comes to a black/white romance is when the
group’s moron, Cheddar Bob, hits on a black girl, before being
rebuffed and hitting on a white girl successfully.
Have
any of you lived in an urban area?
Have you been anywhere that there weren’t interracial
relationships aplenty? I mean, since 1968. Not
one in the very “real” 8 Mile.
And
what of the many black characters in the film?
None of them seem likely to escape their unhappy lives.
And Rabbit’s best friend, Future, is exposed as having
none. For Rabbit to “grow,” he must leave these friends
behind and go his own way.
Very cowboy movie.
But a terrible message.
The illusion that people make it in the record business
– or the movie business, for that matter –on their own is
just that, an illusion. There
is no true machismo in standing alone. It is a weakness, not a strength.
Youth
– These guys hang out and do dumb things. Their
youthfulness may be the strongest element of the film.
But what the film fails to do is to find someone, anyone,
who is finding a different way out.
Education? Mocked. Work?
Okay when you get to rap at the lunch truck or bang
Brittany in some open space where no one sees you.
But otherwise, it is hard and boring.
Even being a manager there is drudgery.
So is there an out besides being a rap star?
If so, it wasn’t in this movie.
Meanwhile,
Rabbit keeps attacking people without remorse.
In order to make his impetuous self-indulgence seem
okay, the movie cheats. When he beats up a guy for having sex with
his girl – she’s his girl because they had sex once – he pays
by being beaten by six guys.
But he has it coming!!!
What right did he have to beat the other guy?
None. But if just one guy beat him, he might not
be sympathetic. So
he gets beat by a group… intentional victimization.
When he beats his mother’s boyfriend, he leaves…. DUH!!!!
Growth
– There is almost none. He
goes from being too scared to compete to being able to publicly
state all of his problems. Is “the takeaway” a great strategy? Sure. Does
knowing how to humiliate yourself so that no one else can
a form of growth? I
don’t know. Ask every stand-up comic on the planet. Ask the fat kid who calls himself fat so no
one else will. Ask
the girls who vomit after every meal so no one will call them
fat. Ask a woman who
likes men who abuse her because she thinks she deserves it.
One
of the reasons I liked Blue Crush so much was because
even though it was pseudo-gritty, the women owned their lives.
They may have wanted men and wanted to be treated like
girls sometimes, but if the men fell short, they had the strength
to move on and reach for more. The difference between “want” and “need” is key.
It’s
not about some arch standard of “truth.” It’s about very accessible
subtext that really says terrible things about every character
in 8 Mile other than Rabbit and his innocent little sister.
Rappin’ Physician, Heal Thyself.
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