Page 134 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

118 Music

the experience of both groups is one of alienation from mainstream
society, which is most often represented as White and middle class.
Eminem ’ s use of Black music to articulate the suffering of impoverished
Whites disrupts widely held racial and class assumptions by drawing
explicit parallels between the lived conditions of working - class Whites
and Blacks, and by challenging the myth that Whiteness is synonymous
with economic privilege. Eminem neither attempts to “ be Black ” nor
celebrates “ White trashness ” – in fact, he is quite critical of the prejudices
held by some members of the White working class. The argument he
makes through his music is nuanced: he claims that living at the bottom
of the economic scale is a miserable existence for anyone, regardless of
skin color, and that hip hop “ authenticity ” is based in neither race nor
class, but more generally in the experience of deprivation and the desire
for a better life.
We can examine how music functions in one scene from 8 Mile , the

2002 biographical film that spawned a chart - topping album of the same
name, to get a sense of Eminem ’ s careful strategy for negotiating delicate
issues of race and class. Immediately preceding the scene we ’ ll consider,
Eminem ’ s character, Rabbit, has been publicly humiliated in a hip hop
battle competition at a local nightclub when he is unable to respond to
lyrical assault from a Black rapper who uses Rabbit ’ s Whiteness as the
theme of his attack. Compounding this, Rabbit returns home to the trailer

park to find his unemployed mother having sex in the living room with
her drunken, similarly unemployed boyfriend. As a gesture of conciliation,
and a poor attempt at a birthday present, she gives him the keys to her
rusted, broken - down old sedan, which Rabbit and his Black friend Future
attempt to repair the next morning. As the two men work on the car,
strains of Lynyrd Skynyrd ’ s “ Sweet Home Alabama ” issue forth from the
trailer, accompanied by Rabbit ’ s mother ’ s boyfriend ’ s – Greg Buell ’ s –
drunken attempts to sing along. Greg is visually characterized as the White
trash archetype, clad in a Ford T - shirt and ripped jeans, a cigarette protrud-
ing from his unshaven face. His taste in music is suggestive of his world-
views. Lynyrd Skynyrd were champions of working - class, Southern White
culture (which is commonly aligned with White trash), and often played
stage shows with a Confederate flag as a backdrop. The song “ Sweet Home

Alabama ” has a notorious association with bigotry. The lines “ I hope Neil
Young will remember / a Southern man don ’ t need him around, anyhow ”
are a response to Neil Young ’ s anti - racist song “ Southern Man, ” which
featured the lyrics,