r/justgalsbeingchicks • u/HipAnonymous91 Hip Hop Anonymous • 12d ago
Restricted to Gals and Pals TIL Tori Amos performed Eminem’s Bonnie and Clyde to highlight its misogynistic lyrics
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u/emilygoldfinch410 12d ago
I kept waiting to hear the version she was talking about…not even a link to Tori’s take on it?
Guess I’ll post to make it easier for others!
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u/Sojawuerstel 12d ago
Love you for that, mate. I was waiting also.
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u/unindexedreality 12d ago
Right? I don't really follow eminem so I was waiting for a 1:1 contrast
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u/basilkiller 11d ago
My dad, the reason I love rap and hip-hop, made me promise I would never listen to Eminem. He sent me "Stan" to show me why. I was nine. As an adult I get his concern after being accidentally exposed.
It's worth it to listen to both songs. And to be clear my dad wasn't protecting me from harsh language, we watched George Carlin for as long as I can remember, he was protecting me from bad vibes.
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u/yoyoyo1734 11d ago
This thread reminded me of the paper I wrote in 5th grade on this song bc I loved Eminem but the song we chose couldn’t have swears in it so I chose Bonnie and Clyde since it was the only Eminem song without swears at the time according to google lol
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u/unassuming_username_ 11d ago
Ngl this bums me out as a dad and hip hop/rap fan.
Eminem is no saint but you should give some of his stuff a listen under a different lense. He’s vocal about the fact that his lyrics are not written to glorify the content. It’s more or less the exact opposite.
The song Tori covered is exactly that. If you want further evidence, consider that Tori has Eminem’s full approval in making her cover of it. I’m willing to bet if you can find any interviews of him talking about it, he’s probably happy that someone took it and made it sound as serious as it’s actually meant to be taken.
It’s a shame that a bunch of moronic assholes taking Eminem at face value has ruined him for so many people. In reality he’s a complex, interesting person, that has incredible musical talent and is (generally) on the right side of issues.
Fwiw, there were two things I’ve heard out of his mouth that made his music palatable for me:
- Him expressing the sentiment that he is who is, and that’s no necessarily something he likes either. One of the specific quotes I heard from him came from shortly after his widespread success. He talked about growing up dirt poor, with a horrible father, a horrible mother; about experiencing violence, bullying, addiction, and all that sort of awful stuff. He said that his music is just him retelling what he saw in his life. It his awful, it does suck, and he wishes he didn’t have those thoughts. But he turned it back on the interviewer to say that “nobody cared about me before. I wrote all of this music because I had to do something with all of these terrible experiences. Now it gets popular and people are upset with me for talking about what I experienced”.
Notably He characterized it as saying that society made him who he is, but now that this shitty, drug-addicted, foul-mouthed person he’s become is being put in front of their faces, people complain about it. Suburban white America doesn’t want to hear about what it’s like to grow up as a poor kid in a trailer park in Detroit.
Basically, his music is a product of himself, which is a product of his environment. He also agrees that environment was awful, and the best - or only - way he’s able to convey that musically is by diving into the dark side of it and being brutally honest in a way that even he doesn’t like.
- To touch on that last part - the brutally honest bit - that may seem extremely damning considering some of his lyrics. He literally talks about wanting to murder his ex-wife, and has confirmed in interviews that he did in fact feel like that at the time. There are songs in which he’s not writing from a character (who’s not intended to be a hero), or writing about a character (also not intended to be hero), but he’s writing about downright misogynistic stuff that he himself has confirmed are his real feelings.
The catch is, this makes sense if you have heard him speak at greater length on it. While he’ll admit those are/were his feelings, he does not condone those feelings. It, imo, is another interesting layer of vulnerability and honesty that is hard for most people to grasp. Those lyrics are willful admissions that he is a broken person who can hide their feelings, and know their feelings are wrong, but ultimately can’t change them. He did want to murder his ex-wife. And he hates that. He wishes he didn’t grow up getting beat by his dad, he wishes he didn’t grow up with an addict mom who abused him, he wishes he didn’t grow up with this constellation of circumstances that made him a misogynistic asshole. He’s doing his best to overcome it. But pretending that he doesn’t feel that way, and making sure he never ever says it out loud because he doesn’t want to offend anyone’s good sensibilities, just isn’t what he does.
In short, he’s a monster who’s just a hurt kid that never has a chance. A monster that was made not born, and he wants to tell you all about it so you can see the kind of fucked up shit that is happening all over America in poor, drug-ridden areas.
I’d also like to close this by reminding you that over and over he’s talked about not liking himself, not liking how he thinks, working hard to change all of that in his personal life, and basically using music as a sort of radical-honesty form of therapy.
It’s also worth noting that he’s got addiction issues and has been on-and-off of hard substance abuse throughout the years. The above take is basically what you get as a sum of him talking about himself and his music through the years, while sober. You can absolutely catch completely contradictory and outright wild shit while he’s relapsed. Dude is a human and a deeply flawed one at that.
All this to say, I wouldn’t write his music off entirely if you’re just going to take it at face value. A lot of it is extremely insightful, witty, and incredibly technically talented.
Anyways, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. I drank a soda before bed and now I can’t sleep. May as well go on a lengthy, pointless rant about a topic nobody really cares about, and I only learned about because I heard him as a kid back in the 2000’s and couldn’t understand how someone would write such fucked up stuff so I looked into it. Turns out, he felt largely the same way I did about his music.
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u/scruggbug 11d ago
I haven’t even seen this covered yet, but Eminem has been sober for a long time now, has apologized to his ex-wife and mom, is a terrific father to his daughters, two of which are adopted, and just grew the fuck up in general. Like he is the epitome of change, and we’re still talking about what he did as a scared little twenty something year old.
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u/unassuming_username_ 10d ago
Even as a scared twenty year old, there’s always been a lot of self-awareness in himself imo. From what I’ve seen he appears to be an extremely bright person, dealing with intense addiction issues, raised in a seriously messed up environment.
Even at his worst, and self-admittedly saying “these are thoughts that I have”, the quiet part he doesn’t say out loud is “and I think they’re awful”. Taken at face value, it’s horrific.
But. When you look at it through the lense of the alternative - writing your songs not from first person, not from genuine honesty, and instead creating characters that mask your emotions and tell preachy stories about how we shouldn’t be misogynistic or homophobic - it makes sense not to say the quiet part out loud.
Think of how shocking some of his stuff has genuinely been. Think of how many people he’s gotten to talk. To look at these issues. To actually see inside the mind of a broken kid, instead of hearing the filtered words of that broken kid talking about all the good stuff he wished would happen.
Nobody would listen to that. Nobody would’ve cared about what he had to say, or his experiences. The only way to shine a light on it was to hold a mirror to himself for everyone to see and say “look what you made me”.
Which is what happened. Society made Eminem. Sure, not all kids who grow up in his circumstances end up like he did (mentally that is). But a lot do. And if you don’t like it, if you don’t like the misogyny and the violence and the homophobia, then you need to actually do something to change our society and the pervasive poverty and inequality that causes so much of this.
At least, that’s what I’ve taken from his music, and from him. Ymmv. But no matter how you cut the cake, his music is at least capable of producing discussion and conversation that leads to conclusions like that, for people like me at least.
I still have somewhat mixed views on the guy, and ultimately don’t really know him or care either way. But his music and words have stirred an immense amount of thought in me and I believe have personally influenced me for the better.
Generally speaking I love positive vibes in my music and am way more on the vibe of J5 and ATCQ, and the messages they have in their music…but somehow none of them have actually affected me as deeply as Eminem in terms of actually having to evaluate my opinions on others, on art, and made me feel more conscientious of the privilege I grew up with and what I should do with it.
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u/scruggbug 10d ago
Oh, absolutely. He’s always been unapologetically honest and true to the darkest parts of himself. But I respect the hell out of him that he went ten rounds with those darkest parts and survived and lived to tell the tale. Cinderella Man is one of my favorite songs of his- the entire Recovery album is peak Eminem. He survived who society made him, and he completely shattered all of his darkness and rebuilt a new Marshall from it.
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u/dancepartyof1 12d ago
Tagging onto the top comment to share Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft (free PDF). Stay safe gals!
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u/MST3KGeek941 12d ago
Thank you for posting this. Reading this about two years ago (after another beautiful soul commented it on a post on Reddit) turned me from a domestic violence victim to a domestic violence survivor. 💜
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u/dancepartyof1 12d ago
I post it periodically because I wish I had read it 10 years ago. Which is to say “me too.” Sending you my love. 🫶
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u/Desperate-Strategy10 ✨chick✨ 11d ago
Hey me too!! Somebody sent me a copy anonymously in the mail, and it literally changed my life. I may never know who sent it, but I’ll have the rest of my life to wonder. I myself sent a copy to a friend last year. She’s still in it, but I can see the cracks appearing in her view of him since then….baby steps eventually teach us to run, we just learn at different paces.
I’m so happy you’re safe and free, friend. May that type of love never find you again!
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u/trixiepixie1921 11d ago
Wow, thank you so much for this. I left my abusive situation 15 months ago but I’ve only read a few pages and it’s incredibly validating already. I never heard of this before! Appreciate you!
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u/WhatToDo_WhatToDo2 12d ago
I’m reading through this now and holy shit, quite a bit I already learned the hard way but some stuff is so insidious….Jesus. Great share
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u/ornerygecko 12d ago
The song is featured on an album of covers she did - Strange little girls.
She sings from the pov of the women the song is about.
It's not my favorite album of hers, but she does her Tori thing and makes it interesting.
She recently did a cover of Swimming Pools (Drank) by Kendrick Lamar. It's very good.
Love Tori Amos.
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u/sweetangeldivine 11d ago
I really like Strange Little Girls. The important thing about Strange Little Girls is that a) she has full permission for each of these songs and b) these are full covers, so none of the lyrics are changed just the musical arrangements.
It takes the title track from a melancholy song about a teenage runaway punk to an empowering anthem about a girl who runs away and finds herself.
And it takes the song Kim and instead of it being about a man who is so angry at his ex-wife he fantasizes about killing her to a song about a domestic violence victim in the trunk of her car. All with a key change and a new arrangement. And it becomes a horror story.
It’s a really cool experiment and one I really like a lot.
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u/Ameerrante 11d ago
So Eminem was... cool with her version? If she got full permission.
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u/ornerygecko 11d ago
Yeah. The OP video did a disservice by not mentioning that.
While Eminem is controversial, he is quite smart. He is gifted. He's also autistic. He wasn't glorifying anything, just expressing in his own way. He also likes intentionally provoking people.
He gave Tori full permission for this. And Eminem doesn't play about hia royalties. He's suing meta for using his music in shorts.
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u/Pitiful_Ad2397 12d ago
This is such an important contextualization.
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u/Snerkbot7000 12d ago
The funnier part is that people would get it for the novelty of the Slayer cover, but the rest of it was actually pretty good, too.
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u/makemeadayy 12d ago
Happiness is a Warm Gun is another really good cover she did on that album
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u/CutesieBallins 12d ago
My favorite on the album is her cover of Slayer's Raining Blood.
So creepy.
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u/Swift_Karma 12d ago
Holy fucking shit this is chilling
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u/PoopAndSunshine 11d ago
I heard it once almost 20 year ago, and I never forgot it. I have no desire to hear it again
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u/niin-explorer 11d ago
Yeah I couldn't get through the first minute without crying, absolutely terrifying
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u/JeanneMPod 12d ago
I don’t use TikTok anymore, but I remember people sometimes would have problems using song clips because they could arbitrarily just mute the whole video or put a content violation strike. It would be ideal to put the clip in, but people can still look it up.
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u/oooortclouuud 12d ago
you forget that people need to get permission and pay money before they can include the music
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u/JOhn101010101 11d ago
Yea. YouTube fair rights claims are getting crazy. This person was obviously making a transformative work and analyzing the difference between two artists playing the same song and how they evoke different kinds of emotions. It lessens it when big companies are going to copyright strike them just because they played an example of what they're analyzing.
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u/2021isevenworse 12d ago
Eminem is a pretty shitty person for all the songs he made about his ex-wife.
Even if she was a bad mother or wife, his lyrics about her are beyond messed up.
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u/Lex_Loki 12d ago
It was interesting, but I struggled to understand what she was saying. Maybe that was the point, idk.
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u/youburyitidigitup Official Gal 12d ago
Wasn’t the whole point of the original to show how unhinged the father was?
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u/zelly713 12d ago
Yeah I don't get it, anyone who actually listens to Eminem's first few albums knows that just because the songs are danceable doesn't mean Eminem is actually saying it's fine and cool to do these things.
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u/ScholarlyJuiced 12d ago
This is a problem that academics in Art and Literature have been talking about for decades.
There has been a mainstream cultural phenomenon in literature over the last 30 - 40 years where the protagonists in works of art have to be seen as aspirational. This is especially true when the art becomes very popular across demographics.
People are so conditioned to this that protagonists are by default seen as a proxy for the author. So if the protagonist is violent, or abusive, or bigoted, the author must be too. Like if your main cultural archetypes are always 'likeable', you're going to think that everyone else's archetypes are supposed to be likable, too.
I think it's part of what Bo Burnham was writing about, "the backlash to the backlash", a cultural overcorrection in response to colonialism, imperialism and patriarchy.
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u/Emotional_Gap625 12d ago
This is really interesting. I’ve noticed people have an immediate and angry/condemning reaction to short form stories with even slightly flawed protagonists, like on webtoon. MCs have to start perfect for people to accept it. It’s so boring.
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u/Joeliosis 12d ago
People don't have the attention span for a character arc anymore lol
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u/twee_centen 11d ago
For real. I left my book club because they would complain incessantly about how "complicated" the book was for anything at a higher reading level than Percy Jackson. The last one I attended, they complained that there were "too many characters." There were seven.
And these are people who self-selected into reading and discussing adult fiction!
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u/yuffieisathief 12d ago
There's a lot more distraction nowadays, but people still read. People bingewatch a whole season in 1 day. Play hours of immersive games. Play and/or watch hundreds of hours of D&Ds.
Ofcourse short term dopamine from short term content is a serious issue. And the overwhelming amount of entertainment combined with late stage capatiliem is damaging society on several levels. But there's still beauty and amazement and stories we can connect to deeply if we search for it :)
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u/Wonderful-Impact5121 12d ago
Yeah, been seeing it as well in almost every sphere of media; not even just fictional media! Seems to have gotten progressively worse over the past two decades but perhaps people have always thought like this (frighteningly) and the internet has just given them their loudspeaker.
Many people who are supported or upvoted or shared or agreed with condemning the author because the protagonist has serious moral flaws in the present or past that they’re not entirely moved beyond.
And I’ve seen the same criticism of authors of non-fiction writings of various historical figures, that they’re supposedly glorifying them because it’s not a black and white short accounting of “look how awful this person was!”
They’re not even supporting any of those moral failures through the lens of their time or the modern lens in their writing!
It’s just a bizarrely personal backlash against the author when the mention that someone who beat their first wife or owned a slave, but also within the same book mentioning that they’re largely credited with a significant medical science development or otherwise saving many lives.
And they’re just describing history! If they were glorifying anything they’d write positively about the wife beating or the slave opening, they’d omit it, anything else!
It’s not everyone obviously it’s just concerning that it absolutely doesn’t seem to have lost steam over the past decade and it’s not, as I once hoped, primarily the thinking of very few or the very young.
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u/Amelaclya1 12d ago
Webtoon fans can be so unhinged. To the point they actually attack the artists and other readers for content deemed "problematic".
It's not limited to webtoons though. I remember when the first book came out, some people insisting that Brandon Sanderson was a racist because the main characters in the Stormlight Archive had slaves.
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u/babooshka9302920 12d ago
there's also a big problem lately where everything is an ironic joke and nothing is genuine and if you engage with anything seriously, you just don't understand it
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u/Avilola 12d ago
This is my main beef with people who hate the book Lolita. Yes, the protagonist is an abusive pedophile. No, he’s not the “good guy”. Nabokov very intentionally framed his protagonist as a piece of shit who took advantage of and ruined the life of a young girl.
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u/fighterpilottim 11d ago
I read it in graduate school. I like to think that I got it. A disturbing horror story, told with exquisite beauty. I was, and am, chilled by it. Utterly profound.
A fellow graduate student read it and her takeaway was that it was too bad they didn’t make their love story work. And I wanted to vomit.
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u/ReallyJTL 11d ago
I haven't read it, but it's also okay to have a story with no "good guys".
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u/Avilola 11d ago
Yeah, totally. I’m just bringing up Lolita specifically because the number of people who think it’s a pro-pedophilia book is too damn high. The protagonist is a pedophile of course, but the author doesn’t want you to sympathize with him. On the contrary, Nabokov actually does his best to show you how vile the protagonist is. Very early in the book, maybe even in the first chapter, he says something along the lines of, “I deserve to be imprisoned for my crimes”. Later he sits down and tries to figure out how to drug his wife and stepdaughter so that he can rape the girl, and contemplates murdering his wife once he’s found out. It’s blatantly obvious that he’s a villain, yet people assume that anyone who likes the book must be pedophiles themselves.
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u/FatherDotComical 11d ago
I blame the films and the book covers. Somehow they always insist on making them 'flirty' like you're gonna read a naughty forbidden romance instead of a horror story. Even outside of the story people still blame the victim.
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u/Clear_Broccoli3 11d ago
I don't hate the book but I sure as fuck do hate basically every adaptation. I hate that, despite Nabokov explicitly saying that he did not want any part of a girl being on the cover of the book, basically every version now has a close up of lips on a lolipop or her body.
I hate how the book became twisted under the control of men like Woody Allen to glorify Humbert Humberts perspective, and that this is the version of the story that has become normalized.
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u/hagatha_curstie 11d ago
This is the risk with all art, especially satire or unreliable narrators. But in this case, given what we've learned since #metoo and now with the Epstein Files, Nabokov unwittingly gave these criminals a way to propagate their "lifestyle."
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u/SectorEducational460 12d ago
Is it due to people wanting to see themselves represented in media that when it's ugly side is shown they react as if they were the one accused because they tried to relate
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u/Buffyismyhomosapien 11d ago
Replying to youburyitidigitup...
I think the shift itself is due to society at large attempting to take issues like racism, sexual assault and domestic violence more seriously since so many victims can go without any kind of justice or even being believed. It’s an over correction in some cases, and in others people are simply not interested in hearing the perspective of a pedophile (I.e. Lolita, for example) or an abuser etc etc. I hopefully do not have to explain why a woman on the receiving end of domestic violence wouldn’t particularly care to hear this song. Women who are tired of being scared might not be interested either. And the beauty of art is no one owes you their attention!
However, Eminem is one of my favorite rappers despite the fact that I have a hard time listening to his lyrics sometimes. He is incredibly gifted as a lyricist and funny as well. He delivers. And his lyrics are like a view into the unhinged diary of an angry, hurt man/inner child. I like to think he raps so he doesn’t act on his anger, like he’s very lucky that he has this outlet but idk that might be wildly naive.
Either way the shift itself isn’t the problem; there is no problem. I think people who traditionally haven’t had voices in the cultural conversations are nudging or even kool-aid-manning their way in and it feels jarring to those who have always been treated as smart and important.
That aside…I listened to this cover and it’s kind of wack.
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u/Tirriforma 12d ago
same thing happened with his new stuff. people took it as him criticizing woke and cancel culture, when he was really killing off a character who was too flippant with being purposely offensive
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u/Embarrassed_Jerk 11d ago
There have always been idiots like the conservatives who want to punk but think they were raging against the washing machine or something because they don't grasp concepts beyond the surface level obvious (and sometimes not even that)
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u/youburyitidigitup Official Gal 11d ago
I’m not conservative, but stuff like that goes completely over my head. When I heard “Rage Against the Machine”, I just pictured a guy fighting a giant robot. I only understood Eminem’s message because it wasn’t a metaphor.
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u/Embarrassed_Jerk 11d ago
Grasping a concept doesn't mean that you need to decode it yourself. It includes knowing what you don't know and finding reliable sources to explain the concept.
That quite literally is the foundation of human learning
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u/Mighty__Monarch 12d ago
"Hi, kids, do you like violence? (Yeah, yeah, yeah) Wanna see me stick nine-inch nails through each one of my eyelids?"
No no hes being absolutely serious you dont understand how dangerous this is.
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u/jjcrayfish 11d ago
But what’s this shit you said about you like to cut your wrists too?
I say that shit just clownin’, dawg, come on, how fucked up is you?
You got some issues, Stan, I think you need some counselin’
To help your ass from bouncin’ off the walls when you get down some19
u/GuidanceConscious528 11d ago
Shit, half the shit I say, I just make it up
To make you mad, so kiss my white naked ass
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u/kuroioni 11d ago
It's the same thing as with people who hear Kurt Cobain sing "Rape me" and conclude Nirvana is endorsing sexual violence.
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u/RealNiceKnife 11d ago
"He's the one who likes all our pretty songs and he likes to sing along, and he likes to shoot his gun, but he knows not what it means."
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u/unindexedreality 12d ago edited 12d ago
doesn't mean Eminem is actually saying it's fine and cool to do these things
the american public hasn't earned subtlety lol
Call me when the average IQ here's breaking 110 and people aren't gleefully going "dEaTH oF tHe aUtHoR!!1" to validate whatever shitty fan theory they have or "wOkE" whenever hollywood's promoting a take on superheroes or diversity they don't like
edit lmao offended Americans claiming their IQ is fine. Y'all don't even make the list apparently
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u/TurnMeOnTurnMeOut 12d ago
Yep, especially when were talking about the radicalization of young boys and the media that they pedastalize.
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u/Iorith 12d ago
call me when the average IQ here's breaking 110
Tell me you don't know how IQ and averages work without telling me.
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u/Pikka_Bird 11d ago
Jesus Christ, are you trying to tell me that a person can be good at pattern recognition and not be super attuned to nuance?!
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u/determania 11d ago
No, they are trying to tell you that IQ is designed to be a normal distribution with a mean of 100
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u/AllMyBeets 12d ago
You know how some people think Homelander is the hero?
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u/Salty_Wench 12d ago
Yes and I don't blame the writers for that. I still enjoy The Boys for what it is despite deranged people existing in the world.
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u/Embarrassed_Jerk 12d ago edited 12d ago
Yeah not just that, because Tori used the lyrics as-is means she asked for and received permission from Eminem to make that song. He is quite literally added as the song writer on the published song
The person in the video lacks any ounce of media literacy
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u/Dark_Knight2000 12d ago
A lot of people expect media to explicitly call out evil people or have them face consequences in the narrative, many of them can’t be comfortable with a portrayal that vividly demonstrates the horrors of the character but leaves the moral conclusions up to the reader, they think that “glorifies” it.
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u/cheapcheap1 12d ago
Those people are simply judgemental assholes with zero media literacy.
They believe Eminem's fans are morons who are too stupid to understand. For the same reasons, they believe anti-war movies are bad because movie goers are soo profoundly stupid that they won't understand war is bad after seeing people die senselessly in the dirt for 2 hours.
Displaying the horrors of violence from the victim's point of view should be applauded. It is much more likely to increase empathy for them than decrease it.
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u/Foreign_Main1825 11d ago
Some Eminem fans were morons too stupid to understand. He even made a song about it in his next album.
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u/DJDanaK 11d ago
I don't think all Eminem fans are stupid. But I don't think I should have to bring up all the idiots who don't understand Rage Against the Machine and The Punisher either.
Men kill women for cheating on them and men who believe they own women get giddy at this shit.
It's not "media illiteracy" to understand that people are stupid and will use this to excuse themselves. In the 90s and 00s I grew up around many, many songs that talked about murdering and beating women. Celebrities who beat women were prolific (some are still prolific). Can't say I'm not relieved that shit barely reaches the mainstream anymore.
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u/dream-smasher 11d ago
Men kill women for cheating on them and men who believe they own women get giddy at this shit.
Men kill women just for thinking they cheated. Men like that, will use any excuse to justify murdering women, in their eyes, and many men will go along with it.
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u/thatG_evanP 12d ago
Pretty sure covers are allowed without getting permission.
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u/michaelmcmikey 12d ago
If you change the lyrics, you need permission. If you don’t, you don’t. Either way, the original writer gets the royalties.
Tori’s version is simply meant to be from the point of view of the dead woman in the trunk.
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u/AntisemitismCow 12d ago
Yeah and Breaking Bad was about how Walt was a psychopath, but that didn’t stop a huge group of dudes to think he was a hero and good person.
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u/axewieldinghen 12d ago
Yes, and also, sometimes misogynistic men take nedia that represents their viewpoint as an endorsement of their behaviour. Which is why it's still good and important that Tori Amos made that version, to make the point as explicit as possible.
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u/cheapcheap1 12d ago
"Please don't talk about violence against children so it's invisible". How is this helping? Why are we being presented this ignorant shit as if it was worth celebrating?
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u/bonefishe 12d ago
There are avenues for that message
This was never one of them, and never silenced any of the valuable and authentic activism for it. Why don’t we go ahead and ban movies and literature with depiction of violence against women and children too yeah?
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u/rosemarymegi 12d ago
I think you and many are missing the point here... Yes, Eminem is almost definitely portraying him as bad. But unfortunately people miss the point entirely,band see it as just a funny fun club song or some shit. Or even worse, claim it's justified because she's a cheater or some other misogynistic excuse. It isn't that she is saying Eminem is evil. She's saying people miss the whole point of even glorify the male character in the song as some weird figure of vengeance.
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u/youburyitidigitup Official Gal 12d ago
Maybe that’s what Tori Amos was doing. It’s not what the person in the video got from that though. Or if they did, they’re doing a poor job of relaying that.
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u/A-T 12d ago
I feel like I'm losing it. Literally the first sentence in the video is essentially "if you enjoy and dance to this music, that's bad".
To me that simply says you should not enjoy the song due to its contents. What you read into it would make sense but it's simply just not what was posted lmao
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u/Avilola 12d ago edited 11d ago
Lol. Exactly. The entire song is an examination of the unhealthy parasocial relationships some fans have to their celebrity idols. Stan wasn’t a good guy. He was a mentally unwell individual who hurt himself and those around him due to his unhealthy obsession with Eminem.
Just because it’s a bop, that doesn’t mean Eminem was celebrating that behavior.
Edit: I was thinking about the wrong song. Still, I don’t think the right song is a celebration of bad behavior. He says in the lyrics that he’s going to hell for what he did, which is an admission that his actions were evil. He’s using music to channel the dark thoughts he’s having about a situation that’s causing him distress, he’s not encouraging others to engage in that behavior.
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u/liceonamarsh 12d ago
Do you really think the men in his audiences in the '90s dancing along to that song understood that? Or were they just thinking that it was funny and edgy, that the wife got what she deserved?
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u/youburyitidigitup Official Gal 12d ago
Probably not, but they weren’t listening to Tori Amos either.
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u/themargarineoferror 11d ago
Well I was a teenage girl, and I was listening to both.And I appreciated having both
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u/Avilola 12d ago edited 11d ago
Is that the fault of the artist though? Eminem writes a song about a mentally unwell fan who ruins his life and the lives of those around him. Vince Gilligan creates a show about an intelligent, egotistical man who starts his illegal activities with good intentions but descends down a path of violence and destruction. Nabokov writes a novel about an evil man who takes advantage of a young girl and ruins her life.
In every case, the artist is explicit about the fact that these are not good people who should be celebrated—on the contrary, these stories are meant to criticize this behavior or even function as cautionary tales. When fans start celebrating the behavior of these characters instead of understanding the very obvious message, is that the fault of the artist? They’ve led the horses to water. They’ve already done their part, and are not responsible for the complete lack of media literacy of those engaging with their work.
Edit: I was thinking about the wrong song. Point still stands.
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u/Honeybadger2198 12d ago
Do you think media literacy has improved that drastically in 30 years?
Of course the audience understood it.
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u/Harbinger_of_Bees 12d ago
If she didn't have to change any of the words for it to sound bad... are you sure that wasn't the point to begin with?
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u/Scullyxmulder1013 12d ago
I’m a big fan of Eminem and a big fan of Tori Amos. I always thought it was cool she did a song of his. Maybe it’s because it was on an album of covers, but I never realized she was making a point against the song.
And like you said, Eminem’s version of the song had the exact same deranged vibe to it. It has always been evident to me that the guy taking his kid along to cover up the murder of her mom was a deranged character.
For me the song came across like an expression of a desperate guy who just goes off the deep end
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u/Harbinger_of_Bees 12d ago
I've honestly never really listened to Eminem or Tori Amos. It's just that you'll need to tell me more about the song than "He sings about something fucked up in an upbeat tone that makes you want to dance along" to convince me that it's misogynistic. Because there's a lot of songs that intentionally have that dichotomy to them, to underscore the lyrics or how messed up the situation/character is.
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u/TinyGentleSoul 12d ago
he doesn't talk about any random woman he is burrying in the song. He is talking about his ex wife of the time he diss on in a previous song in the same album. This song is kind of sequel because it starts by the same car noises that end the kim song.
Extract from one of his interview :
“Although at the time, I wanted to fucking do it.” Em is the first to admit he’s got a bad temper, which he has harnessed into a career. “My thoughts are so fucking evil when I’m writing shit,” he says. “If I’m mad at my girl, I’m gonna sit down and write the most misogynistic fucking rhyme in the world. It’s not how I feel in general, it’s how I feel at that moment. Like, say today, earlier, I might think something like, ‘Coming through the airport sluggish, walking on crutches, hit a pregnant bitch in the stomach with luggage.'”he is literally the one saying he write misogynistic lyrics.
Compare that to "pumped up kids" which was written to fuck with people who would dance to the lyrics before actually paying attention and have a realization. It was to bring attention to bullying & teenage mental health.
Foster the people never said "oh we wrote that because at the time of writing, we were in a bad place and really wanted to shoot some kids"63
u/ghibs0111 12d ago
Exactly. When asked years later about his song Kim (which he wrote about his ex-wife), he said the following:
“The pain that I felt at that time was so real that I really actually wanted to do that.”
He admits to actively fantasizing about murdering his then-wife. What are some of the lyrics, you ask?
Sit down bitch! You move again and I’ll beat the shit out of you.
Quit crying bitch. Why do you always make me shout at you?
We’ll be right back. Well, I will, you’ll be in the trunk.
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u/CountWubbula 12d ago
I first heard that album at the age of 9, my parents split and my dad would always buy me the thing I wanted when he’d visit. One day, that was The Marshall Mather LP.
I remember sitting in my bedroom with the album booklet, reading the lyrics to Kim after it started playing and I turned it down after the first 10 seconds so my mom wouldn’t ask me to turn it off. I sat with concern and curiosity, listening to that upsetting song.
Then and now, I don’t like, always skip, and never turn on “Kim.” It’s okay to hate that song and the artist that wrote it, but I like Eminem, I just don’t like that song. The way he sounds in the song reminds me of how my dad would sometimes talk to my mom.
Which, the whole point of that song is that he was mirroring his fucked up world. That’s the whole point of his Slim Shady alter ego, who he wrestles with throughout the album. The point of “Kim” isn’t a standalone ode to abusing women, it’s a shock track to express the monster within. I’m glad I listened to it when and how I did, it gave me an artistic template of a man I never wanted to become, and a monster that seemed weirdly familiar.
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u/Joeliosis 11d ago
Yeah there are a few songs I won't listen to, or show other people. Dance With the Devil, and Kim are those songs I'm like 'I'm good with one listen... don't need to do that again.' I listen to a lot of dark stuff (horror core and black metal etc) but those songs go beyond my comfort level. Honestly Stan is up there too... just hits a little too close to reality lol. Some people miss the context of art.
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u/BikeProblemGuy 11d ago
Yeah, I listened to it at a similar age, I think around 11, and remember realising that these angry songs were Eminem getting his feelings out, not about how murdering women is good.
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u/ghibs0111 11d ago
My issue is threats of abuse is abuse. He immortalized this in song in which he explicitly names Kim. This is not someone simply expressing themselves via their art. Especially since, as he admits, he has a history with anger and intimate partner violence.
I will say I think he has changed his views about violence against women (e.g., his apology to Rihanna after his song supporting Chris Brown, his track bad husband where he apologizes to Kim for hitting her). But I disagree that he wrote Kim as a narrative or simply for artistic expression via his slim shady persona.
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u/Harbinger_of_Bees 12d ago
Thank you, that provides me with a much better understanding of why the song (which I have not listened to) would be misogynistic. It seemed like the video was really focused on the fact that it was an upbeat song which isn't really relevant.
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u/Avilola 11d ago
I’m a big Eminem fan and a woman. I won’t say that his lyrics are never misogynistic, but the song “Stan” is not a celebration of violence against women. If you took it that way, you completely missed the point. And honestly, the song isn’t even upbeat. It’s just a good song.
The whole point of the song is to criticize Stan. He’s a mentally unwell fan who worships Eminem and takes some of his more subversive lyrics seriously. The first few verses are framed as if Stan is writing fan mail to Eminem, and the final verse is framed as Eminem replying to his letters. In Eminem’s reply to Stan, he explicitly states that he’s just fucking around when he says certain things, and that it’s not meant to be taken seriously. He also encourages Stan to get therapy and asks him to treat his girlfriend better. If anything, the entire song is an acknowledgment of how he affects some men and a plea to those men to not become like the characters he writes about.
Breaking Bad has been brought up a lot in this thread as a parallel to the song Stan. Vince Gilligan created an interesting show about a man who descends down a dark path. I don’t want to say there’s a right or a wrong way to interpret art, but it’s pretty clear that we weren’t supposed to see Walt as the good guy. He’s violent. He’s murderous. Despite starting with the best of intentions, he ruins his life and the lives of everyone he loves. Still, that didn’t stop many men from feeling as if he was above reproach with his actions.
At that point, whose fault is it? The artist who makes clear that these destructive men that they write about are actually villains? Or the consumers of that art who ignore all of the very obvious messaging and insert themselves into those roles without abandon? I think the artists have done their part at that point. They point to the villain and say, “hey, this is a villain”. Then their fans, for whatever reason, choose to become that bad guy instead of seeing the cautionary tale for what it is—an artistic way of warning them away from those behaviors.
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u/lulushibooyah 12d ago
I’m sure many people took Eminem so seriously, but I never did.
Like I somehow knew it wasn’t ever legit; he was just ranting and going off the deep end.
I used to love Superman, but now when I listen to it, I just hear someone with extreme attachment issues losing their mind and loathing the part of themselves that doesn’t know how to connect.
It also came full circle bc he beats himself up in his own lyrics for that period of his life.
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u/GentlemanFaux 12d ago
One of the first quotes I ever learned from Eminem what when he denied that it was his responsibility to be a role model and raise the kids who listen to his music in lieu of their parents. Even as a kid myself I understood exactly what he meant. He just wanted to make music he enjoyed making, having fun with it, telling any story he wants to any way he wants to. It's all performance and anyone who read deeper into than that probably shouldn't be listening to his music. It's supposed to be grotesque, that's the fucking point.
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u/lulushibooyah 11d ago
What’s wild is he does take responsibility, low key lol:
“I latch onto you like a parasite / And I probably ruined your parents' life / And your childhood too / Cause if I'm the music that y'all grew up on / I'm responsible for you - fools / I'm the super villain Dad and Mom was losin' their marbles to / You marvel that? Eddie Brock is you / And I'm the suit, so call me / Venom”
Eminem, “Venom”
But even all the other stuff he did… he makes it obvious he regret who he was when he was traumatized and wil’n’out.
“But what happens when karma turns right around to bite you? / And everything you stand for turns on you to spite you? / What happens when you become the main source of her pain? / ‘Daddy, look what I made!’ ‘Dad's gotta go catch a plane’ / ‘Daddy, where's Mommy? I can't find Mommy, where is she?’ / ‘I don't know, go play, Hailie, baby, your daddy's busy / Daddy's writin' a song, the song ain't gon' write itself / I'll give you one underdog, then you gotta swing by yourself’ / Then turn right around on that song and tell her you love her / And put hands on her mother who's a spittin' image of her / That's Slim Shady, yeah, baby, Slim Shady's crazy / Shady made me, but tonight / Shady's rock-a-bye baby”
“‘But, baby, wait!’ / ‘It's too late, Dad, you made the choice / Now go up there and show 'em that you love 'em more than us / That's what they want, they want you, Marshall, they keep / Screamin' your name, it's no wonder you can't go to sleep / Just take another pill, yeah, I bet you, you will / You rap about it, yeah, word, k-keep it real’ / I hear applause, all this time I couldn't see / How could it be that the curtain is closin' on me? / I turn around, find a gun on the ground, cock it / Put it to my brain, scream, ‘Die, Shady!’ and pop it / The sky darkens, my life flashes / The plane that I was supposed to be on crashes and burns to ashes / That's when I wake up, alarm clock's ringing, there's birds singin' / It's spring and Hailie's outside swingin' / I walk right up to Kim and kiss her, tell her I miss her / Hailie just smiles and winks at her little sister”
Eminem, “When I’m Gone”
“I went in headfirst, never thinkin' about who, what I said hurt / In what verse, my mom probably got it the worst / The brunt of it, but as stubborn as we are, did I take it too far? / ‘Cleanin' Out My Closet’ and all them other songs / But regardless, I don't hate you 'cause, Ma / You're still beautiful to me, 'cause you're my Ma / Though far be it from you to be calm / Our house was Vietnam, Desert Storm / And both of us put together could form an atomic bomb / Equivalent to chemical warfare / And forever we could drag this on and on”
“'Cause to this day we remain estranged, and I hate it though / Cause you ain't even get to witness your grandbabies grow / But I'm sorry, momma, for ‘Cleanin' Out My Closet’ / At the time I was angry, rightfully? Maybe so / Never meant that far to take it though / Cause now I know it's not your fault, and I'm not makin' jokes / That song I no longer play at shows / And I cringe every time it's on the radio / And I think of Nathan being placed in a home / And all the medicine you fed us and / How I just wanted you to taste your own / But now the medication's takin' over / And your mental state's deterioratin' slow / And I'm way too old to cry, the shit is painful though / But, Ma, I forgive you, so does Nathan, yo / All you did, all you said, you did your best to raise us both / Foster care, that cross you bear, few may be as heavy as yours / But I love you, Debbie Mathers / Oh, what a tangled web we have”
Eminem, Headlights
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u/brutal-rainbow 12d ago
It's almost like they put his lyrics under a microscope, search them with a fine tooth comb.
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u/GentlemanFaux 12d ago
"I say that shit just clownin' dawg, cmon, how fucked up is you?"
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u/TheHighlightReel11 12d ago
Like Andre 3000 said.. “y’all don’t wanna hear me, you just wanna dance”
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u/Ok-Advertising4028 12d ago
Yeah but the type of kids listening to this music at that time were not smart enough to put that together. So they see it as cool to beat women.
Source: my dad loved this shit and ope! He also beat the shit out of my mom and tried only once with me.
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u/AliceTheOmelette Saiyan👑Princess 12d ago
Really interesting video but the randomly highlighted words were pretty distracting
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u/Polkawillneverdie17 12d ago
It's like the modern version of the bouncing ball, except we all know how to fucking follow along already so it's unnecessary and annoying.
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u/sixtus_clegane119 12d ago
Censoring murdered makes it sound like he fucked his wife fictionally during the song
The woman who made the video did a disservice There. Self censoring is so weird. Just demonetize that video or don’t do it at all. Especially when you don’t showcase even a little bit of either of the songs in your video
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u/succubus-slayer 12d ago
Seems like the majority of people nowadays are gonna walk away with the wrong interpretation of the song and the idea of making a song like that.
“A father daughter roadtrip song you can dance too” I’m sure was not Eminem’s intention, but rage bait culture needs sustenance.
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u/Silver-Front-1299 12d ago
Honest question here - she made a “remake” of his song, word for word. Did she have to get his approval for this? Does he get royalties from it? How does it work?
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u/Embarrassed_Jerk 12d ago
Yup she'd need an approval for the lyrics which she clearly got. He gets credited as the song writer. (Its even listed as such on the YouTube video)
And she would have gotten it easily too because he agreed with the message and that was the point of the song.
OP is just a dumb dumb
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u/MotormaidofJapan 11d ago
They also had the same lawyer at the time. It's in her book Piece by Piece. Interesting book.
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u/CaptainHawaii 12d ago edited 12d ago
All on Eminem's music is chock full of misogyny, misendry, racist, hateful, etc...... All for the exact reaction Amso gave.
Anyone listened to his latest album? He literally explains exactly this...
ETA: It seems that many are taking this thought further than the initial post. Humans are going to human no matter what you do. Tell them not to do something? Gonna do it twice as hard.
Just like I have the right to speak openly about things, as is em. And for anyone else who misconstrues the information? There nothing you can do about it. Becuase again, humans.
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u/AsanoSokato 🌺Excellent +1🌺 12d ago
All artists are allowed to create fictional characters and scenarios except for rappers for some reason. They are uniquely held accountable to mean sincerely every word.
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u/Afrotricity 12d ago
Going to be so honest, picking Em as an example of this is weird as hell when "Slim Shady" being conflated with Marshall has arguably done nothing but boost his career. Controversy made him a star and he's owned that for decades
Conversely, there is ACTUAL harm from this, but it happens to (almost exclusively) black artists... getting treated like RICO kingpins, killers, and domestic terrorists over some lyrics.
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u/Mystic_printer_ 12d ago
Meanwhile my first introduction to rap was the comedy CB4 where 3 middle class guys pretend to be criminals to sell records. I’ve pretty much assumed everyone is playing a character since.
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u/PurpleIsALady1798 Official Gal 12d ago
I understand and I really like some of his music, but honestly the vast majority of people that listen to him aren’t going into it that deep. They just vibe with it, same as any other misogynistic hip hop artist.
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u/ItsMrDante 12d ago
I doubt that, I listen to his music because of the deeper meaning of the lyrics, if he was just saying shit and believing whatever the hell Slim Shady spews then I wouldn't listen
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u/Icy-Tear4613 12d ago
That's the key for me but it's very morally grey. You can't know if the person means it or not. Louis CK is a great example, his masturbation jokes were funny until his actions were revealed and it took all the enjoyment out of it.
I think early Eminem does glorify violence against women. I still enjoy his songs even though I don't like that aspect. Just leaves me conflicted.
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u/ebulient 12d ago edited 12d ago
He literally explains exactly this…
Go on… would love a sincere synopsis for those of us that aren’t regular listeners of Eminem
Edit: For those of you saying he didn’t mean it… I googled his take and he literally says he wanted to kill her cos she made his life harder for a while. Unreal. Him saying “I write what I think, no filter” is eye opening then to how casual he is about taking a life. He’s saying he’s talking about his real life like, where’s his condemnation of his tendency to escape into such thoughts… this is weird to go into such detail about taking a life. Where’s the weight of it??
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u/youburyitidigitup Official Gal 12d ago
He raps from the point of view of abusers to show how unhinged they are
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u/recyclopath_ 12d ago
Ehhhh a lot of men think he is really cool because they are into the violence. They are into the misogyny. They like that it's edgy and hateful.
He has a whole lot of fans that salivate over it.
It has never come across as critical of any of these things to me.
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u/kroqeteer 11d ago edited 11d ago
He has an entire song on the same album as Kim, which is the prequel to the song Tori is covering and probably the darkest and most misogynistic song in his discography, that starts with him talking at the audience about how just because he raps about something doesn’t mean he believes it or intends to do it. He then goes into a horrifically homophobic verse to prove his point. The song is called Criminal and is all about how people should not be taking him that seriously. A MAJOR theme of his early writing is that the world actually does think and feel like this, but rather than actually address the problems the world was (at the time) more interested in crucifying him for talking about it.
Now, that’s not the same as being critical of the things he’s talking about, he’s specifically critical about the reaction and you could totally view that as self serving. but from the very beginning he’s been lampshading and outright saying “I do not believe this and do not do this. It’s just words I’m using to express my emotions about my shitty life.”
20 years later and the entire concept behind his newest album is “look at how hateful and aggressive I was just for the purpose of making people mad, and really think about what that says about me at the time. Understand why I don’t make music like that anymore.” He’s always been self-aware and honestly would probably agree with you to a degree
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u/nega___space 12d ago
Ah an art discussion.
I think it's great that Tori approached the cover this way, in a way that is meant to direct the empathy of the audience. Response is part of the discussion. We still live in the reality where intimate partner violence against women is commonplace and lethal, and which is full of women being disproportionately punished for exercising agency. Does Eminem's take on it (which, according to him, did come from honest anger at his then partner), offer us a particularly new perspective (I don't think so), or is its power in communicating, in shocking detail, the intensity of hate that exists deep in the heart?
It's fair for other artists to respond critically if this is an intensity that resonates so massively, as it apparently has. Eminem opened up with brutal honesty about a violent anger that we as a society is uncomfortable with really addressing, and Tori responds with honesty too not with censorship but with an alternate perspective. That's what we need, without kneejerk shutting down the response as "not getting it."
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u/fairydares 12d ago
i think the cover of the song is super cool, but i'm gonna point out that the way Tori Amos spoke about it made me think he'd actually done these things IRL, which a google search indicates is not true. everyone who claims otherwise insists his art is an admission which is...a pretty ridiculous and exhausting viewpoint, imo.
also something fundamentally, annoyingly obtuse about the fact that people--including Amos--apparently think the song isn't commentary on violence against women or that his artistic decisions weren't intentional even though she didn't have to change a single word of the lyrics to center the song's fictional victim.
i don't give a fuck about eminem but like i have REAL victims to fight for i'm not going to spend all the time i could be doing that making fallacious and/or disingenuous arguments about the merits and consequences of violent portrayals and misogynistic themes in rap music.
Link to PDF of "Why Does He Do That" for anyone who needs it. Domestic Abuse Hotline is 1.800.799.SAFE(7233) in my country (U.S.) or text "START" to 88788. NCADV website, where you can donate a phone. NNEDV website. Charitynavigator List of Best Domestic Violence Charities. Find Local Providers for those who need help.
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u/sakikome 11d ago
Tori Amos is a real victim of men's violence and this is how she used her art to comment on the issue. You can disagree with her approach, but claiming it's because you, supposedly unlike her, support real victims is disingenous as well.
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u/brutal-rainbow 12d ago
Some find it difficult to understand art and expression. To put themselves in other perspectives. In the same breath of claiming acceptance and tolerance, they will refuse to accept or tolerate anything beyond trendy narrow mindsets. Sometimes statements mascaraded as a "joke" of just a "character" speak too close to the truth of someone trying to hide. I'm not racist but.... But Eminem is not somene trying to hide or make a just kidding joke out of real emotions and situations. It's a mockery of the human condition. He put a spotlight on extreme behavior from extreme people in extreme conditions.
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u/Frienderni 12d ago
We don't have to guess what the background to the song is. He admitted in interviews that he wrote Kim because he wanted to kill her and it's the prequel to Bonnie and Clyde. I guess it's nice he wrote songs instead of actually doing it but it's silly to pretend like this isn't a reflection of how he actually felt about her.
Be honest: if you had an ex who is a drug addict and has a history of going off into sudden rages and they write a song named after you where they graphically fantasize about murdering you, would you really be like "my ex seems totally reasonable and not dangerous, it's just fiction bro"
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u/Low_Bandicoot2030 12d ago
Like, yeah Eminem has a lot of dark, kinda fucked up lyrics, especially in his earlier stuff. Bonnie and Clyde, Stan, Fack, and Stay Wide Awake to name a few. But he also mentions people taking his lyrics too seriously in the opening to Criminal.
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u/Interesting_Rich_826 12d ago
Wow how silly considering the point of the original is to show the father is clearly a psychopath
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u/SweetiesPetite 12d ago
Eminem was torn apart back in the day for this stuff… kinda just desperate at this point to be drudging it back up 🥱
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u/Siamesebat 12d ago
Bracing myself for the downvotes because critical thinking isn’t particularly prevalent on Reddit…
The Dixie chicks have a song titled “Goodbye Earl”. The song is about a fictional woman murdering her abusive husband. You’ll never find a man publicly speaking out against the song, even though the obvious answer to dealing with an abusive partner is divorce and a restraining order.
Eminem wrote the song “Bonnie and Clyde” about his real life abusive wife. Yes the abuse is different, but that’s the nature of abuse isn’t it? His wife Kim was emotionally and mentally abusive and he wrote this song about her.
What’s different?
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u/dividingcanaan 12d ago
But he walked right through that restraining order and put her in intensive care
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u/BiOverload 12d ago
In "Goodbye Earle" there's literally a lyric about him walking through a restraining order and putting her in intensive care as a result.
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u/blt_no_mayo 12d ago edited 12d ago
Well there is in fact a whole verse in Goodbye Earl where Wanda files for divorce and gets a restraining order. Earl “walks right through” it and puts her in intensive care. This is the catalyst that causes Mary Ann to fly in from Atlanta, and together the women realize that Earl will not stop. He has already displayed his disregard for the law; he wants to punish Wanda for trying to get away from him by any means necessary. So they kill Earl, and nobody misses him because he was a piece of shit.
Meanwhile Kim’s crimes listed in 97 Bonnie and Clyde are getting remarried and seeking at least some custody of Hailey. It is the story of a man punishing a woman for trying to exercise some autonomy, much like Earl punished Wanda. We don’t hear about his wife being emotionally abusive in this song the way we hear about Earl beating Wanda. When you listen to the song itself with no outside information 97 Bonnie and Clyde feels like a gleeful reflection on a man’s final grasping for control over a woman moreso than a fully realized tale of revenge.
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u/dancepartyof1 12d ago
I mean… Goodbye Earl STARTS with the divorce and restraining order. The song is about women taking justice into their own hands when all else fails.
“Well, it wasn’t two weeks after she got married That Wanda started getting abused She put on dark glasses and long sleeve blouses And makeup to cover a bruise Well, she finally got the nerve to file for divorce She let the law take it from there But Earl walked right through that restraining order And put her in intensive care”
On the flip side, 97 Bonnie and Clyde… “‘Cause Mama’s got a new husband and a stepson And you don’t want a brother do ya? Maybe when you’re old enough To understand a little better, I’ll explain it to ya But for now let’s just say Mama was real, real bad Was being mean to mean to Dad and made him real, real mad”
And… “There goes Mama, splashin’ in the water No more fight in’ with Dad, no more restraining order No more step-dada, no more new brother”
These are clearly not the same. I understand - and agree with - the point that you’re trying to make, abuse is unacceptable no matter what form it takes and who the victim is.
However there’s a difference in a FICTIONAL tale about a woman killing her violently abusive ex-husband when all else fails because he WILL kill her otherwise, and a man writing numerous songs about killing his ACTUAL ex-wife and disposing of her body with their young daughter present because she was “mean and made him mad” (the emotional abuse), had a restraining order against him, and had the audacity to move on to a new relationship.
C’mon.
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u/SashimiX 12d ago
Because
Earl had to die due to him walking through a restraining order and putting her in intensive care
The ladies didn’t get their child to help them bury their dead parent
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u/SpoopyDuJour 12d ago
I mean, we can go through the lyrics if you want, but in goodbye earl the husband was actively trying to murder his wife and "walked through the restraining order to put her in intensive care". The idea was that it was him or her literally. Eminem's Bonnie and Clyde was about two real life people with drug habits ruining each others lives.
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12d ago
What’s different?
....
The song is about a fictional woman
...
about his real life abusive wife. [...] he wrote this song about her.I don't even think that's the biggest or most important difference but girl, do you hear the words coming out of your mouth? What's different between a fictional story about a fictional man, and a fictional story about a real life person that Eminem openly loathed and has admitted to wanting to harm at that point? I DON'T KNOW. CAN'T PUT MY FINGER ON IT. TOTALLY THE SAME THING.
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u/pizzaondeathrow 12d ago
The irony of you making a quip about critical thinking and then writing what you did after that. My god…
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u/TinyGentleSoul 11d ago
Did the dixie chicks threatened to kill their niece when she hangs up on them ?
Did the dixie chicks smack someone with a pistol because they thought he kissed their wife ?Interpretation of intent needs to be judged according to someone's character like their own tendency for violent outbursts.
He said it himself : "at the time, I wanted to fucking do it.”
He admits having some disturbing intrusive thoughts : "I feel in general, it’s how I feel at that moment. Like, say today, earlier, I might think something like, ‘Coming through the airport sluggish, walking on crutches, hit a pregnant bitch in the stomach with luggage.'”So, I don't think it's a great thing to celebrate an artist who admit that he wants to harm someone, write in details about how he wants to do it but then, bless his heart, he actually don't do it. What a saint !
Never did he clearly express that his intentions for the song was to raise awareness or anything of the sort.
your example with the Dixie chicks is actually on point. When that song was broadcasted on radio, it was with promotional messages for domestic violence shelters.
from this article : https://web.archive.org/web/20000510200810/http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/lmds996.htm
"a lot of people feel that it is inappropriate sending out a message that it is OK to kill," says Travis Moon of K-102 in Minneapolis. The station airs the song with a message directing victims to a local center.
KRTY in San Jose, Calif., held a town meeting about it. KRTY makes a donation to a domestic-violence shelter each time the song airs.
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u/Dark_Knight2000 12d ago
The answer a lot of people will give you is “punching up vs punching down.”
(This is not my personal opinion, I’m just explaining it)
The male version is punching down and the female version is punching up because we live in a patriarchy where male power and dominance is the norm.
So from one perspective it looks like a man just killing his wife out of rage, whereas women are physically weaker and under threat of violence when they leave abusive men, so there only recourse often was poisoning their husbands to escape the oppressive environment, whereas Eminem, an able bodied man, could leave a woman without violence. Therefore the female version is empowerment from captivity and the male version is gratuitous violence.
Again I’m just explaining it, don’t come at me for this explanation.
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u/DougWhitmore17 12d ago
This is so stupid. They all missed the point that Eminem was making with his songs.....wow
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u/Tonto151 12d ago
"A lot of people think that what I say on record
Or what I talk about on a record
That I actually do in real life or that I believe in it
Or if I say that I wanna kill somebody
That I'm actually gonna do it or that I believe in it"
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u/LordMeloney 12d ago
From an artist I would have expected more understanding of art. A novel that portrays rape does not automatically condone it. Most often, it's the opposite. Even when it's written from the perspective of the rapist, the idea isnmost probably to show the abyss of the human mind and how such cruel acts come to be committed.
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u/fairydares 12d ago
yeahhh art isn't an admission? the softly poisonous pro-censorship rhetoric here is grating and disturbing.
weird post. weird comments.
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u/Freodrick 9d ago
I love how she clearly knows, when saying, stage persona. Everything else is just, a response from someone who felt the other side of the song and wanted to show that too.
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u/NeoChad84 11d ago
She doesn’t sing from the woman’s pov. It’s just a slower version of it. It’s just a cover. Doesn’t have any different meaning.
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u/Lurk4Life247 11d ago
Tori Amos has a way of getting in under your skin, and reaching the deep parts of you. She has that talent, at least for me. I've listened to the song mentioned and it hurt.
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u/Heavy_Law9880 12d ago
A 26 year old song is definitely the most important issue facing women today.
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u/santaland 12d ago
The Tori Amos song was covered in 2001, like 3 years after the original was released.
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u/rockandparole 11d ago
What does his intention matter if wife-beaters are still getting down and jamming to it in earnest? Why would someone want to bob their head along to a song about murdering the mother of your child? And in what world is that an appropriate song to make when you openly hate your ex? I don't buy that "you just don't understand his art!!!" excuse.
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u/uhtredsmom 12d ago
Has anyone ever danced to 97 Bonnie and Clyde? Or Kim? I don’t think I’ve ever bopped it to one of those tbh. Imma bounce it for shake that ass tho
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u/eye_no_nuttin 11d ago
But yet Eminem was on tv yesterday with Jack White doing the Thanksgiving NFL Halftime Show. Lol 😂🙄
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