Priestly Perspective of 'Eight Mile', A
Eight Mile, the motion picture featuring the rap artist Eminem grossed an amazing $54.8 million its opening weekend. Although reviews for the film have been mixed, critics were universal in their praise of Eminem for his 'breakout' performance, going so far as to hail the diminutive star as the 'next James Dean'. Audiences continue to flock to see the film. Teenagers, particularly, seem entranced by the artist formerly known as Marshall Mathers III.
I, of course, have heard of Eminem. How could one not be aware of Eminem? Commercials have been trumpeting the release of Eight Mile every half hour on the hour (this observation coming from one who watches only Fox News, ESPN, and the History Channel). My students (yes, I teach in a Catholic high school) waxed poetic about Eninem and announced their plans to attend the film's opening at the local movie house. After viewing the film and fulfilling the adolescent equivalent of nirvana, these same teens dutifully reported to me how 'awesome' they found the picture. Some shared that their parents accompanied them and were declared to be equally enthralled. Such statements inspired other students to say that they too were making the pilgrimage to view Eight Mile. My natural priestly instinct was to dissuade them from viewing the film. Although my knowledge of Eminem was cursory at best, my collegiate days in Detroit did inform me enough about rap to pronounce negatively.
After voicing my misgivings about rap and especially Eminem, my students countered with the familiar argument, "how can you condemn something that you did not see?" On the surface the argument is bereft. I do not need to put my hand into a fire to know the consequences of burning. However, the students' argument does have some merit. The example of fire deals with concrete actions with perceptible consequences where definite moral judgments are almost always possible. On the other hand, when discussing rap music or the quality of films, we are traveling down the far more illusive path of culture and art, both of which are open to interpretation according to numerous points of view. The effects of bad 'artistic expression' are not always so apparent. Unfortunately, at a time when the definition of culture itself has become ambivalent, moral pronouncements are not attained readily. I remember the debate a few years ago when Martin Scorsese released his film The Last Temptation of Christ. Some bishops condemned the film while other bishops endorsed Scorsese's depiction of a Christ void of divinity and subject solely to human determinisms.
Because I am always in search of 'teachable moments' when students are prime to actually listen to what I have to say, I debated as to whether I should accompany them to the film. I thought to myself: if parents are bringing their teens to see Eight Mile can it really be all that bad? Besides, I reasoned, the Holy Father has continually exhorted us to evangelize culture by engaging it: not by flight, but by moral fight. If I found anything objectionable would I not have more credibility with my students to address the problem? Moreover, as moderator of a "Catholic Culture Club" where members watch films and analyze them from a Catholic moral perspective, I was of the mind that if any film begged for moral scrutiny, it was this one. After debating with myself the 'good end, but is this a bad means?' dimensions of viewing Eight Mile with students, I decided to attend the screening with them. To put it mildly, nothing prepared me for what I was about to view on the big screen.
Eight Mile is supposedly the semi-autographical account of Eminem's life. The lead character, Jimmy Smith Jr., aka "Bunny Rabbit" has been dealt life's worst set of cards. He has just broken up with his pregnant girlfriend. He is without car, job, and home except for his mother's squalid trailer. Mom also has her problems: she is an alcoholic and has taken up with an equally boozing male friend the same age as Rabbit. Rabbit's only solaces in life are his rap friends, his amazing skill of razing opponents at rap insult competitions, and his dreams of making it as a rap star and getting a better life someplace else.
Unfortunately, like all his family and friends, Rabbit is on the fast track to no where. He agonizes between a group of his friends who dream of assembling a rap group and another friend who promises Rabbit a recording contract that never seems to materialize. To make matters worse, Rabbit has acquired a reputation as a choker in an insult competition as well as a girlfriend who uses sex to further her ends. The entire film traces Rabbit's odyssey from white trash rap-choker to the predictable Rocky-like finale where Rabbit is transformed into white trash rap insult competition victor. (I use the unfortunate term 'white trash' for descriptive purposes only, not to depersonalize or demonize. No human person is 'trash'.)
If the story itself was not wretched enough, the relentlessly profane and harsh language (I stopped counting words beginning with 'f' after the first ten minutes) and free-wheeling recreational sex, put this film way over the top - or should I say, under the usual fare. One agonizingly graphic sex scene in particular makes one wonder why this film did not garner an 'X' rating. So much for the vaunted film ratings system: wolves are clearly guarding this hen house. In reference to its other aspects, the film's depiction of the hip-hop world is completely sanitized. None of the rappers engage in serious drug abuse. Following violent gang beatings, no one sustains either serious or life-threatening wounds. Although sex flows freely, there are no sexually communicable diseases, and no one becomes pregnant. This is idealistic as it comes in the world of hip-hop. The story builds to the aforementioned finale of Rabbit's victory in the insult competition. Annihilation of one's opponents is not achieved with guns or knives. In hip-hop land, one slices and dices the enemy by means of an obscene-laden tongue. It's blood-letting of the worse sort. This is the world of Eminem, 'Bunny Rabbit', and the culture of rap.
As rap enters into the cultural mainstream (that near-record $54.8 million opening box office for an 'R' rated film was certainly not achieved by inner-city youth alone), it is important to point out that it has not shed its advocacy of moral degeneracy. The packaging is the only thing that has changed. The pattern repeats itself for rap as it did for rock: the pattern of accommodation. In the name of tolerance and inclusiveness, the high-minded Judeo-Christian moral tradition is further displaced to accommodate lower class street values. Furthermore, the passion for innovation, a quintessentially American obsession, has the unfortunate effect of disarming culture's usual manner of renewal: self-purification by ostracizing anything deemed sullying to the esteemed cultural inheritance. In the present schema, everything must be tolerated no matter how abhorrent. Culture, therefore, stoops to absorb and mainstream the 'new' without discerning the degree of injury to what authentic culture normally celebrates: the highest values of a group of people embellished in sign and symbol for the purpose of handing on cherished values to subsequent generations. Our death warrant as a people has been signed, the ink written in the hankering for profit (whichever the moral cost) and the uncritical embrace of the 'new' (however profane) for tolerance sake.
Given the indisputable influence of rap and celebrities such as Eminem, what strategy can parents employ to assist teens in their navigation through the moral quagmire of a toxic culture so typified by films like Eight Mile?
First, always state the truth clearly without equivocation. There are actions which are always right and there are actions which are always morally wrong. Morality is not relative, nor does the Christian accept that it has been revised to become 'new and improved.' (How funny that the new morality looks suspiciously like the old paganism.) In this moral morass, the Church is a sure teacher and moral guide. Fidelity to the Magisterium of the Church is paramount. Moral choices must be made in reference to the clearly stated moral teachings of our faith. Teens hardly benefit from a diluted catechesis which acquiesces to the surrounding culture under the guise of 'compassion.' Directing a soul to damnation by dispensing fuzzy-wuzzy, "God loves us no matter what we do" advice is hardly compassionate. Jesus said the truth alone will set us free. And often times that truth will hurt especially when one is living a lifestyle at variance with it. The goal of education is to teach kids how to think and how to make moral choices in conformity with their supernatural end. The specific goal of Catholic education is to teach them how to think and to act as believing and practicing members of the Roman Catholic Church. We educate and provide the tools for moral decision-making by preaching the Gospel in all its integrity and power. To dilute or edit the Gospel is to strip it of its power to transform lives. Faith provides the vision to see things as they are from a divine perspective. It is this faith perspective that enables the individual to evaluate critically the surrounding culture. If everyone looked at the world and all it holds from the vantage point of faith, we would have a vastly different world where Eminem and others of his ilk would be obsolete.
Second, parents need to discuss moral issues and their cultural manifestations with their children. In a perfect world, crass media would not exist. Unfortunately, the world is not perfect and the media is the principal instrument which disseminates the new orthodoxy of moral relativism coupled with political correctness. There is such a thing as educating by inoculating. Attempts to shelter youth from harmful influences are often futile in our media age. Parents should know that virtually any musical recording or film is obtainable for download on the internet. Frequently some enterprising computer whiz downloads films or objectionable music and passes copies around school. Better for parents to engage the issues addressed in the various media outlets head-on. Discuss with your teens the issues raised by popular media. If parents do not engage their children with firm guidance on moral issues and cultural mores, you can be certain the vacuum will be filled by social and educational 'experts' who parrot the very voices and philosophies from which children should be protected.
Third, parents must be consistent. I am amazed that parents find no moral objection to watching Friends but are rightfully strident in their objection to films such as Eight Mile. Do they honestly believe that Friends and Eight Mile are all that different? Unfortunately, the ideal of the morally rudderless self cut adrift in a world where everything can be had no matter how odious is the same for each. They differ only in their choice of means and the degree of moral ambivalence on the part of the characters who convey the message.
Fourth, teach teens the virtue of 'self-imposed censorship. It is a truth of faith that the diabolical acts only through the natural order. Satan is creature, not creator. He is preternatural, but not supernatural. Like all creatures without grace, he exists and moves and has his being completely outside the supernatural, which is God's exclusive domain. The world of sight and sounds can be and often is the devil's workshop. These are the means he uses to supply the ideas and the images and the motives he would like to see as the individual's interior intimates, the regulators of his decisions and actions. Christian discernment is the art of ascertaining where these thoughts arise, what they really mean, so that choices can be made. It is imperative that one engages in 'self-imposed censorship' as to what one reads, what one views, and to the type of music one listens. All these stimulate our mind to think, and what we think determines what we desire, and our desires become the seedbed of our actions. We shape our destiny by the ideas we choose to have enter our minds through the media. Common sense, not to say enlightened prudence, tells us we must be selective in what we choose to view or to hear.
Fifth, prayer and the sacramental life are indispensable for living a Christian moral life. Prayer is conversation with God. By it we become intimates of the God who has called us to knowledge and love of Himself. Through the sacraments, those marvelous channels of divine grace, we are raised up to share in the very life of our Creator. Through the gift of grace we are gradually transformed to His perspective and manner of action so that we are capable of saying, as did St. Paul, "it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me." Because of the divine indwelling through grace, the Christian is able to act on every social situation from a divine point of view. This inspires us to hope: God will provide the means for us to not only survive in a wicked age, but to flourish spiritually. It is only in the night that the stars are able to shine. Christians are called to be beacons of light in this age of moral darkness. Human action, ennobled by grace, enables us to be this light.
I was not a happy man after viewing Eight Mile and even less happy that many of my own students enjoyed what they saw. There is clearly much teaching to be done. I am also disturbed that otherwise good, sensible parents have viewed the Eminem phenomenon as something benign. That is sadly incorrect. Eminem and the rap culture is a seductive attack upon the virtue of purity and the dignity of the human person. Music which celebrates vulgarity, misogyny, mutilation, and rape hardly fulfills the Christian definition of culture as the 'highest values of a group of people.' If rap music represents our highest values, our society is much sicker than we know.
Although a very displeasing experience, my viewing of Eight Mile has enabled me to gain first-hand knowledge of a very influential cultural phenomenon and the attitudes of our Catholic teens toward the same. As proof of God's ability to draw good out of evil, several of the teens with whom I have been discussing the film since viewing it have begun to see rap for the evil that it is. Even more satisfying was the significant number of teens who voiced their repugnance after viewing Eight Mile. There may be hope after all.
"The people dwelling in darkness has seen a great light," proclaims the Advent liturgy. With reference to the present cultural war for control of the minds and souls of our youth, let us pray fervently that more people will see the light as well.
Fr. Vierling has an excellent website: The Internet Padre.
This item 4547 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
