Losing Himself in the Music
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postmodernist fiction is designed to raise: real, compared to
what? (91)
If history destabilizes the real world, likewise the personas of
postmodernist writers destabilize their real selves.
If “Borges and I” begins to call the notion of distinguishing between an
authentic, essential self and its representations and personas into question, the
lyrics of Eminem exploit and explore this possibility in a clearly explicit way.
Even the titles of Eminem’s albums reveal Eminem’s interest in and exploitation
of the multiplicity of the nonessential selves that seem to make up the mind of this
artist. Barring Eminem’s first album, all of his albums are named for himself:
The Slim Shady EP (1998) and LP (1999), the Marshall Mathers LP (2000), and
The Eminem Show (2002). While each album has its own “identity” and should
apparently reveal something about these various personas; nevertheless, all three
personas make appearances in some form on all three albums, and much of the
themes, and even structures, of these albums are quite similar. Slim Shady is
seemingly the misogynistic and homophobic “dark side” of Marshall Mathers’s
identity. Eminem—as the title of his most recent album indicates—is the
showman, the more traditional rap persona of Marshall Mathers. The double “m”
invoked by Eminem’s name connects him to Marshall Mathers while still
maintaining an odd and potentially racially symbolic divide between himself and
this performer.
But if there is an Eminem “show” there is also a Slim Shady and even a
Marshall Mathers “show.” After introducing himself to the world as Slim Shady
at the opening of the Slim Shady LP, he apparently wants to also introduce
Marshall Mathers to the world in his next self-titled album. His frustration in
doing so is clearly evident in the album but especially in “The Way I Am.” While
the verses of the song describe who Marshall Mathers is, what he does, and what
he thinks about, the closing lines of the first verse explain that he is “tired of
arguin’” about who he is but that he does not “mean to be mean but that’s all I can
be is just me.” Nevertheless, despite these claims that he is the man that he
describes, his frustration at being defined through the media gives rise to another
way that he knows himself:
’Cause I am whatever you say I am
If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?
In the paper, the news everyday I am
Radio won't even play my jam
’Cause I am whatever you say I am
If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?
In the paper, the news everyday I am
I don’t know, it’s just the way I am