Murder by Eminem, continued

Just read the long Eminem comments thread. A few remarks:

1. It seems clear now that the report that the Arizona killer quoted Eminem lyrics as he killed members of his family was not true. The lyrics are not from an Eminem song, even though the psycho told cops they were. In light of this new information, I'm backing off -- somewhat -- the force of yesterday's post.

2. That false lead caused me to look up Eminem lyrics, which are among the most repulsive, violent, misogynistic, pornographic things I've ever read. Typical of that musical genre. I think it is difficult at best to draw a direct causal line between an work of art and an anti-social or violent act carried out by someone who was moved by it. Still, I will say again that I think it is disingenuous to claim that there is no connection whatsover between these acts and art consumed by people who do them. Take a look at this story. Excerpt:

The United States Military Academy at West Point yesterday confirmed that Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan recently travelled to California to meet producers of the show, broadcast on the Fox channel. He told them that promoting illegal behaviour in the series - apparently hugely popular among the US military - was having a damaging effect on young troops.

According to the New Yorker magazine, Gen Finnegan, who teaches a course on the laws of war, said of the producers: "I'd like them to stop. They should do a show where torture backfires... The kids see it and say, 'If torture is wrong, what about 24'?

"The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do."

The meeting in November was arranged by Human Rights First, a non-profit organisation that has launched a campaign against torture both in the real world and on television. It says that since the terror attacks of September 11, the incidence of torture in television shows has soared. In 2000 there were 42 scenes of torture on prime-time US television while in 2003 there were 228.

The group's David Danzig said: "I think there is no question [it is having an effect]. We have spoken to soldiers with experience in Iraq who say, for young soldiers, there is a direct relationship between what they are doing in their jobs and what they see on TV... It's the same abroad.

"The image of the US and its military [being involved in torture] is being affirmed."

I heard this discussed on a radio broadcast the other day, and the West Point general was quoted saying that it was deeply unsettling to him that soldiers in the field were forgetting their military training, and allowing a pop culture figure -- Jack Bauer -- to be more influential in how they regarded torture than the military.

Who will argue that Sergeant Smith, confronted with a suspected terrorist, said, "What would Jack Bauer do?", then set about torturing the man? I doubt you could find that anywhere. But clearly the show and its valorization of torture was having enough of an effect on troops in real life that West Point felt moved to send a general out to Hollywood to plead with the producers to stop it.

Another story: back in the early 1990s, I was watching "Menace II Society" or one of the ghetto movies like it that were popular back then. I thought the film was a gritty and realistic and moral tale of the hopelessness of a certain sort of inner city life. It was a real work of art, I thought, both morally and aesthetically. At one point, there's an act of violence, and a human head is quickly shown rolling down the street. A group of black teenage boys -- precisely the group the film was attempting to reach -- sitting behind me roared with laughter, and talked raucously for a few minutes about how cool that was. That shook me up. The filmmakers plainly did not intend for the audience to think that was "cool"; they intended to shock the audience with the horror of what they witnessed. Yet these teenagers were inured to violence. It was all aesthetic to them. That unsettled me more than anything on screen. What sort of interior life does a young man lead day to day to find decapitation funny? What does he put into his head to shape his soul?

I have written before about how I left professional film criticism right after my first child was born (not because I had a kid, mind you, but because I changed jobs at the newspaper). I startled myself by discovering how I had become desensitized to film violence and sexuality, simply by watching so many movies. I also surprised myself by losing, and losing almost instantly, my tolerance for gory film violence. Seeing how precious and vulnerable life is, by caring for a newborn baby, created a sensitivity in me against graphic film violence that I had not known before. I choose not to try to overcome it, because I believe it represents a humanization of me, a re-sensitization that is for the good.

This is one reason I despise pornography. Not only does it defile the image of women (and all human beings who participate in it), but it nourishes a low, brutish side of our personalities, the part we're supposed to work toward overcoming as part of becoming civilized. It desensitizes us to the humanity of women, and to humanity itself. It trains us to become brutes. The process of civilization involves moving away from our animal selves -- but we have created a culture that is bound and determined to re-barbarize us.

Now, I'm wondering exactly what truth is told, and what part of our souls are to be edified, by Eminem's rapping about masturbating to the image of Hannah Montana. I wonder what higher faculties of the soul are nurtured by contemplating Eminem's couplet in which he discusses ejaculating into someone's anus, then eating the semen. (Sorry to shock you, but if we're going to talk about this, let's be clear what we're talking about). Would you want your daughter going out with a boy who filled his head with this garbage?

3. To those who draw an equivalence between Eminem lyrics and political speech calling late-term abortionists "butchers," let me tell you, when someone writes song after song revelling in grotesque detail in the murder of abortionists, you'll have a fair comparison. I have written here that people need to be responsible in how we talk about these emotional issues. But what Eminem and his ilk do is not the same thing. Not even close.

4. I reject the relativist "Elvis shocked people in his day" argument. I think you guys are fooling yourselves. For that to be valid, you have to assume that there is essentially no difference between "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog" and the sort of hip-hop song quoted in the excerpt below the jump. What I've posted there is a portion of the transcript from the PBS Frontline documentary "The Lost Children of Rockdale County," which was an exploration of the free-for-all sexual culture in suburban Atlanta high schools, uncovered when the state came in to investigate a syphilis outbreak among the students. Read this portion of the transcript, and try to maintain with a straight face that the kind of "art" these kids value and make part of their daily experience has nothing whatsoever to do with the values they affirm and live by (warning: this is rough):