This is to share and make a smallish comment about a jaw-droppingly powerful image that I've just seen, disseminated to my newsfeed by Nation magazine. I’m not sure if I should directly feature the work of the Australian painter, lushsux, licensable by Getty images— but, after all, lushsux does hope to go viral as a “meme artist” so I guess it’s OK. You can easily find the image that the Nation licensed if you click on this screenshot from a google search on "lushsux trump."
It features Trump and the rapper Eminem writing "Dear Slim, I wrote you but you still ain't calling..."
At this point readers may divide, with some not grasping this reference (and if so, then probably not my title either) while the other half is annoyed with me for mansplaining it. Will this be like either immediately grasping a joke or not, and if we have to stop and explain, it's already too late?
In any case, for those who need catching up, the mural references Eminem’s song “Stan”—arguably one of the top ten hip-hop songs ever made. One single hearing permanently sears it into your memory. If you need to stop and hear it now, please don’t be like students who only read the first half of Malcolm X’s autobiography, armed with negative preconceptions, get offended, stop…and thus miss the end of the book that repudiates most of what offended them. (Not that Eminem equals Malcolm—I’m just saying listen to the end.)
Is everyone with me now? It is “Stan,” the obsessive superfan, being referenced in the mural. He is addressing Eminem’s rap persona, “Slim Shady”:
“Dear Slim, I wrote you but you still ain’t calling….”
Stan has lost track of the gap between two things: On one hand, the ironized description and/or critique and/or hyper-intensified semi-caricature of violent misogynistic behavior in much hip-hop music—that is, a poetic report that is also lament and outrage. On the other hand, the straightforward promotion and celebration of such violence and misogyny.
(More mansplaining: let’s be clear that both things are part of hip-hop, but that far more of hip-hip is in the former camp than haters presume. That’s by any reasonable measure, and I would further maintain that in the best hip-hop, the critical aspects are preponderant. But we can adjudicate what's "best" another day; no one denies that this song belongs in that camp.)
Stan (the character) obsessively imagines Slim (that is, Eminem, the narrator) as the only one who “gets” him and by extension as a sort of idealized best friend or lover. But he believes Eminem has disrespected him. Slowly Stan loses his grip, and by the end he goes off the rails, puts his girlfriend in the trunk of his car, and drives off a bridge.
His last message to Slim, from the bridge, makes it clear that he is partly blinded by rage, partly wants to punish Eminem for an imagined betrayal, and partly hopes to posthumously impress Eminem. He tries the latter by re-enacting in “his real life” (that is, within the song’s narrative) what Eminem had presented in an earlier song as a disturbing but mainly ironic revenge fantasy. (Eminem refers to this as "clowning," clearly trying to disavow any reading of the previous song that is not ironic enough for his fans to grasp.)
We know that Stan is only imagining Eminem betraying him, because we can hear (again within the narrative of the song) Eminem catching up on replies to fan mail. He apologizes for an unintentional slight, encourages Stan to chill out and spend quality time with his girlfriend, and urges him to get counseling.
About the revenge fantasy he says: “I say that shit just clowning, dog/ How fucked up is you?”
And so we circle back to the complexities and ironies encoded in this mural.
Yes, Trump has triggered something—parts of which might lead back toward understandable grievances—that pushed his “Stans” over the edge.
Yes, there are sick fantasies and broken promises involved.
Yes, everyone needs to chill out and get some counseling.
As for the question to Stan in the song, “Dog! how fucked up is you?,” and as for the object of Stan’s obsession (Eminem) trying to calm to the violently unstable actors down-- there the point for today isn't so much Trump addressing such words to his alt-right militias (although we might like to do that!) but rather the world addressing it to Trump.
MBE standard notice: The time I spend on this blog is not in addition to a Twitter and FaceBook presence, but an alternative to it. If you think anything here merits wider circulation, this will probably only happen if you circulate it.