By Zoe Zorka, freelance writer
@zoeshrugged
With Trump’s first year in office immortalized by scandal, blunders, and numerous other controversies and Eminem preparing to headline Coachella, our nation finds itself on the cusp of a generational shift and our leader isn’t the orange buffoon sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., but rather the Real Slim Shady- the unlikely voice of the millennial generation.
After all, it was only a matter of time until Eminem, known the past two decades for skewering politicians and current political dynamics, took aim at Trump (as well as many of society’s other ills), creating not a revolution, but a revival.
Revival, which is undoubtedly one of Eminem’s best albums of his career, serves as the perfect mirror for millennial America’s entrance into adulthood.
“I could be one of your kids…”
In the late 1990s and early 2000’s, millennials (who were largely teens and preteens at the time) loved Eminem, most parents hated him. After all, even he touted his ideas as “nightmares to white parents.”
He was the media’s dream come true.
Just like Trump.
This isn’t Trump’s reality show.
This is The Eminem Show. All grown up.
“Now how the f*** did this metamorphosis happen?”
In order to understand where we are now, it’s crucial to understand that we got to this point long before the Republican primaries in 2016.
Following one of the biggest upsets in history, political pundits and talking heads pondered the following:
How did Clinton not swiftly capture our millennial vote? (We love Jay-Z!)
How did she not capture the vote of our parents, the baby boomers? (They love Medicare!)
The answer is simple: The millenials, Eminem’s “White America,” came of age.
(In this context, it’s important to note that Eminem’s “White America,” is strictly a reference to the 2002 hit song off The Eminem Show album, and has far less to do with race than it does with relating to disenfranchised millenials, most of us whom were teenagers or pre-teens when the album came out as Eminem’s broad, cross-cultural appeal to “anyone who’s ever been through s*** in their lives” largely resonated with middle-class urban and suburban kids across every race, religion, and socioeconomic demographic. )
“Little hellions, kids feeling rebellious…”
While perhaps misguided, Trump succeeded in pushing “this generation of kids to stand and fight for the right to say something you might not like.”
And he appealed to our parents’ sense of frugality and paternal dependence, thus winning the two largest voting blocks.
If Eminem, who has been simultaneously both a reflection of our generation as well as a motivating factor, was so accurately able to capture the attention of America’s youth (which he obviously did as the album sold over 10 million copies), it should come as no surprise that our generation would grow up and carry those messages and values into our adulthood. Essentially, our generation still has a lot of “anger aimed in no particular direction that just sprays and sprays.”
In a recent interview with The Atlantic, Alan Jacobs, author of How to Think, argues that “the primary fault of the right at this moment in America is wrath,” a dynamic evidenced on social media and in the comments section of any major news article on any given day.
Carly Holman of Conservative Review hit the nail on the head when she wrote that “Trump is the Eminem candidate. Like the rapper, Trump is explicit, vulgar, and unapologetic. He’s anti-PC and he’s anti-elitism. Both Trump and Eminem have endured the intense backlash of liberal elites.”
Legally, us millennials are adults, but emotionally, many of us are stuck in a perpetual state of blissful, delayed adolescence. We’re figurative teenagers who were, and still are, both simultaneously dependent on, and despondent of, our parents and other authority figures.
The candidates understood this dynamic, and the angst that accompanies it, and turned our electorate into a family with two divorced parents going to divorce court on the national stage. Us kids just had to choose: mom or dad.
In “Cleaning Out My Closet” (also on The Eminem Show), Eminem embodied this millennial dichotomy, blowing off “tempers flaring from parents” while simultaneously singing a song written entirely about his mother, a woman who he was clearly codependent on- to at least some extent.
Trump further capitalized on this contradiction by singing “for these kids who don’t have a thing” as he “lit a fire up under [America’s collective] a**” by providing an outlet to rebel against our surrogate helicopter parents (the government, big corporations), but still promising to be the dad who would be there when someone tried to hurt us.
After all, even Eminem has devoted a fair amount of lyrics to the importance of being a good father and the impact that a fatherless existence had on his upbringing.
“Have you ever been hated or discriminated against?”
Just as with most of his music, Eminem consciously (and subconsciously) appealed to listeners’ feelings of being a victim, because let’s face it- everyone has been judged to some extent. In the 2016 election, both candidates played into the idea that everyone is a victim- many times they reinforced the belief that “it” (whatever it is) is someone else's fault.
As millennials, we were the test tube babies of the anti-bullying movement. At school, teachers and administrators would ask the offender to change their behavior rather than for us to handle it on our own. At home, our parents told us to stand up for ourselves and to hit back (literally or figuratively) in order to earn respect. Eminem called enemies “a maltese” while he was “a pit bull off his leash,” the same moral ideology touted by Trump with regard to pretty much all of his policies.
“You’re getting older now…”
In the end, millennials chose to live with dad because, according to Dan Zak of the Washington Post, we have some daddy issues stemming from the fact that our first experience with governance is our family unit. A parent is in charge, and traditionally, it’s Dad.
Many in our generation voted for who we thought would parent us best while our parents voted who they thought would be the best parent and look after their wayward brood of children.
Many baby boomers seemed to want a father who would take care of the kids once he was gone. Ellen Kaufman, 56, called Donald Trump “the strict dad that America needs.”
Trump gave voters both those things, mirroring the familiar family dynamics that many millennials still pine for while at the same time, promising our parents that he’d care for his kids, the American population, if they were to die.
“Like Home"
With an unprecedented amount of coverage, the reaction to Revival symbolizes much more than a protest against the current administration. It’s the symbolic passing of a generational torch and more importantly, the need for us millennials to start acting like adults.
This is the perfect chance for the strongest of our generation to emerge from the chaos and do this the right way.
Almost two decades ago, he gave respect to the first amendment and “the women and men who broke their necks for the freedom of speech this democracy of hypocrisy is sworn to uphold.”
Back when we were kids, the freedom of speech seemed like a ubiquitous concept, something foreign to many of us or an ancient relic of the protests of our parents’ generation.
Today, we have that power, but too many of us have no idea how to use it, not realizing that ideas and criticism of the current administration or social dynamics is not an affront against America, but rather an important part of progress.
In “Like Home,” Eminem sings: “But you ain't ruining our country, punk, or takin' our pride from us/you won't define us/cause like a dictionary, things are looking up/so much, got a sprained neck/know we will rise up/so hands in the air, let's hear it for the start of a brand new America,” a unifying call to reject not America, but the toxic ideas that have become far too prevalent in today’s anger culture.
As leaders of our generation, we can’t be afraid of the freedom of speech, but we also must know how to use it wisely. Repeating rhetoric, sharing simpleminded views, and stirring the pot simply for the sake of attention and/or our peers’ and elders’ approval (or disapproval) is not the way to do that.
The question is: which of us are going to step up and be adults? Who among us will the voice to inspire the next generation of kids and get them to pay attention?
“America, we love you….”
But we do need a line in the sand as Eminem pointed out in his BET freestyle video.
Which of us in the “White America” generation are willing to draw a line in the sand? Who among us is enlightened enough to know that the line isn’t necessarily against just a man, but also against ignorance, racism, divisiveness, and the other ills plaguing our nation?
Racism and hatred on life support and our generation needs to be the one who pulls the plug.
Eminem ends both “White America” and Revival stating his support for the nation as a whole, giving a glimmer of hope during two turbulent times in our nation’s history.
After all, we owe it to the next generation to give them a better America than we had, a sentiment best summed up by Eminem while waxing philosophical on the potential of a draft (a fear among young adults in 2002):