Superman is one of the Eminem’s songs in The Eminem Show album which depicts gender and sexuality. Similar with his other songs, Superman continues the series of female’s negative images in the relationship with male and how the women are crazy about Eminem. The video clip starts with his romance with a woman and how they enjoy it in sexuality but later most of the video shows his rejection to women. I will analyze by combining the lyrics, video, and Eminem’s experience in women.
“I’ll never let another chick bring me down”, a sentence in his lyric expresses distrust feeling, not to be affected or even controlled by woman anymore. This probably refers to his past bad experience when having a relationship with woman. First, his ex-wife (Kim) had an affair with another men and he saw they were sleeping together in their home. Second, how his disappointment with his mother shown in his song: Cleaning out my closet. These two reasons make Eminem dislikes women but not a gay, misogyny.
Eminem’s exposure to the bad side of woman continues by saying: “Not a jealous man, but females lie,” and “You want what you can’t have, Ooh girl that’s too damn bad,” and the scene shows of how he saw the women having an affair with other man. Surely he wants to justify the reason of why he dislikes women. Moreover, Eminem also shows the women get crazy about him. He presents himself as a dream figure for women and they ask his attention especially in sexuality. This can be seen in the scene of lot of mini-dressed women surrounding on him. Referring to the title Superman, this is not like a superhero dreamed by people when they are in trouble, but more like an idol man in sexuality.
Women have been represented as a figure with more obsessions in sexuality. In the first part of the video, women seem to be presented as figures having big sex desire and they want to control men using it. In the other parts, Eminem seems to illustrate that women have affair because of sex. In the scene when he is surrounded by women justified that they are the ones who want to have sex.
Of course male, Eminem in particularly, will likely accept benefits from this kind of offer. By projecting woman as bitch, ho’s, and liar, Eminem constructs women’s domination in men by their sexual appeal and attraction. Eminem shows himself as a ‘victim’ of this kind of domination, he becomes the marginalized side.
Eminem wants to offer liberation from women’s domination by discovering their dominant side and how they act sexually. His traumatic experience becomes a reason to hate women and as his basis for his treatment to them. The fact that he dislike women and being an idol of women that represented in Superman tend to put the women in an oppressive level. When Eminem treats women unfair, we can understand it because of his generalization them. When he sleeps with a woman, leaves her, and calls her back if he wants, we can understand because of his distrust to women.
It seems that Eminem wants to show to the audience that not only women who deserve to get sympathy but also men. Woman is represented as a figure who likes to cheat with male and male shouldn’t receive it. It is true that both male and female deserve to get sympathy, but with the over exposure given in the video and lyrics, Eminem illustrates that the male should control the female. By his over-expression of dislike to women potentially marginalized the women. At the same time, Eminem shows his superiority to women by rejecting their intention to get closer.
Liberation that offered by Eminem in Superman seems to make sense because of the reasons shown previously. But there is an inconsistency in the way he expresses the liberation, he offers to re-dominate the women as a way out. Domination of gender has been projected by Eminem, but at the same time he offers new kind of gender domination.
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