8 Mile Is All You Gotta Go To Jam With Eminem

8 Mile is a semi-autobiographical movie about B-Rabbit (Eminem), an aspiring rapper in the ’90s’ rap scene of Detroit. The protagonist seeks to launch a career in hip-hop while stuck in a rat race with his awful job at a car (?) factory and his even more awful family living in a trailer park. The movie creates an original atmosphere of tragicomedy, which is hardly ever seen in hood movies. They either dramatically overexaggerate the exasperations of poverty and crime, or quite the opposite, they tend to dip the story in comedy, catering more for the consumers’ taste.

However, Eminem creates an ingenious atmosphere, using music to process through the tragic hood reality. Take for example the scene with B-Rabbit and Future tinkering B-Rabbit’s car while rapping about the trailer park, B-Rabbit’s mom, and that damnation of a car, jamming to Sweet Home Alabama (“You live at home in a trailer”). Not only do they jam to cope with the situation that life brought about, music quite literally takes them away from the godforsaken Detroit trailer park to the lush green hills of Alabama.

Originally, Scott Silver’s screenplay included animated sequences for a similar purpose. As B-Rabbit closes his eyes on the bus, listening to some music, he “[escapes] his earthy bounds & dull reality”, turning into Superman, flying high above the “bad” streets of Detroit, going back in time to the previous night, going full-on samurai on Lil Tic, the rapper he lost a freestyle battle to, starting a Tarantino-esque bloodbath, ending up in the present, at a fancy hotel in the suburbs where he works as a bellboy. Make no mistake, Tarantino was considered directing the movie, and I can’t really explain why the producers refrained from going with Silver’s animations.

Eminem, on the other hand, greatly plays a quasi-cameo in the movie, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, as he had already experimented with several alter-egos such as Slim Shady, the rapper known for his penchant for violence and dark humour. Although B-Rabbit is no Slim Shady, the aggressive look on his face has the same roots, and I don’t really wonder why 8 Mile didn’t pass the Bechdel test, either.