Research Symposium

BIO

Always a fan of blurring binaries, Ana pursued an Honor's Thesis focused on Eminem's political persona, namely, how the political and the persona crash into each other and what novelties are created in the organized chaos. Ana has also published literary research through Florida State's undergraduate research journal, The Owl, and assisted Dr. Bailey with her work concerning camera perspectives in police use of force videos and how they contribute to normative judgments of officers and civilians. In the future, Ana aspires to use their juris doctorate to protect the rights of marginalized groups and defend those whose rights have been violated.

Rapping Politics: A Case Study on Eminem as a Politicized Celebrity

Abstract

Literature concerning the interconnectedness of politics and popular media has rapidly gained traction over the past few years as popular media scholars like John Street and Regina Lawrence interpret, contextualize, and define the theoretical Venn diagram between politics and media. My thesis augments this discourse by answering the question: Is Marshal Mathers, or, as he is most famously known, Eminem, a political celebrity? Eminem has been a familiar face in the rap industry for over two decades; his success and longevity as a White man in a Black-dominated enterprise have been the locus of multiple analyses. Indeed, the implications of his race on popular hip-hop music comprise most of the conversation surrounding Eminem’s career. However, scarce, if any, research is committed to analyzing the extent of Eminem’s active participation in American politics. The literature dedicated to Eminem hyper-focuses on his race and the constructs of whiteness in African American music, often failing to examine Eminem’s engagement in contemporary politics. On the contrary, I examine him as a political actor, not despite his celebrity status but through it, concluding that Eminem fulfills all the characteristics of a politicized celebrity as defined by scholars before me. Thus, my thesis not only supplements the scholarship on political entertainment but, arguably, provides novel evidence for the affair between politics and popular media.

Keywords: Eminem, politics, popular media, entertainment, news