The Role Of Women In 8 Mile

There is no doubt that Eminem’s performance and music in 8 Mile, an American hip hop drama film loosely based on Eminem’s early life, were phenomenal. His original song “Lose Yourself” that was written for this film even won an Oscar, marking him the first rapper to receive an Academy award. However, viewers are too focused on praising Eminem’s successful transition from rapper to actor and, thus, overlook the role of women in this film, which exemplifies Laura Mulvey’s writings on the male gaze. In “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Mulvey argues that the processes of the film industry are gendered, through the male perspective of females and the influence of filming techniques, such as camera angles. Because of the overly sexualized

8 Mile is a reasonably male-dominated film, as this film is meant to convey Eminem’s actual upbringing in Detroit and he had mainly male friends; however, essentially every male character sees the main female characters featured in this film as sexual objects. 8 Mile is about Jimmy “B-Rabbit” Smith Jr., played by Eminem, who is an aspiring rapper from the ghettos of Detroit trying to make it big, but faces many obstacles from his family, friends, and foes in his path to success. Additionally, his character is shaped by these people, in particular, the predominant female characters of 8 Mile: B-Rabbit’s alcoholic mother, Stephanie and his love interest, Alex. As the film progresses, both women are frequently featured in sexual, objectifying scenes. As a

briefly encounters Alex for the first time. Jimmy blatantly checks her out as she walks away and the camera, then, zooms in on the lower half of her body, featuring her leather mini-skirt and black boots. Immediately, spectators inherently develop a sexual perspective of Alex, since it is Alex’s pleasing physicality that attracts her to Jimmy in the first place. As a result, “the determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly” (Mulvey 837). Because the male protagonist sees his love interest in this particular manner, movie watchers, the majority being men since this film targets male audiences, sees these female characters in the same way. Additionally, the camera angle becomes gendered, since it is oriented to focus on Alex’s physical features. This underlying action also promotes spectators to fixate these physical features and ultimately prioritizing them above any other feature, such as noticing Alex’s caring personality. Another instance is a female character who is always seen standing beside the character Papa Doc, the leader of a rival rap group that competes against B-Rabbit. She has no lines in the film and often has her arm around Papa Doc or is embracing him, dressed in provocative clothing. It is apparent that her sole purpose in the film is to stand beside Papa Doc in order for him to appear more masculine