As a young child, I wasn't allowed to watch the US debut of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan for fear it might expose me prematurely to sexual lyrics. I can only laugh about that now. At the risk of being as "uncool" now as I was then, I believe the sick stuff emanating from Eminem's world goes way beyond I Wanna Hold Your Hand - now it's "I wanna tie you up, torture you and film you".
Beneath the seductive, lulling, even soothing beat of Eminem's hypnotic music, there is a lyrical celebration of the psychopathic personality. Drowning a pregnant woman in the boot of a car. Bringing a woman into the woods and painting the trees with her blood. Cutting a woman's head off with a chainsaw. Mother-rape:
Slut! You think I won't choke no whore
Til her vocal chords don't work in her throat no more. . . [female voice - ahhhh!]
Put your hands down bitch ain't gonna shoot you
I'm gonna pull you to this bullet and put it through you
Shut up, Slut! You're causing too much chaos
Just bend over and take it like a slut. . . ok ma! [female voice: Ahhh!]
As a parent, I have difficulty reading these lyrics from a cultural-studies perspective, which regards Eminem as ironically commenting on a society that is already sick - a society which, after all, created him, and isn't that proof enough? As a parent, I am a protector, not a cultural commentator.
As Marie Murray, head of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview, Dublin, states: Eminem "is a child protection issue, not a censorship issue". We have become almost paranoid, she says, about protecting our children from pollution, drugs and sexual abuse, yet we allow the sexually abusive lyrics of Eminem straight into our children's minds, putting the lives of girls and women at risk. "There are some children whose childhood ends with the message of this kind of material," Murray says. "Some embark on a process where childhood trust is converted into distrust, normal frustrations become justifications for aggression and anger. Others lose their capacity to be shocked and enter into a frozen knowing. The child who has had prolonged repeated exposure may lose all capacity for insight or empathy."
But what can we do? In the days of 45 rpm and Ed Sullivan - broadcast once a week - parents could exercise some control. Today, our lives are so infused by a potential 24-hour exposure to TV, video and the Internet that parents feel powerless - despite the "parental advisory" sticker on Eminem's album.
Susan Ricketts, a south Dublin mother of three children (the eldest of whom is nine) expresses the helplessness so many of us feel: "I think Eminem is sick. His language is so threatening that I cannot understand why it's not banned. I wouldn't like my children listening to his music, if I could help it. I'd like to see Eminem banned from programmes like Top of the Pops and RTE young people's programmes, because young children watch those."
On the other hand, Ian Dempsey, DJ with Today FM and former presenter of the children's programme Dempsey's Den, bought the Eminem CD for his 11-year-old son for Christmas and listens to it with him.
"There's a lot worse out there, especially among some of the black rappers," he says. Dempsey says that by discussing the music with his son he believes he is defusing any harm that might be done. He has also made his son promise that he will not play the CD for any of his friends because it is up to his friends' parents to decide whether they should be exposed to it.
Rob Weatherill, a secondary school teacher, psychoanalyst and father of a 16-year-old Eminem fan, believes parents are intimidated and fearful of being considered "un-cool", despite the fact that Eminem's lyrics may "tip some vulnerable - they would hate this word! - adolescents into a dangerously depressed place, or isolationist seclusion, with or without others of like mind, inspiring fantasies of homicide, suicide and rape."
Eminem, he says, "forms part of a wide range of risks that adolescents are prone to in postmodernism, which is `post' or `past' all traditional values. There's no way of stopping this stuff, which is more or less total pornography.
"There is no way of talking about it in any meaningful way, as by definition it is most radically counter-cultural - not something you could possibly talk to your parents about!"
Says Murray: "Unwittingly many parents may have purchased this material or provided the wherewithal for their children to do so. Many parents hear only a repetitive beat being played out and smile indulgently at the musical tastes of the current youth culture, genuinely believing that this is somehow like the past, when the dissonance or loudness of music separated the generations."
This isn't the Beatles - or even Morrisey, Sid Vicious or Johnny Rotten, for that matter. Eminem is a sneering brain-washer, nothing more. He knows that the farther music goes, the more sick material you need to be stimulated, just as with pornography. "In order to maintain the same level of physical and sexual arousal that the lyrics can induce, the evil has to push further and further," says Murray. When is somebody going to shout "stop!"? When it's too late, probably.
