Dog! How F*cked Up Is You?: Trump and His "Stans"

This is to share and make a smallish comment about a jaw-dropping image that I've just seen, fresh in my newsfeed from Nation magazine. I’m not sure if I should directly feature work by the Australian painter, lushsux, licensable by Getty images—but, lushsux does want to go viral as a “meme artist” so maybe it’s OK. You can find the image that the Nation licensed if you click on this screenshot from a google search on "lushsux trump."

Rapper Eminem and Donald Trump writing "Dear Slim, I wrote you but you still ain't calling..."

My readers probably divide, with some not immediately grasping the reference (and if not, then probably not my title either) while the other half is annoyed with my mansplaining. Is this like getting a joke or not, but if we have to stop to explain, it's too late?

In any case, for those who need mansplaining, lushsux references Eminem’s “Stan”—one of the top ten hip-hop songs ever made. A single hearing permanently sears it into memory. If you need to stop to listen, please don’t be like students who only read the first half of Malcolm X’s autobiography, armed with negative preconceptions, take offense, stop…and miss how Malcolm's final chapters repudiate most of what offended them. (No, I'm not saying Eminem equals Malcolm—I’m just saying listen to the end.)

Is everyone with me? It is Stan, Eminem's obsessive superfan, who is referenced in the mural. He addreses Eminem, aka Slim Shady: “Dear Slim, I wrote you but you still ain’t calling….”

Stan has lost touch of a gap between two things: On one hand, hip-hip's ironized descriptions and/or critiques and/or hyper-intensified semi-caricatures of violent misogynistic behavior—that is, its poetic reports that are also lament and outrage. On the other hand, the straightforward promotion and celebration of such violence and misogyny.

More mansplaining: both these things are part of hip-hop, but far more of hip-hip is in the former camp than haters presume. That’s by any reasonable measure. I further maintain that in the better parts of hip-hop (including this song) the critical aspects are preponderant.

Stan (Eminem's character) obsessively imagines Slim (a persona of Eminem, the narrator) as the only one who “gets” him and by extension an idealized best friend or possible lover. But he thinks Slim/Eminem has disrespected him. Slowly Stan loses his grip, and by the end he goes off the rails, locks his girlfriend in the trunk of his car, and drives off a bridge.

Is there a lesson here from lushsux? Perhaps for Trump fans not to lose their grip this way?

Stan's last message to Slim, on the bridge, makes it clear that he is partly blinded by rage, partly wants to punish Slim for an imagined betrayal, and partly hopes to posthumously impress Slim. He tries for the latter by re-enacting in “real life” (that is, within the song’s narrative) what Eminem had presented in an earlier song as a disturbing but mainly ironic revenge fantasy. (Writing to Stan in the narrative of the current song, Eminem refers to this earlier song as "clowning," thus disavowing any reading of it that was not ironic enough for his fans to grasp.)

Listeners know that Stan has only imagined Eminem betraying him, because we can hear (within the narrative of the unfolding song) Eminem catching up on his fan mail. Replying to Stan's letter but unaware that Stan is dead, Slim apologizes for an unintentional slight, encourages Stan to chill out and spend quality time with his girlfriend, and urges him to get counseling. This is where, referencing the fantasy Stan has by now enacted in (narrative) "real life," Eminem says: “I say that shit just clowning, dog/ How fucked up is you?”

And so we circle back to the complexities and ironies encoded in this mural. 

• Yes, Trump has triggered something dark and rageful—parts of which could lead back toward understandable grievances—that pushed his “Stans” over an edge.

  
  

• Yes, there are sick fantasies and broken promises involved; also, revenge fantasies that sell can also spin out of control.

  
  

• Yes, everyone needs to chill out and get some counseling.

  
  

• Above all, the question posed to Stan in the song, “Dog! how fucked up is you?!

  
  

As for the object of Stan’s obsession (Eminem) trying to calm down his violently unstable fans who are losing touch with distinctions between revenge fantasies and real life, here the point for today isn't so much that Trump will address calming words to his alt-right militias (however much we might hope Trump or someone else would do that!). The major point is imagining the world addressing this to Trump.