Who's Responsible...?

Who's responsible for the message/story of a piece being understood correctly?

I keep on going back and forth in my head about this subject. Largely cuz I'm listening to Eminem's library at the moment and all I constantly hear from a lot of people that he's a horrible person...

The problem is that anyone that actually listens to what the songs are saying he is giving positive messages about equality, sexuality, freedom of speech, standing up for yourself, not taking things too far, responsibility etc...

He is unarguably articulate beyond what many people in the world can claim and surely his message, for those who listen, is crystal clear, but is it his fault that people don't listen to him? Surely he knows that cussing is going to cause this problem for some audiences... But what about those who listen beyond that point but don't pay attention, is that his fault too?



Since someone is going to ask, how is this related to this sub-forum. I am not just talking about music, but all art forms and mediums. It's just that Eminem is on my mind right now. One could make the argument that Lobdell is a genius writer taking a meta-approach to taking shots at DC's new 52, but most are just taking what he did with Starfire as sexist and not looking at it any further... Is this Lobdell's fault or the fault of the readers who can't see it?

I don't see why the responsibility can't be shared, or at least distributed case-by-case. History has shown us that some artists are not appreciated at first, sometimes not even until long after they're gone. Perhaps a more discerning audience would have recognized their achievements sooner, but perhaps a more communicative artist would've gotten the message across more easily too?

Well, if the artist doesn't care what the audience thinks, yeah, I guess they can absolve themselves of responsibility. If they want the audience to understand, they must sometimes accept some measure of responsibility if their message doesn't get across properly.

There is no responsibility. "Responsibility" implies that the message must be understood - it doesn't. Heck, in some cases a message may not even be intended. An artist's only responsibility is to create his art (or not), and the subject's to experience it (or not).

"IF" (note that I quoted and capitalized) there is a message that the creator wants understood then the creator of that message is the one obliged to make that message apparent. For instance I could make this argument in french if I desired to. But in no way should I assume that the non french speaking portion of the audience should do the work to translate it.

And an argument that any lyrics, story, image, etc.. is not meant to be taken literally is a poor one. If they were not meant to be taken that way then it should have been stated as such from the start or be labeled as a parody. Typically that argument is one used by somebody who has expressed their own views, found those views to be extremely unpopular, and then claimed it was an exaggeration or a joke. As in making an extremely racist statement and then claiming it was a joke or a quotation from an obscure movie. And the same argument also gets used by people who love something only to find out that others consider it offensive. ie

INSERTNAMEHERE: Those Gor books are great. I love all the sex and violence.

INSERTNAMETHERE: You're kidding right? Those books are offensively sexist. Every other line in them is about how women are incompetent at anything other than sex and that the one thing all women truly desire is to be slaves to men. They make me puke.

INSERTNAMEHERE: You just aren't reading them close enough. If you did you would be able to see that the author intended them as an exaggeration to show that women really are oppressed in society today and we should do something about that.

So yes, if the author has a message it is up to the author to make that message clear, or to accept any fallout they get from making the message unclear.

And what I'm getting from this is another attempt to try and justify something that the OP believes is great but others have told him is bad. Which is of course pointless because trying to justify something you like doesn't mean you feel the need to educate people. It just means that you're afraid that other people are right about you being wrong so you are looking for arguments to make you feel better about yourself. And if you disagree with this statement then it's because you aren't reading my post closely enough to understand what is actually being said.

I remeber t one time a comedian on Saturday Night Live said he was cutting edge. He did not want more than 30 percent of his audience to get the joke. This begs the question whois the artists target audience. If you only appeal to 3 out of 10 people and your happy with your niche - ok.

I'm going to turn the focus away from Eminem for just a moment.

Some of you may be familiar with a movie from the early 1980s called Slumber Party Massacre. It's a B-movie at best. The plot is basically "naked girls get killed by a drill." I was unable to provide a link to the trailer because there is too much T&A in the preview to demonstrate the caliber of sleaze this movie encompasses. On first watch, you might think it was written by Joe Esterhaz, the guy who brought the world Basic Instinct and Showgirls.

But in actuality, the script was written by feminist author Rita Mae Brown. It was intended to be a parody of slasher movies, in which women are dumb, naked objects who exist mainly to die in horrific ways. The giant drill used by the killer was supposed to be a phallic symbol.

But the producers had different ideas. They didn't make substantial changes to the script, but did film everything literally. Scenes that were supposed to be tongue in cheek were instead taken at face value. Suddenly the parody became the thing it was supposed to be parodying. The feminist elements are still there if you look deep for them, though.

Producing a movie or an album is an arduous process. I agree that the message is not just in the words. But to some degree the artist (actually, artists, since almost any of these things is produced by a team of people) does have some responsibility for the final product. The fact that you can read something deeply for a message counter to the message sold at face value does not, IMO, necessarily redeem the product.

In the case of Eminem specifically, I know little about him, and that is by choice after exposure to his constant negative posturing. I would only say that if he wants to build bridges to the people he has slighted over the years, (and made millions doing so in the process) that there are more direct and ultimately honest ways to going about doing so than burying his meaning in cryptic lyrics. The very idea that you have to dig deep to find his "true" meaning is IMO on some level shallow in itself given that this is a person whose calling card is his supposed standing up to the man and "telling it like it is." It just seems incredibly cowardly to me for him to claim that, really, all that bravado was masking benevolent intentions.

Some people don't "get" rap. I had a friend who threw a hissy fit when Common was invited to the White House, even though we've had George Bush shake hands with Johnny Cash, who isn't exactly squeaky clean.