I’m not planning on seeing the new Eminem film 8 Mile. Neither the movie’s premise or cast does anything for me. And since I had my sky high hopes dashed on the rocks by Vanilla Ice’s surprisingly wooden performance in Cool As Ice, I’ve abandoned the hopes of finding the next cinematic Elvis from the ranks of skinny, angry, white rappers. (Or chunky, happy, black rappers either for that matter - sorry Sir Mix-a-lot.)
However, Henry Payne reports in National Review Online that the real star of the movie, or at least the primary antagonist, may be the city of Detroit itself, which apparently is presented accurately in all it’s burned out and devastated shame. This white hot spotlight of truth doesn’t reflect well on the city or on the Democratic party, which has had a choke hold on the city’s governance for decades. According to Payne (who also happens to be the editorial cartoonist at The Detroit News):
“The reason hope ends at Central, Telegraph, Eight Mile, and Mack is not because of racism, but government policy. Small entrepreneurs have no confidence that the city will protect their stores. Detroit charges a 1 percent income tax for nonresidents working in Detroit. The city's ill-educated workforce sports a staggering 47-percent illiteracy rate. And a generation of welfare addicts are just now gaining the discipline necessary to keep a job.
The results of these public policies are everywhere. Detroit, Michigan's largest city with 970,000 people, has only one movie theater, the Phoenix on Eight Mile (where a man was shot in the stomach on the film's opening night). It does not contain a single large retail store. Not one. Detroiters must travel to neighboring Dearborn to find a Sears or a Marshall's. Seventy percent of children are born into single-parent households. Kids walking to school along Hamilton Avenue on the city's west side or John R Road on the east side — just to use two of numerous examples — pass rows of abandoned buildings (an estimated 10,700 dot the city), dope addicts and criminals often lurking inside. On the city's main street, Woodward Avenue, teenagers serve Popeye's and McDonald's kid's meals from behind bulletproof glass.
Furthermore, the supporters of the political status quo in Detroit seem to prefer burying their heads, rather than facing the issues directly:
8 Mile's relentless depiction of this apocalyptic landscape has provoked cries from Detroit boosters that the film makes Detroit look like one big ghetto. No Detroit public officials attended the film's premier at The Phoenix — presumably irked by its depiction of the city. The city's Democratic politicians hope that not talking about the city's problems will make them go away.
So 8 Mile is the tale of a young man attempting to overcome the forces of evil in an apocalyptic landscape? Sounds like interesting stuff, but still not enough to get me down to the multiplex - I’ve seen The Road Warrior like ten times already.
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