schedule. MTV’s interpretation of the trendsetter profile also ex-
plained the network’s emphatic embrace of Eminem within a year of
the study. The rapper’s in-your-face demeanor and shockingly per-
sonal lyrics certainly achieved what MTV believed its viewers were
looking for in the modern pop star. Here was someone, in the study’s
words, who was “not fake, phony, and superficial.” Through his songs
and videos Eminem established the kind of emotional connection to
young music lovers that, according to MTV’s trendsetter study, had
become an essential but mostly missing part of their music media
experience.

MTV, in general, and the music video, in particular, were the per-

fect stage for Eminem’s antics and his politics. Eminem’s precarious
racial presence in hip hop required an adroit handling of his image;
music video was crucial in his bid for hip-hop authenticity. Ironi-
cally, music video was the place where Eminem, as much by necessity
as by choice, took on his status as a racial outsider in hip hop.

. . .

Eminem’s 1999 breakthrough video for his breakout single, “My
Name Is,” begins with him in self-deprecatory disguise. Throughout
the video Eminem plays what is arguably his most distinguishing
role—the great cultural prankster and provocateur. In the role he si-
multaneously laughs at himself, winks at his audience, and thumbs
his nose at institutions of tradition and power. In the “My Name Is”
video, Eminem plays with some of the most enduring images of
whiteness in American culture: the overly moralistic and idealized
family situation-comedies like

Leave It to Beaver and The Brady

Bunch, as well as figures of white masculine performance and power
in the forms of Johnny Carson and Bill Clinton. Eminem’s whiteness
and, more specifically, the need to address it gives him a degree of
artistic freedom that eludes his black counterparts.

Music video, a medium increasingly predicated on craft, story,

image, and performance, provides an ideal venue to act out the out-

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