Is the Reverse Cowgirl the Eminem of Salon Weblogs?
Harold Bloom tells us that great literary art requires an ironic (in the most profound sense) stance toward its objects (characters, events, ideas, etc.). For him, this happens from the perspective of a great, even Gnostic, height, a perspective that the artist sheds their mundane self to reach. Thus, knowing the particulars of the artist and their life wouldn't be particularly helpful to understanding the art ("trust the art not the artist," as they say). This is made a great deal more complicated when the object of the art is the artist themselves.
Eminem, consciously or not, attempts to make that kind of art. Some observers have gotten all excited about the post-modern implications of reading his "performance" in terms of Lacan, Derrida, and other French theorists. Of course, this is nothing that hasn't already been done by Cervantes, Proust, Madonna, and many others before him. True, it is an artistically audacious undertaking, but I think it occurred to Eminem because it allows him to be whoever he wants to be and no one at the same time. All of the versions of himself that he presents (violent misogynist and homophobe, thoughtful interviewee, underdog made good, etc.) are ironic stances that can be amplified or shed as convenient. Adversaries that seize and confront any of these stances miss the point and are destined to fail.
According to Bloom, the only effective response to strong art is strong misreading. Those critics of Eminem wrestling with one or another of his stance's are weakly misreading him. The Pet Shop Boys have managed the strongest misreading and most effective critique of Eminem with "The Night I Fell In Love," and it's such a strong misreading in part because it's so plausible.
But what does all of this have to do with the Reverse Cowgirl? It's slowly dawning on me that she's undertaking a similar artistic project. She's cleverer than Eminem, and a much better writer, but like him, she's been weakly misread (by me, among others).
10:45:44 AM 
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