______Shady Beasts, Animal Transgression, and Identity
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observer of taboo and its connection to animality, does not hesitate to
include a romantic beast:
Sometimes, I wanna get on TV and just let loose, but can’t.
But it’s cool for Tom Green to hump a dead moose.'^
These lines record an instance of dramatic intertextuality as Eminem
calls to mind the shock-humor comedian, Tom Green. Green hosted a
show called The Tom Green Show (1999-2003) that aired on MTV and
other stations. In one episode. Green “humped” a moose’s corpse that he
claimed to have struck with his car, in an ostensible attempt to revive it.
Green repeats, “wake up, wake up, wake up.. .maybe we can revive him”
on the show while engaging the beast. Close-up camera angles shoot
Green on the moose and record his feigned agony interspersed with shots
zooming in on the moose’s fixed eye. This disturbing scene causes
several passersby to stop and approach, then to leave with evident
disgust. Eminem remembers these lines in the context of surprising
censorship: he has been unable to engage in other more desirable taboos
but been prevented, and it seems unfair that Tom Green can engage in
this extraordinarily taboo practice and maintain some popularity. The
human animal relationship in question is not bounded solely by which
meat is edible or deserving the status of pet or even friend—but by which
beast is available as a sexual partner.''' This dead moose forces Eminem
to consider his relationship to other humans and beasts alike as he
attempts to adhere to social convention even while raising offensive and
digressive boundary crossings between human and beast.
Eminem attempts to contain the dead moose by suggesting that:
We ain’t nothing but mammals . . .
Well, some of us cannibals
Who cut other people open like cantaloupes.
(“The Real Slim Shady”)
These lyrics, immediately following the moose inteijection, repeat
Byron’s gesture toward the slippery slope of taboo in Don Juan (in
which Don Juan’s Spaniel is eaten): once you eat an inappropriate beast,
or attempt to sexualize it, there can be no safe differentiation for the
human. Th