Popular Culture Review Vol. 25, No. 1, Winter 2014 | Page 93

______Shady Beasts, Animal Transgression, and Identity 89 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