Celebrity Casualties: Part 2 of 3

This is the second part of a 3-post case study on the unfortunate lives of celebrities who were once victims of emotional abuse.


The following case is a controversial one, because the image the former victim presents publicly is clearly deranged - even though it's almost mandatory to seem crazy or dangerous in this line of entertainment in order to have artist's "credibility". I, personally, am not a fan, but I do recognize that this man has an extraordinary amount of talent as a rapper. I also believe every thread of miserable detail surrounding this artist's upbringing is true.

Eminem

Marshall Bruce Mathers III was born in 1972 in St. Joseph, Missouri, the son of Deborah Mathers-Briggs and Marshall Bruce Mathers, Jr. After his father abandoned the family when Marshall was 2, his mother moved him back and forth between Kansas City, Detroit, and the suburbs, before settling in Warren, Michigan when he was 12. Debbie struggled financially, having to resort to various locations in public housing, mobile homes, and living with relatives, one of them being Marshall's great-aunt Edna (mentioned in the song Evil Deeds, 2004). She battled depression by taking prescription drugs Vicodin and Valium, but Marshall recalls that she abused her prescriptions and subjected him and, later, his younger half-brother (by 14 years), Nathan to extreme emotional abuse: belittling, teasing, humiliating, and assaulting her sons. Marshall also accused his mother later of having Munchausen syndrome (a psychiatric disorder where one pretends to be ill or diseased in order to gain attention or sympathy), only she would pose her son as the patient to falsely claim health care benefits and actually try to breed sickness in him by making him take some of her prescriptions. The same suspicions were drawn by a social worker in 1996 during an investigation of Debbie's treatment of her second son Nathan.

Growing up in such a confusing and dangerous household, Marshall was a withdrawn and socially awkward child with few friends. He spent most of his youth alone at home playing video games and reading comics, listening to hip-hop music, and trying to escape the bullying he had to weather every day at school - a fear that eventually led to his skipping school frequently by the ninth grade, and final drop-out at age 17. He met his girlfriend Kimberly Ann Scott in high school and when she became pregnant and gave birth to their daughter Hailie Jade Scott in 1996, Marshall began to actively pursue his dreams as a rapper in order to support his new family. He recorded his first album, Infinite, but it was a critical fail and Marshall attempted to commit suicide by overdosing on Tylenol when Kim ended their relationship shortly after. His suicide attempt failed, so Marshall sought out to try rapping again and reconciled with Kim, marrying her in 1999.

That same year, Marshall, now "Eminem", was discovered by the rapper Dr. Dre (who heard his demo rap over the radio and set out to find the young underground talent) and recorded The Slim Shady LP, which went triple-platinum by the end of the year. In 2000 he recorded and released The Marshall Mathers LP, another critical and entertainment success, and The Eminem Show (2002), Encore (2004), and after a long hiatus, Relapse and Relapse 2 (2008). But the same reasons why most of Eminem's fans loved him were the very reasons why he was panned by many listeners as a raging psychotic - his lyrics were exceedingly violent, scathing, cruel, and accusatory. His mother filed a lawsuit against him in 1999 for defamatory remarks about his upbringing, and his wife Kim attempted suicide after the release of the song Kim, where Eminem threatened to kill her. He rapped about physically harming and killing other celebrities, mostly female stars such as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Lindsay Lohan, and others who had never had anything to do with the rapper personally. The evil content in his lyrics is only rising today, with the recent release of a song called The Warning, in which Eminem explicitly threatens to expose and destroy songstress Mariah Carey for being reluctant to admit that she had a brief sexual relationship with the rapper in 2001.

If it's not evident that Eminem seems to suffer from severe deep-seated rage and vents it in his lyrics, his personal life since leaving his mother's abusive home provides more proof. After her suicide attempt, Kim filed for divorce from Eminem in 2001, and Eminem began his own struggle with drug abuse - namely, pills. He checked himself into rehab briefly in 2005.

I personally believe that underneath all the anger, Eminem/Marshall is inherently a good person. I realize how cliche that sounds. But I say this because, since his rise to fame, Eminem has quietly taken the daughter of his ex-wife Kim's twin sister Dawn, Alaina "Laney", as an adopted child of his own (even referring to her as his own daughter in the song Mockingbird, 2004). He also cares for his younger half-brother Nathan, his own stepdaughter Whitney (by Kim), and lives with all of them in Michigan in the outskirts of Detroit. He has a large heart ... only it seems to be filled with pain. And even as he clearly internalizes beliefs that he is inferior and a misfit and ostracized, Eminem constantly lashes out in frustration at his perceived maltreatment.

Tragically, Eminem seems to have taught himself to embrace his victim's cage.