Eminem And The Anti-Design Movement Of The 1970's

1. INTRODUCTION

Before Eminem “ Marshall Mathers” became a rapper his true dream was to become a comic book artist. Interestingly Eminem did not gather any of his inspiration from the anti-design movement, yet many of his values that are seen within the album cover and some of his songs in the album can be connected to the values of the anti-design movement of the 1970’s. There are many similarities between the

Eminem album cover, Encore, and the anti design movement of the 1970’s in the way that the public have received them.

2. IDEOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL SIMILARITIES BETWEEN EMINEM AND THE

ANTI DESIGN MOVEMENT OF THE 1970’S

Firstly, Both the album cover Encore by Eminem and the anti design movement of the 1970’s have the same rebellious attitude

Whereas they did something unique and did not worry if it was going to be popular amongst the public. This is also illustrated in Eminem where he say what he wants to say and uses vulgar language where he is not going to stop just to create a higher revenue and push up sales.

Eminem and The anti design movement both have a strong following. In the case of

Eminem it is a lot easier to get a rough number of how many followers he has thanks to the new technology alone on twitter he has 20.8 million followers worldwide. The anti design movement also had many followers as we see that the anti-design movement had a big influence on the Memphis movement that followed. According to an article on Widewalls done by Elena Martinique (2016) Ettore Sottsass Jr who was a young designer, who was a key spokesman for the anti-design movement once it took off and grew in popularity.

In the Eminem album and amongst the anti-design movement the sought out the power of their craft to create awareness. As Eminem uses some of the songs within the album such as “Toy soldiers” to create awareness against the gang violence

This characteristic can be transferred to anti-design where there is no or little function to the object making you challenge the object and why it was even created.

In the Eminem album cover and the anti-design movement were a reaction against greed. Eminem’s album cover was a reaction against the greed of consumers by calling the album “ Encore” he is stating that that is all the public wants is more and more. By using the visuals he shows that the greed of the consumers has taken it out of him as we see in figure 3 a suicide note with bullets on it from him. The visuals of the gun also represent that he is fed up with it and is about to do something about it ( Ransom 2012 ). Then there is the greed that the anti-design is commenting on and this is the greed of the capitalist design where it was being designed for mass production and greatest capital made.

3. CONCLUSION

In conclusion, Both Eminem’s album and the anti-design movement of the 1970’s both show a reaction against the greed, go against the social convention and being confined to what everyone else is doing. What the above signifies is that