Doug(las) Klinger, Content Director for IMVDb, is a big Eminem fan, so I didn't tell him I was writing about Eminem today for our Music Video Relapse post because he'd probably tell me to pick "Toy Soldiers" or something super deep, but this is column so I'm going whole hog into the world of Eminem and nobody can stop me.
No matter what you think of Mr. Mathers, you have to agree that he really enjoys moving between the extremely earnest and the extremely ridiculous. That's why you can sit down to watch some Eminem music videos and see him flying in the air as a visual metaphor for overcoming addiction or him projectile vomiting on Michael Jackson in a bathroom. It's truly amazing.
On the ridiculous side, there are few artists willing to make music videos that are as stupid and enjoyable as Eminem. So today we're watching the one video that I think blows past every other Eminem video in the ridiculousness department, 2005's "Ass Like That", directed by Philip G. Atwell.
The video centers around a dog puppet character named Triumph The Insult Comic Dog. He's a character created by Robert Smigel, who was a writer on Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Conan O'Brien for years. It's a puppet that insults people, going around to different events and doing what an insult comic does best. He started off on Late Night and then started appearing in many other places, such as the MTV Video Music Awards.
At the 2002 VMAs, Triumph performed and produced one of the weirdest and most awkward moments in VMA history when Eminem basically got up and stopped Smigel from doing a bit with him because he didn't like it and didn't understand what was going on. Triumph was insulting Moby and tried to move over to Eminem who proceeded to not have any of it. Here's an excerpt about the incident from Eminem's autobiography by way of Entertainment Weekly:
I'd been so busy touring and doing my own s--- that I hadn't had time to watch TV, so I had no idea what that dog was. All I saw was Moby and Christina and this dude who's sticking his hand in my face, trying to be funny. I didn't even see the puppet, you know? My natural reaction was, ''Get the f--- out of my face. Get your f---ing hand out of my face.''
This, apparently, was real (unlike many of the VMA stunts throughout the years). Fast forward three years later, and Triumph is appearing in one of Eminem's own music videos, insulting him. So I suppose they made up and are friends now, or are they?
Here's the thing about this video. I think there is supposed to be a critique here that boils down to Robert Smigel and Triumph can say whatever he wants because he is saying it throug a puppet, and puppets are a way of unfairly changing context. It's kind of an intellectual argument about people accepting and laughing at something that is usually unacceptable, all because they have been manipulated into doing so by a non-human entity like Triumph. To illustrate this point, the video features situations where the police show up, obstensibly to arrest Eminem for doing something sexually deviant, and he puts the the Triumph puppet on his hand and everyone turns into puppets, thereby confusing/distracting the police and getting out of the situation. This is a subtext that a college film major could turn into a 10 page paper.
And this isn't just the video, the same message is in the song. "Ass Like That" is basically half in the character of Triumph - in the Triumph voice - and spends a good portion of the song explicitly making the point with lines like "I am Triumph, I am a mere puppet. I can get away with anything I say and you will love it". Does anyone else not see how insane this is?
At this point we should also note that the video features puppets from Crank Yankers, a show on Comedy Central that ran from 2002 to 2007 and featured prank calls that were acted out by puppets. There are a bunch of custom puppets as well, including an Eminem puppet and Dr. Dre puppet the can exhale smoke, apparently.
The final twist on this video is that "Ass Like That" seems to suggest that there is something somehow unjust at a fundamental level about the double standard of a puppet world and a real world, but that it this is how things are. Eminem isn't super happy about a puppet being able to do this, but he uses it to his advantage nonetheless. Just look at the look on his face when he delivers the line "Britney Spears has shoulders like a man and you laugh cause there's a puppet on my hand". That is the face of a man who has spent a career being critized for what he says, lamenting the fact that if he does it in puppet form it is considered comedy.
Remember, none of this really makes an objective sense. It only makes sense in the context of the contentious relationship between Triumph and Eminem and Eminem's own perception of injustice. Nobody else listening to this music or watching this video has any perspective that would make them bitter about a puppet. That's probably why the song is also about asses.
In closing, who else is nostalgic for a time and place where Jessica Simpson was included in this song.
