1. Eminem: The New White Negro by Carl Hancock Rux "Wearing visors, sunglasses And disguises Cause my split personality Is having an identity crisis" --Eminem, from "Low, Down, Dirty" "There is a zone of non-being, An extraordinary sterile and arid region, An utterly naked declivity Where an authentic upheaval can be born. In most cases the Black man lacks the advantage Of being able to accomplish this descent Into a real hell." --Frantz Fanon, from "Black Skin, White Masks" 1. Revenge of Pentheus Pentheus, the protagonist of Euripides' The Bacchae, was a young moralist and anarchical warrior who sought to abolish the worship of Dionysus (god of tradition, or perhaps better said, god of the re-cyclical, who causes the loss of individual identity in the uncontrollable, chaotic eruption of ritualistic possession). When Pentheus sets out to infiltrate the world of the Bacchae and explore the mysteries of savage lore, his intention is to save the possessed women of Thebes (from themselves), who engage in hedonistic practices somewhere high in the mountains. Dionysus derails the young warrior's lofty mission by titillating his sexual curiosity (inviting him to take a quick glimpse of the drunken women as they revel in their lesbian orgy). In order to witness firsthand the necromancy of the inhumane, Pentheus must disguise himself as one of the inhumane.

Ultimately the young moralist's disguise mirrors the appearance of Dionysus, the very god he seeks to subjugate. The transformed soldier, now possessed by the spirit of the nemesis, is set on the highest branch of a fir tree, elevated above all and visible to none--or so he is led to believe. Pentheus' disguise is as transparent as his voyeuristic fetish, and it is because of this very visible elevated space he inhabits that he is brutally dismembered by a gang of possessed women on the mountain (led by his own mother), who see him for what he is. Historically, academics have neatly interpreted the characters of The Bacchae as belonging to themes of good versus evil, rational versus reason, nobility versus paganism. In the casual study of classical realism, Pentheus is noble in his efforts to eradicate paganism, and Dionysus is an all-powerful demonic and immoral force. But in a more careful study (or at least, an alternative one), we may learn that Dionysus is a traditional Olympian god, neither good nor bad. His powers are amoral; they are powers informed only by the powers that control human existence. Real life--death, sex, grief, joy, etc.

--in its entire splendor. Dionysus and his worshipers cannot be controlled or converted. Their humanity has been perceived as inhumane, and in defense of their right to preserve an identity and a culture for themselves, an extreme cruelty befitting of inhumanity is enacted. The mother's murder of her son is a necessary evil; we accept the death of Pentheus as the inevitable defeat of his judgmental and moral idealism, but because this act of brutality is performed by the mother of its victim, we also question the value of human existence above the existence of humanity (couldn't she have just given him a slap on the hand and a good talking-to and said, "Baby, some people live differently than others, but ain't nobody better than the rest ."?). Perhaps the moral of the story is: The identity of the individual is most often sacrificed for the identity of the collective, so we must now all live and speak in broad familiar terms and forsake our sons and daughters for the ultimate good of humanity as we see it. The evolution of human existence is propelled by a constant narcissism; a struggle to negotiate one's perception of self and one's perception of the other, and some of the most (historically) flawed (though pervasive) acts of negotiating a collective identity are politicize.