In the Detroit area it has cultural significance because it is a defacto dividing line between the predominantly poor city area and the wealthier northern suburbs of the city.
I would call into question some of what KutuluMike stated in his answer, and provide a better one - one from an authentic Detroiter. Perhaps long ago it once served as a line that divided the Detroit culture, but I believe the inner-city culture has shifted significantly in recent years, for better or for worse.
I grew up in the Metro Detroit area my whole life and not once did I hear it referred to as any line of demarcation, etc. In fact, I wouldn't even say there is a line necessarily. Just keep on driving north and eventually a black person is hard to find.
Also, I wouldn't say that 8-mile is that significant in the hip-hop community at large - only in Eminem's music. And for the most part, race is not a consistent theme to Eminem's music.
What is a consistent theme is the struggles he has faced in his life: growing up in a severely impoverished area of Detroit and navigating the issues of raising children after all he has been through with his family, wife, etc. Sure, he is a white man in an industry nearly dominated by African Americans. But, if you actually listen to a lot of his music, it's not something he hits on that often. This brings me to a point at which I will answer this question. The movie is called 8-mile because it is where Eminem grew up - the section of the road that the movie is referring to it's a big road and there's actually some nice parts of it is stricken with poverty and total societal breakdown.
From the perspective of someone who visited this road firsthand too many times: It is one of the dirtiest places in Metro Detroit, known explicitly for its trailer parks and white trash.
So, it is pretty significant that someone like Marshall Mathers became one of the biggest lyrical geniuses of all-time from such an armpit of society. The movie 8-Mile did get its name from the road in Southeast Michigan; this road does separate two counties and two cultures; the movie explores the interactions between these cultures. The road got its name because it is 8 miles North of downtown Detroit.
Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? To the north lies the mostly white suburbs of Oakland County. The shops are richer, the houses freshly painted and the neighbourhoods have names such as Ferndale and Royal Oak.
In between stretches Eight Mile Road, so called because of its distance from Detroit's river front. It is a strip of highway lined by pawn brokers, sex shops, topless bars, fast food restaurants and the sort of motels where guests stay either for an hour or three months.
It is a haven for prostitutes and drug dealers. Even at 9am, just pulling up to the side of the road is enough to elicit the attention of a young man keen to sell drugs. In Detroit the unemployment rate is Roughly a third of citizens live on or below the poverty line.
The city is also now 82 per cent black. These neighbourhoods are 83 per cent white. The average household income on the north side of Eight Mile is double that of those living on the south side.
The two neighbourhoods rarely meet, despite being just a few minutes' walk apart. Residents on the north side have taken down the basketball hoops on their parks to discourage southern neighbours from coming over to play black America's favourite sport.
That decision goes to the core of the problem: race. Detroit - like many big American cities - is deeply racially divided between black and white. In the Fifties, more than 2 million people called Detroit home.
Now that figure is fewer than , After race riots rocked the city in hundreds of thousands of whites moved away, unwilling to share their city with black Americans freed by the civil rights movements of the Sixties. They took with them the jobs and the money, condemning neighbourhoods to a long decline.
The second blow to Detroit was one of employment. The slow death of the American car industry has meant the death of much of working-class Detroit. Tens of thousands of jobs have disappeared in the past few decades, further eroding the city.
Detroit has been gutted of its economic worth. It is dotted by gigantic and abandoned factories and host to roughly 13, homeless people. It is a place where residents will often burn 'problem' houses in their own neighbourhoods because the police will not tackle the crack dens themselves. Yet to the north of Eight Mile lies a land of office parks and strip malls.
It is a country of Starbucks and car parks and tidy lawns and white picket fences. I know it's suburbia but that's where most people want to be,' says Ellen Francis, a year-old mother of two as she walks along the pavements of Ferndale, about two miles north of Eight Mile.
For Eight Mile has become not just a racial divide but also a class one. So he may have been white, but he was still a "nigger",' says Carl Taylor, who is black and a sociologist at Michigan State University. One of the few things to cross Eight Mile successfully has been rap music.
In the shopping malls of northern suburbs such as Rochester Hills and Sterling Heights, white teenagers listen to the latest rap artists. They wear the baggy clothes and expensive trainers promoted by the hippest rap stars. Rap stars are heroes and the top of them all is Eminem.
When Eminem - real name Marshall Mathers - became a success he added further proof to the idea that rap music was a way out of poverty and crime. The mainstreaming of black urban culture into white suburban America has been one of the biggest, and most surprising, cultural phenomenons of the last two decades. It is also one of the most lucrative. For many black kids it offered the promise of riches and a life free from crime. Element Detroit at the Metropolitan.
The Inn at 97 Winder. The Inn On Ferry Street. Aloft Detroit at The David Whitney. Sonder Gabriel Richard. Detroit Foundation Hotel. MotorCity Casino Hotel. Sonder The Randolph. Washington Blvd Condos by Barsala. Mint House Downtown Detroit. Courtyard By Marriott Detroit Downtown.
0コメント