ABSTRACT

This chapter analyzes Eminem’s Love the Way You Lie from a rhetorical feminist perspective and illustrates how the song strengthens cultural myths about domestic violence and subsequently normalizes men’s violence against women. Eminem has rapped about his violent behavior toward women, and Rihanna is publicly recognized as a survivor of intimate partner violence. The culmination of Fox’s attempt to leave the relationship is summarized in Eminem’s final lyrics of the song. The hypersexualized pushing, shoving, and punching between Fox and Dominic Monaghan is accompanied by Eminem’s lyrics delivered with a tangible intensity. The repetitive cycles oscillating between violence and sex provide the foundational narrative for Fox and Monaghan’s relationship throughout the music video. This oscillation subjects the audience to Monaghan and Fox’s reconciliation represented as kissing, sex, and other forms of intimacy only to be thrown back into acts of physical and verbal abuse.