I think this is a rare miss - not because the song should be cancelled, but because the song isn't even as problematic as you're saying it is.
In the context of the time, it's not 'guy is super creepy and the woman is a victim' and more 'guy and girl both want to do it but the girl feels the need to put up token resistance because of social mores'. The 1940s were not a time when a girl could outright say 'Yeah let's get it on' so there was a complicated social dance happening, but both parties in the song know the dance and want what's coming.
The versions I've seen performed live, in that era, were clearly flirtatious from both parties and not predatory. Grisha's post has a good link explaining all this in more detail.
Ehhhh…I certainly see what you’re saying, I can see that several other comments think that I’ve missed the boat. But what you’re describing is basically the “no means yes” mindset personified. Which, yes, absolutely was the dynamic back then. And is decidedly not the dynamic now — imagine how dangerous it would be for a guy these days to think “oh this is just a little game”. Which brings me back to the same conclusion: It contains an old-fashioned dynamic that’s seriously bad news in 2024, but we like it in spite of that.
I agree with Jeremiah here. About a quarter of the girl’s lyrics actually make explicit the fact that she is flirting and doesn’t have any desire to leave. “So very nice … so very warm … maybe just a half a drink more .. at least I’m gonna say that I tried” etc.
Having said that, I also agree with Jeff that good things shouldn’t and can’t be canceled.
I think the most important part here is that you mentioned teaching your son.
There is a substantial difference in the way adults should be expected to consume media (with nuance and respect for cultural differences, the past is a foreign country!), and children should. As you have mentioned in the past, kids are DUMB with a capital B.
The instinctual push back here (by myself at least) was in part due to viewing this through the lens of an adult (because I am one). If I consider this to be intended towards children, it becomes much more palatable to me.
Before becoming a parent, I always thought that nuance would be my watchword, and that I would always try to give the full picture. Now... Sometimes it's easier to just tell them that if they don't eat their vegetables their bones will become weak and they'll walk with a hunch.
I’ve found myself abridging things for my 6 year-old that simply couldn’t have been when I was a kid: “What Makes The Red Man Red?” from Peter Pan (BTW, as an adult I find Peter Pan to be a dick, and I think that was Barrie’s intention).
I have also skipped a two page section of a SEL-type book that has that THINK acronym that tries to shame people from telling the truth if it hurts someone’s feelings. My goal is to pass on that the most important thing, above all else, is simply the T: Is it true? We are also deep into talking about Santa (eeeeehhhhhh)
I'm introducing legislation tomorrow, promised by Mike Johnson to be given special consideration, to prevent the viewing by minors of this heinous affront to traditional family values.
it's a fair point that the song doesn't translate well to 2024 scenarios, but I agree it would be silly to toss the song in the bin just because of that.
I'd say it's both at once. It was a time when women were still just objects of a man's desire, but also a time where women in turn were required by societal rules to be chaste. Ergo, the man is being unduly aggressive, and the woman may not be into him. It's also possible that she may be into him and fending off his advances simply because she doesn't want to be seen by everyone as the Town Floozy.
Disagree. That dynamic is intuitive to the human experience and can be seen across cultures. Females playing hard to get with someone they actually like can be seen all the way down to our great ape cousins. Men are usually the ones being forward/more aggressively pursuing sex because that's what testosterone does. It doesn't have to infer non-consent or sexual harassment/assault. People need to accept life, including gender relations, are way more nuanced & complex than these black/white narratives.
I'm not defending "no means yes," but I really hate that all the problematizing that goes on acts like men are evil for daring to express a desire for, uh, "company," and women are just delicate flowers who can't possibly be expected to be able to clearly and directly say, "nope" and leave. Because you'll note that despite all her giggly hemming and hawing, the "cold outside" chick clearly has zero intention of actually going anywhere (and, frankly, in many of the versions I've heard sounds like she's already taken off her blouse by the last line 🤷🏼♀️).
Dudes who are _physically_ aggressive are clearly bad and we should keep making that crystal clear, but it annoys me that we apparently still have a culture where some women feel like saying "no" definitively is somehow rude (definitely how I felt until I hit maybe 35). The solution to this old-fashioned dynamic shouldn't be terrifying boys into submission (unless they're into that, idk), it should be building up better agency for girls.
Yea, this is a huge misread of the actual song. The woman is clearly playing coy. Whether that is an anachronism, maybe? But it’s clearly supposed to be mutual flirtation. Her somewhat nominally protesting while effectively inching closer.
I think this is right. Lines from the woman's perspective: "My father will be pacing the floor...I'd better scurry...maybe just a half a drink more." it's like when I was a server and everyone would tell me, "I really shouldn't order the french fries," before ordering the french fries. It's pretty clear that she's saying, "I should, but I don't want to." A modern version might focus on an early meeting, "I should go get some sleep," and their significant other saying, "nah, stay and keep binge watching more of this show with me." Thought that sounds like a terrible song.
Absolutely. And I’d even be willing to stick my neck out and say it’s also not meant to reinforce rape culture where no means yes. She’s so obviously saying yes (while also paying lip service to decorum and decency) her tongue is so obviously in her cheek, that a man would need to be tin-eared not to understand the difference between that and the poor cat in Pepe Le Pew. It’s more akin to someone being offered a biscuit saying “oh no really shouldn’t” in the hope the person will press them again so they feel less guilty about accepting.
This tumbler person compares it to a scene in macbeth where it is ambiguous whether Lady Macbeth is pressuring her husband to do something he doesn't want to do or giving him license to do what he already wants.
The other commenters are right and this is wrong: "she clearly doesn’t want to get pursued that night." Quite wrong. The song is a sexual dance to a certain climax, and both partners are enjoying the steps . . . she's just doing hers backwards in high heels.
All I have found says this: "the comment that the dancer Ginger Rogers did everything that her partner Fred Astaire did, but ‘backwards and in high heels’ and therefore with extra difficulty, is often attributed to Rogers herself. Rogers, however, denied it." I would be happy if you have a contra source.
Finally, someone who sticks up for the Eleanor Roosevelt/David Ben-Gurion version! The part where she ad-libbed “I’ve got to go and finish the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” always gets me needing to take a cold shower.
Btw, if you haven’t heard the Mamie Eisenhower/George C. Marshall version (“Baby, I’ve got a Plan for you, and it doesn’t need Congressional approval”), you haven’t lived.
Please read this post, which explains that the most "rapey" interpretation is wrong, if you understand the cultural context. The idea is that the woman IS into it, but has to give excuses, and even the "what's in this drink" doesn't at all mean that she's being roofied.
This is a repost of a column from Listening While Feminist, but the original seems to have disappeared. Fortunately, someone seems to have grabbed it, and the original link can also be retrieved through archive.is
I'm considering unsubscribing after leaving this comment. It's pretty clear you've neither understood the song lyrics nor read any actual discussion of their semantics in contemporary context. This piece is unfair and gross.
Every single objection Mouse raises is "my family will be upset with me if I exercise my agency in this way," while Wolf is alternating between compliments and giving her the plausible deniability she needs to fend off the slut-shaming of her "vicious" relatives. And lines like "what's in this drink" (used in many, many pieces of media when someone is going to do something they don't want to take the blame for and plan to attribute that decision to a weak or non-alcoholic drink) and "I wish I knew how to break this spell" are all neon signs saying that she wants this, she just doesn't want anyone to think she's the "type of girl" who stays overnight at her suitor's house.
We're rooting for this couple, who have been handed a golden opportunity by the weather to do something they would ordinarily get in trouble for (with her bearing the brunt of those social consequences). She's skittish about whether they're going to be able to get away with it, and she needs him to reassure her. Your descriptions of the characters, based on a cursory skimming of lyrics you couldn't bother to glance at past the most surface level with a contextual eye eighty years removed from its audience, are neither accurate nor classy.
Your point about “what’s in this drink” being an old tongue in cheek line for wanting an excuse to do something you know you shouldn’t is an important point, and i was really surprised that Jeff wasn’t aware of that, given his knowledge of our cultural history. That said, i wouldn’t unsubscribe just for that- everyone gets to swing and miss sometimes. I dont interpret his take on those points was in bad faith. I think he just got this one wrong in good faith.
There's a phenomenon (sometimes called Gell-Mann Amnesia) where someone confidently espouses nonsense on a topic you understand well enough to know better, and then once they start talking about things you don't understand that well, you go, "well, they sound confident, so they must know that they're talking about." I try to avoid falling into that, so once someone says balderdash with the the confidence of fact, if I'm not willing to double-check everything else they say, it's no longer worth keeping them around as a trusted source of information.
I had not heard that term before but I followed the link you provided and read about it- that's great- and so very true! thanks- I will definitely be using that term going forward! Though, I'm not convinced that it would apply here, especially given Jeff's track record. Put another way, I've said some pretty stupid and wrong stuff with great certainty in my time, only to later discover my error. I'd like to think that a writer as good as Jeff has enough built-up credibility to get a mulligan every now and then. And I say that, by the way, as a guy who is not even of his political persuasion.
Under advice of counsel, I have amended my previous statement to be more nuanced: I too am considering unfollowing after this post. Just so off the mark. And feel sorry for young men waiting for a woman to pursue them who may never get laid except by ——— women with poor self esteem seeking validation. Because, like it or not, most women are still raised to play defense not offense. And the ones who play offense are going to tend to go after a specific type of alpha male guy.
It seems that the societal belief that causes the dynamic in the song -- i.e. that women who want sex are "whores" -- is not as old-fashioned as I thought.
Apparently my truth was too harsh, but I know that a lot of women still play hard to get because they do not want to be seen as whores. And the higher up the desirability scale you go, the more they tend to just reflexively say no to most men because they get hit on a lot. And players can be really obnoxious so not advocating raising a son to be a player. Just saying women find confidence attractive. But then you got to back up the confidence with something. Charm, intelligence, interesting hobbies, and some degree of bedroom skill. It ain’t easy and you will get your heart broken and probably break some hearts, but that’s being human.
Does that dynamic not exist anymore? I honestly have no idea, I haven't dated in 20 years, but back then I'm pretty sure women were still perceived as less attractive if they didn't act sufficiently "hard to get", no matter how stupid that whole idea is.
It's not even about societal pressure; you see it all around the animal kingdom-males are nearly always the more aggressive pursuers of sex, and females often will play coy and uninterested right before consummation. There's never been a human society anywhere where women just go up to men they don't know saying 'hey, nice dick, want to fuck?" . .and it's not because every society has just not enabled the sexual liberation of women.
Not that it matters, but I have done fine thank you. I am not obviously saying women who want sex are whores. I am saying if you are not a 6ft tall total chad a lot of women will not pursue you aggressively. And you will be lonely waiting for them to. You may need to be a bit more aggressive, funny, and as this song is flirty. Not rapey just maybe not someone who gives up at the slightest push back. Love is a dance and you need to learn the steps.
There's a lot about relationships you don't quite get. But keep thinking that "Chads" get all the girls because they're so very tall. Also, you might want to just delete your first comment about "whores" and be done with it.
Really hung up on that word aren’t you? Who’s slut shaming me or you? But as for understanding relationships let’s see, since I was 16 for 40 years been in 3 long term relationships and never single more than a few months. I think I understand relationships. And two of those long term relationships started because I talked a girl into fooling around when they just “wanted to be friends.”
I agree that he's misread the song, but I don't see why that'd cause you to unsubscribe. Does misreading a fictional social situation from almost a century ago mean that you no longer find the author trustworthy?
Well I really liked Jeff Maurer's BarPod episode (#225) where he expresses contrition over the one-sided knee-jerk progressive tone that Last Week Tonight devolved into, but somehow reading this article I could just picture John Oliver pounding on his desk saying "...but it is a deeply problematic song!"
Have considered creating a google doc that says "John Oliver is dumb and bad" in a variety of fonts? You could save a lot of time by just rereading that if that's all you want out of media.
I disagree with the author but he supports his argument at length in a reasonable tone. It's very different from John Oliver pounding on a desk (an image which itself is a caricature). I can get where he's coming from, even if the conclusion is wrong.
Why would I do that? You and Mr. Kidwell really have created a cartoon caricature of me, which is ironic because I look so much like john Oliver that I used to get stopped on the street all the time and asked if I was John Oliver. I used to love his show, and if you just want entertainment sometimes it is that, but it is not a very a good way to understand nuanced issues.
I apologize, maybe that was unfair. I just read your comments like you mostly evaluate media based on treatment of John Oliver. It seemed one dimensional.
John Oliver aside, I don't think the article is bad, even if the conclusion is wrong. I disagree with the assumptions he makes that lead to his conclusion, but since he clearly states what those assumptions are are, we are able to disagree with him. For example, some disagree that the man is pressuring the woman into anything. The author has responded to that disagreement and explained why.
That seems like all you can ask for in someone that writes about their opinions. If you only want to read your own opinions, there's no need to subscribe to anyone at all.
It amazes me how fast prevailing opinions change and then immediately take on the solidity of common knowledge that everyone has always understood. Fifteen years ago, nobody blinked at this song - just a cheesy bit of old-fashioned Americana. About ten years ago, everyone decided it was a celebration of date rape. Radio stations and streaming services pulled it off the air. Thinkpieces were written. Men self-flagellated on behalf of their rapey and unenlightened forebears. Then, a few years ago, somebody circulated a feminist defense of the song, pointing out the interpretation you describe. Now that viewpoint has become so self-evident and important that you’re here threatening a successful culture writer with malpractice because he missed the latest memo. Incredible stuff.
Not everyone decided it was a celebration of date rape, a small subset of hyper-online millennials did. We should not need memos to guide our opinions about the world. A more interesting phenomenon was the reassessment of the Alfred Eisenstaedt photo of a drunken sailor kissing a nurse during V-J Day in Times Square. Around 2010 everyone suddenly was up in arms that it was a photo of a sexual assault and not a wholesome photo. The thing is I think everyone in the 1940s knew that the photo was of an unwanted kiss. It was not that it was reinterpreted through modern eyes, I think modern people just didn't look closely at the photo before. Is it a photo of joy, male privilege, frenzy? All of the above.
Also, my recollection is that the sudden adjustment of our view on the V-J Day photo came from an article in which the woman in the photograph shared her feelings about it. Prior to that, I don’t think most of us were really spending much energy analyzing the photo or the incident it depicts; the article got everyone thinking about it.
That's probably true, but for 60 years it was one of the most famous photos in America, lots of people were familiar with it. That article happened at a time when it became popular to problematize famous photos, it was not just this photo under scrutiny.
Sorry, I thought it would be assumed that when I said “everyone” that I didn’t mean every single individual in the country - rather I meant that this attitude overflowed the banks of the hyper-online set and flooded the mainstream. You are simply remembering incorrectly that it was limited to a few hysterical millennials.
it was the talking point of the day because "content creators" and daytime talk shows latched onto it, but I think a very small subset of people took it seriously.
Totally agree. And as a woman, I interpret this song as a little playful pursuit not altogether unwelcome. If she was a hard no I think the woman's lines would be written differently.
I agree with these two comments above. I think Jeff gets it quite wrong when he says that she doesnt want to be pursued- rather, it is a flirtatious song on both sides where she is saying the things she is supposed to say according to the times, but with a wink and a nod. Or at least that’s the way I’ve always interpreted it. This dynamic really comes through on the very best - but for some reason never mentioned- version of the song with Brian Setzer and Ann Margaret. Definitely worth a listen! I dont see how - at least from that version- you can hear it any other way.
I think we can also acknowledge that the song was written before "no means no" was a phrase taught to people. (as an aside, there's a Hebrew song "When you(f) say no", with the first line "when you say no, what do you mean?", that was referenced in a court ruling, where it was determined that... She means no).
In this time and place, the man and the woman are both (potentially) playing the roles society expects of them. The woman, if she wants the man, would be behaving the way she is in the song. I think that most people can agree that the current expectations (say what you mean) are better, as it alleviates the myriad issues involved in the "potentially" above. With that, it's very unfair to the (fictional) singer to impute rapeyness, with the mores of modern society that were simply different.
I don't, but I think we expect/require them to. Or at least we treat our children that they should.
Obviously the conversation around consent is almost nonsensical, does anyone in a relationship actually ask for/receive "enthusiastic verbal consent" before every interaction? I'd say that's a strawman, but I have been told that that that is the expected standard explicitly, many times. And I have not seen a consistent, less rigorous standard floated. Regardless, people spout that nonsense, because we would rather people err in that direction.
Fair enough. But there’s still a lot of “hard to get” out there.
I personally never had any time for it. Which is why I married the woman that was much much more aggressive in our first date. Ha! I was the one that wanted to wait (hint: we didn’t. I just needed some *ahem* “convincing”).
People under a certain age are never going to understand this song because it was written when there was an actual dating/relationship ritual that played out, and it was because SEX wasn't some casual activity that didn't have real world consequences. It did. SEX was for marriage, and while some did have sex outside or before marriage, most did not because of the social stigma. Also remember that when the song was written, the only available contraception was condoms and it's not like you could buy them off the shelf at Walgreens. But as sexual creatures, even then, people were preoccupied with it.
Consequently, that preoccupation was directed, and had been for centuries, to the idea of romance, of wanting sex, but recognizing social limitations and stigmas, and working around it. That meant hints, euphemisms, double-entendres, and playing roles like wolf and ingenue. Everybody understood the dynamics of sexual play in those days and if you tried to whine about it as modern day puritans do, they'd laugh you out of the room. It was a way to have fun with members of the opposite sex without being shamed.
Which is all cancel culture is.
As for the song, if you don't like it, or don't get it; don't listen to it. Being outraged by social norms from 60+ years ago is a waste of time given all the problems men and women are having with each other today.
Of all of the comments posted, this one is the best. Agreed 100% with everything said here. I think that those who don’t get the playful fun of the song reflect either some sort of historical myopia or puritanical impulses, or both. In my experience, usually both.
Years ago, when I wrote a spirited defense of this duet, which is neither a Christmas song, nor, to be honest, in need of defense from philistines, performers or in the audience, I found myself explained and corrected by a poster that the then popular WET ASS PUSSY was a better song because of its depiction of agency. Deliver me. No less a light than Stephen Sondheim regards Frank Loesser as perhaps the single greatest vernacular lyricist contributing to the American Popular Songbook. And this work is a great example of that brilliance, which predates his return to the New York City of his birth to create three of the greatest mid century musicals we have.
Ya, people need to lighten up. As Willie Nelson says, there are two kind of music. Good and bad. If the song is really good, you don’t pay too much attention to the meaning of the lyrics. Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” came out when I was thirteen. I still can recite the lyrics today but I managed to not become a suicidal psychopath. We need to cancel the bad music.
I know that X-Mas must be near when the lights go up on the one remaining department store downtown and the perennial critiques of this eighty-year-old song again appear in my social media feed.
For a while I thought that cut-and-pasted critiques of Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree -- why doesn't the tree have boundaries? -- would supplant it, but it seems this song's attachment to the holidays makes complaints about the lyrics evergreen. Also making the annual "hey, I like that song!" pushback evergreen.
Anyway I'm sure this song was a pagan anthem to Baldur or whatever before the Romans colonized it.
Agree emphatically. Others have said this, but I think it's insane that anyone listening doesn't understand that both people are playing their roles; people who miss this are (almost always) doing it intentionally.
Besides, there are few things more pathetic than judging the past by today's current moral standards. In 200 years, plenty of things we think are just fine will be considered unimaginably monstrous - it will be seen as immoral to eat a vegetable because someone has determined that they're more alive than we give them credit for or something like that. Does that mean that all of us are bad people TODAY? Further, does it mean that our artistic/social/etc. achievements should be cast away as tainted by sins that are only sins in retrospect? I say no.
Besides, the truly stupid thing about this is that there are things happening today that are worth raging against that could actually make people's lives better. Cancelling past performers/politicians/etc is worthless virtue signaling, nothing more. It's the most useless and self-congratulatory form of activism.
It's only in our current retentive cultural impaction that anyone would read stupid shit into what is a fun playful song. Although, it's possible that women have never liked sex and would never in a million years act coy or flirtatiously. Just in case I'm wrong, I've already clamped on the cilice...
I think this is a rare miss - not because the song should be cancelled, but because the song isn't even as problematic as you're saying it is.
In the context of the time, it's not 'guy is super creepy and the woman is a victim' and more 'guy and girl both want to do it but the girl feels the need to put up token resistance because of social mores'. The 1940s were not a time when a girl could outright say 'Yeah let's get it on' so there was a complicated social dance happening, but both parties in the song know the dance and want what's coming.
The versions I've seen performed live, in that era, were clearly flirtatious from both parties and not predatory. Grisha's post has a good link explaining all this in more detail.
Ehhhh…I certainly see what you’re saying, I can see that several other comments think that I’ve missed the boat. But what you’re describing is basically the “no means yes” mindset personified. Which, yes, absolutely was the dynamic back then. And is decidedly not the dynamic now — imagine how dangerous it would be for a guy these days to think “oh this is just a little game”. Which brings me back to the same conclusion: It contains an old-fashioned dynamic that’s seriously bad news in 2024, but we like it in spite of that.
I agree with Jeremiah here. About a quarter of the girl’s lyrics actually make explicit the fact that she is flirting and doesn’t have any desire to leave. “So very nice … so very warm … maybe just a half a drink more .. at least I’m gonna say that I tried” etc.
Having said that, I also agree with Jeff that good things shouldn’t and can’t be canceled.
I think the most important part here is that you mentioned teaching your son.
There is a substantial difference in the way adults should be expected to consume media (with nuance and respect for cultural differences, the past is a foreign country!), and children should. As you have mentioned in the past, kids are DUMB with a capital B.
The instinctual push back here (by myself at least) was in part due to viewing this through the lens of an adult (because I am one). If I consider this to be intended towards children, it becomes much more palatable to me.
Before becoming a parent, I always thought that nuance would be my watchword, and that I would always try to give the full picture. Now... Sometimes it's easier to just tell them that if they don't eat their vegetables their bones will become weak and they'll walk with a hunch.
I’ve found myself abridging things for my 6 year-old that simply couldn’t have been when I was a kid: “What Makes The Red Man Red?” from Peter Pan (BTW, as an adult I find Peter Pan to be a dick, and I think that was Barrie’s intention).
I have also skipped a two page section of a SEL-type book that has that THINK acronym that tries to shame people from telling the truth if it hurts someone’s feelings. My goal is to pass on that the most important thing, above all else, is simply the T: Is it true? We are also deep into talking about Santa (eeeeehhhhhh)
Luckily no Santa for me. The only thing to think about is Elijah's cup!
We do both. It’s been a slow shift for me, who only did Chanukkah and had a spiky relationship with Christmas
I'm introducing legislation tomorrow, promised by Mike Johnson to be given special consideration, to prevent the viewing by minors of this heinous affront to traditional family values.
it's a fair point that the song doesn't translate well to 2024 scenarios, but I agree it would be silly to toss the song in the bin just because of that.
I'd say it's both at once. It was a time when women were still just objects of a man's desire, but also a time where women in turn were required by societal rules to be chaste. Ergo, the man is being unduly aggressive, and the woman may not be into him. It's also possible that she may be into him and fending off his advances simply because she doesn't want to be seen by everyone as the Town Floozy.
"No" means "not yet", and maybe "not ever" if you are unwilling to commit. THAT is the context of the time.
Disagree. That dynamic is intuitive to the human experience and can be seen across cultures. Females playing hard to get with someone they actually like can be seen all the way down to our great ape cousins. Men are usually the ones being forward/more aggressively pursuing sex because that's what testosterone does. It doesn't have to infer non-consent or sexual harassment/assault. People need to accept life, including gender relations, are way more nuanced & complex than these black/white narratives.
I'm not defending "no means yes," but I really hate that all the problematizing that goes on acts like men are evil for daring to express a desire for, uh, "company," and women are just delicate flowers who can't possibly be expected to be able to clearly and directly say, "nope" and leave. Because you'll note that despite all her giggly hemming and hawing, the "cold outside" chick clearly has zero intention of actually going anywhere (and, frankly, in many of the versions I've heard sounds like she's already taken off her blouse by the last line 🤷🏼♀️).
Dudes who are _physically_ aggressive are clearly bad and we should keep making that crystal clear, but it annoys me that we apparently still have a culture where some women feel like saying "no" definitively is somehow rude (definitely how I felt until I hit maybe 35). The solution to this old-fashioned dynamic shouldn't be terrifying boys into submission (unless they're into that, idk), it should be building up better agency for girls.
Yea, this is a huge misread of the actual song. The woman is clearly playing coy. Whether that is an anachronism, maybe? But it’s clearly supposed to be mutual flirtation. Her somewhat nominally protesting while effectively inching closer.
I think this is right. Lines from the woman's perspective: "My father will be pacing the floor...I'd better scurry...maybe just a half a drink more." it's like when I was a server and everyone would tell me, "I really shouldn't order the french fries," before ordering the french fries. It's pretty clear that she's saying, "I should, but I don't want to." A modern version might focus on an early meeting, "I should go get some sleep," and their significant other saying, "nah, stay and keep binge watching more of this show with me." Thought that sounds like a terrible song.
agreed, my take on this song has always been that she’s into it
Absolutely. And I’d even be willing to stick my neck out and say it’s also not meant to reinforce rape culture where no means yes. She’s so obviously saying yes (while also paying lip service to decorum and decency) her tongue is so obviously in her cheek, that a man would need to be tin-eared not to understand the difference between that and the poor cat in Pepe Le Pew. It’s more akin to someone being offered a biscuit saying “oh no really shouldn’t” in the hope the person will press them again so they feel less guilty about accepting.
This tumbler person compares it to a scene in macbeth where it is ambiguous whether Lady Macbeth is pressuring her husband to do something he doesn't want to do or giving him license to do what he already wants.
https://www.tumblr.com/ms-demeanor/168305679152/emilysidhe-dont-spoop-yourself-emilysidhe
The other commenters are right and this is wrong: "she clearly doesn’t want to get pursued that night." Quite wrong. The song is a sexual dance to a certain climax, and both partners are enjoying the steps . . . she's just doing hers backwards in high heels.
Good one.
Credit Ginger Rogers, at least apocryphally.
No apocryphal....she said that. Excellent reference.
All I have found says this: "the comment that the dancer Ginger Rogers did everything that her partner Fred Astaire did, but ‘backwards and in high heels’ and therefore with extra difficulty, is often attributed to Rogers herself. Rogers, however, denied it." I would be happy if you have a contra source.
You're right. I'm wrong. I knee jerked into believing my fuzzy memory.
This piece still sucks, though.
We are in solid agreement on the larger sucky point.
Finally, someone who sticks up for the Eleanor Roosevelt/David Ben-Gurion version! The part where she ad-libbed “I’ve got to go and finish the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” always gets me needing to take a cold shower.
Btw, if you haven’t heard the Mamie Eisenhower/George C. Marshall version (“Baby, I’ve got a Plan for you, and it doesn’t need Congressional approval”), you haven’t lived.
That's funny, and I don't mean that ironically.
Please read this post, which explains that the most "rapey" interpretation is wrong, if you understand the cultural context. The idea is that the woman IS into it, but has to give excuses, and even the "what's in this drink" doesn't at all mean that she's being roofied.
This is a repost of a column from Listening While Feminist, but the original seems to have disappeared. Fortunately, someone seems to have grabbed it, and the original link can also be retrieved through archive.is
https://leisureguy.ca/2018/12/03/listening-while-feminist-in-defense-of-baby-its-cold-outside/
I'm considering unsubscribing after leaving this comment. It's pretty clear you've neither understood the song lyrics nor read any actual discussion of their semantics in contemporary context. This piece is unfair and gross.
Every single objection Mouse raises is "my family will be upset with me if I exercise my agency in this way," while Wolf is alternating between compliments and giving her the plausible deniability she needs to fend off the slut-shaming of her "vicious" relatives. And lines like "what's in this drink" (used in many, many pieces of media when someone is going to do something they don't want to take the blame for and plan to attribute that decision to a weak or non-alcoholic drink) and "I wish I knew how to break this spell" are all neon signs saying that she wants this, she just doesn't want anyone to think she's the "type of girl" who stays overnight at her suitor's house.
We're rooting for this couple, who have been handed a golden opportunity by the weather to do something they would ordinarily get in trouble for (with her bearing the brunt of those social consequences). She's skittish about whether they're going to be able to get away with it, and she needs him to reassure her. Your descriptions of the characters, based on a cursory skimming of lyrics you couldn't bother to glance at past the most surface level with a contextual eye eighty years removed from its audience, are neither accurate nor classy.
Swing and a miss.
Your point about “what’s in this drink” being an old tongue in cheek line for wanting an excuse to do something you know you shouldn’t is an important point, and i was really surprised that Jeff wasn’t aware of that, given his knowledge of our cultural history. That said, i wouldn’t unsubscribe just for that- everyone gets to swing and miss sometimes. I dont interpret his take on those points was in bad faith. I think he just got this one wrong in good faith.
There's a phenomenon (sometimes called Gell-Mann Amnesia) where someone confidently espouses nonsense on a topic you understand well enough to know better, and then once they start talking about things you don't understand that well, you go, "well, they sound confident, so they must know that they're talking about." I try to avoid falling into that, so once someone says balderdash with the the confidence of fact, if I'm not willing to double-check everything else they say, it's no longer worth keeping them around as a trusted source of information.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
I had not heard that term before but I followed the link you provided and read about it- that's great- and so very true! thanks- I will definitely be using that term going forward! Though, I'm not convinced that it would apply here, especially given Jeff's track record. Put another way, I've said some pretty stupid and wrong stuff with great certainty in my time, only to later discover my error. I'd like to think that a writer as good as Jeff has enough built-up credibility to get a mulligan every now and then. And I say that, by the way, as a guy who is not even of his political persuasion.
I think he got it wrong because he is getting suckered into being socially appropriate.
Good lord - THIS is the post that would cause you to unsubscribe???? Really??? You definitely to chill.
Under advice of counsel, I have amended my previous statement to be more nuanced: I too am considering unfollowing after this post. Just so off the mark. And feel sorry for young men waiting for a woman to pursue them who may never get laid except by ——— women with poor self esteem seeking validation. Because, like it or not, most women are still raised to play defense not offense. And the ones who play offense are going to tend to go after a specific type of alpha male guy.
It seems that the societal belief that causes the dynamic in the song -- i.e. that women who want sex are "whores" -- is not as old-fashioned as I thought.
Apparently my truth was too harsh, but I know that a lot of women still play hard to get because they do not want to be seen as whores. And the higher up the desirability scale you go, the more they tend to just reflexively say no to most men because they get hit on a lot. And players can be really obnoxious so not advocating raising a son to be a player. Just saying women find confidence attractive. But then you got to back up the confidence with something. Charm, intelligence, interesting hobbies, and some degree of bedroom skill. It ain’t easy and you will get your heart broken and probably break some hearts, but that’s being human.
Does that dynamic not exist anymore? I honestly have no idea, I haven't dated in 20 years, but back then I'm pretty sure women were still perceived as less attractive if they didn't act sufficiently "hard to get", no matter how stupid that whole idea is.
It's not even about societal pressure; you see it all around the animal kingdom-males are nearly always the more aggressive pursuers of sex, and females often will play coy and uninterested right before consummation. There's never been a human society anywhere where women just go up to men they don't know saying 'hey, nice dick, want to fuck?" . .and it's not because every society has just not enabled the sexual liberation of women.
Right, we are part of the animal kingdom. Mating rituals almost always involve the male trying to seduce the female.
I would bet many dollars that Jeff's son will fare much better with the ladies than you have, Professor. The odds are in his favor.
Not that it matters, but I have done fine thank you. I am not obviously saying women who want sex are whores. I am saying if you are not a 6ft tall total chad a lot of women will not pursue you aggressively. And you will be lonely waiting for them to. You may need to be a bit more aggressive, funny, and as this song is flirty. Not rapey just maybe not someone who gives up at the slightest push back. Love is a dance and you need to learn the steps.
There's a lot about relationships you don't quite get. But keep thinking that "Chads" get all the girls because they're so very tall. Also, you might want to just delete your first comment about "whores" and be done with it.
Really hung up on that word aren’t you? Who’s slut shaming me or you? But as for understanding relationships let’s see, since I was 16 for 40 years been in 3 long term relationships and never single more than a few months. I think I understand relationships. And two of those long term relationships started because I talked a girl into fooling around when they just “wanted to be friends.”
Oof...you *really* aren't helping your case, pal.
I agree that he's misread the song, but I don't see why that'd cause you to unsubscribe. Does misreading a fictional social situation from almost a century ago mean that you no longer find the author trustworthy?
Well I really liked Jeff Maurer's BarPod episode (#225) where he expresses contrition over the one-sided knee-jerk progressive tone that Last Week Tonight devolved into, but somehow reading this article I could just picture John Oliver pounding on his desk saying "...but it is a deeply problematic song!"
Have considered creating a google doc that says "John Oliver is dumb and bad" in a variety of fonts? You could save a lot of time by just rereading that if that's all you want out of media.
I disagree with the author but he supports his argument at length in a reasonable tone. It's very different from John Oliver pounding on a desk (an image which itself is a caricature). I can get where he's coming from, even if the conclusion is wrong.
Why would I do that? You and Mr. Kidwell really have created a cartoon caricature of me, which is ironic because I look so much like john Oliver that I used to get stopped on the street all the time and asked if I was John Oliver. I used to love his show, and if you just want entertainment sometimes it is that, but it is not a very a good way to understand nuanced issues.
I apologize, maybe that was unfair. I just read your comments like you mostly evaluate media based on treatment of John Oliver. It seemed one dimensional.
John Oliver aside, I don't think the article is bad, even if the conclusion is wrong. I disagree with the assumptions he makes that lead to his conclusion, but since he clearly states what those assumptions are are, we are able to disagree with him. For example, some disagree that the man is pressuring the woman into anything. The author has responded to that disagreement and explained why.
That seems like all you can ask for in someone that writes about their opinions. If you only want to read your own opinions, there's no need to subscribe to anyone at all.
It amazes me how fast prevailing opinions change and then immediately take on the solidity of common knowledge that everyone has always understood. Fifteen years ago, nobody blinked at this song - just a cheesy bit of old-fashioned Americana. About ten years ago, everyone decided it was a celebration of date rape. Radio stations and streaming services pulled it off the air. Thinkpieces were written. Men self-flagellated on behalf of their rapey and unenlightened forebears. Then, a few years ago, somebody circulated a feminist defense of the song, pointing out the interpretation you describe. Now that viewpoint has become so self-evident and important that you’re here threatening a successful culture writer with malpractice because he missed the latest memo. Incredible stuff.
Not everyone decided it was a celebration of date rape, a small subset of hyper-online millennials did. We should not need memos to guide our opinions about the world. A more interesting phenomenon was the reassessment of the Alfred Eisenstaedt photo of a drunken sailor kissing a nurse during V-J Day in Times Square. Around 2010 everyone suddenly was up in arms that it was a photo of a sexual assault and not a wholesome photo. The thing is I think everyone in the 1940s knew that the photo was of an unwanted kiss. It was not that it was reinterpreted through modern eyes, I think modern people just didn't look closely at the photo before. Is it a photo of joy, male privilege, frenzy? All of the above.
Also, my recollection is that the sudden adjustment of our view on the V-J Day photo came from an article in which the woman in the photograph shared her feelings about it. Prior to that, I don’t think most of us were really spending much energy analyzing the photo or the incident it depicts; the article got everyone thinking about it.
That's probably true, but for 60 years it was one of the most famous photos in America, lots of people were familiar with it. That article happened at a time when it became popular to problematize famous photos, it was not just this photo under scrutiny.
Sorry, I thought it would be assumed that when I said “everyone” that I didn’t mean every single individual in the country - rather I meant that this attitude overflowed the banks of the hyper-online set and flooded the mainstream. You are simply remembering incorrectly that it was limited to a few hysterical millennials.
it was the talking point of the day because "content creators" and daytime talk shows latched onto it, but I think a very small subset of people took it seriously.
Totally agree. And as a woman, I interpret this song as a little playful pursuit not altogether unwelcome. If she was a hard no I think the woman's lines would be written differently.
It's a beautiful song. If there's any suggestion of persuading her to have sex, it's tongue in cheek. It celebrates a romance.
We should make this our anthem when we celebrate the end of cancel culture.
I agree with these two comments above. I think Jeff gets it quite wrong when he says that she doesnt want to be pursued- rather, it is a flirtatious song on both sides where she is saying the things she is supposed to say according to the times, but with a wink and a nod. Or at least that’s the way I’ve always interpreted it. This dynamic really comes through on the very best - but for some reason never mentioned- version of the song with Brian Setzer and Ann Margaret. Definitely worth a listen! I dont see how - at least from that version- you can hear it any other way.
I think we can also acknowledge that the song was written before "no means no" was a phrase taught to people. (as an aside, there's a Hebrew song "When you(f) say no", with the first line "when you say no, what do you mean?", that was referenced in a court ruling, where it was determined that... She means no).
In this time and place, the man and the woman are both (potentially) playing the roles society expects of them. The woman, if she wants the man, would be behaving the way she is in the song. I think that most people can agree that the current expectations (say what you mean) are better, as it alleviates the myriad issues involved in the "potentially" above. With that, it's very unfair to the (fictional) singer to impute rapeyness, with the mores of modern society that were simply different.
You think modern women “say what they mean” or men too for that matter?
I’m not sure that’s as common as it’s made out to be.
I don't, but I think we expect/require them to. Or at least we treat our children that they should.
Obviously the conversation around consent is almost nonsensical, does anyone in a relationship actually ask for/receive "enthusiastic verbal consent" before every interaction? I'd say that's a strawman, but I have been told that that that is the expected standard explicitly, many times. And I have not seen a consistent, less rigorous standard floated. Regardless, people spout that nonsense, because we would rather people err in that direction.
Fair enough. But there’s still a lot of “hard to get” out there.
I personally never had any time for it. Which is why I married the woman that was much much more aggressive in our first date. Ha! I was the one that wanted to wait (hint: we didn’t. I just needed some *ahem* “convincing”).
M: I just want one holiday season without discourse about BICO
W: Baby it's cold outside
M: Clearly you're just in it for engagement
W: Baby it's cold outside
M: You're making the season a tiny bit more annoying and though it's not a all-caps CONSENT VIOLATION I still didn't sign up for that
W: Baby it's cold outside
M: Fine I'll come back when you talk about something else.
People under a certain age are never going to understand this song because it was written when there was an actual dating/relationship ritual that played out, and it was because SEX wasn't some casual activity that didn't have real world consequences. It did. SEX was for marriage, and while some did have sex outside or before marriage, most did not because of the social stigma. Also remember that when the song was written, the only available contraception was condoms and it's not like you could buy them off the shelf at Walgreens. But as sexual creatures, even then, people were preoccupied with it.
Consequently, that preoccupation was directed, and had been for centuries, to the idea of romance, of wanting sex, but recognizing social limitations and stigmas, and working around it. That meant hints, euphemisms, double-entendres, and playing roles like wolf and ingenue. Everybody understood the dynamics of sexual play in those days and if you tried to whine about it as modern day puritans do, they'd laugh you out of the room. It was a way to have fun with members of the opposite sex without being shamed.
Which is all cancel culture is.
As for the song, if you don't like it, or don't get it; don't listen to it. Being outraged by social norms from 60+ years ago is a waste of time given all the problems men and women are having with each other today.
Of all of the comments posted, this one is the best. Agreed 100% with everything said here. I think that those who don’t get the playful fun of the song reflect either some sort of historical myopia or puritanical impulses, or both. In my experience, usually both.
Years ago, when I wrote a spirited defense of this duet, which is neither a Christmas song, nor, to be honest, in need of defense from philistines, performers or in the audience, I found myself explained and corrected by a poster that the then popular WET ASS PUSSY was a better song because of its depiction of agency. Deliver me. No less a light than Stephen Sondheim regards Frank Loesser as perhaps the single greatest vernacular lyricist contributing to the American Popular Songbook. And this work is a great example of that brilliance, which predates his return to the New York City of his birth to create three of the greatest mid century musicals we have.
Ya, people need to lighten up. As Willie Nelson says, there are two kind of music. Good and bad. If the song is really good, you don’t pay too much attention to the meaning of the lyrics. Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” came out when I was thirteen. I still can recite the lyrics today but I managed to not become a suicidal psychopath. We need to cancel the bad music.
I know that X-Mas must be near when the lights go up on the one remaining department store downtown and the perennial critiques of this eighty-year-old song again appear in my social media feed.
For a while I thought that cut-and-pasted critiques of Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree -- why doesn't the tree have boundaries? -- would supplant it, but it seems this song's attachment to the holidays makes complaints about the lyrics evergreen. Also making the annual "hey, I like that song!" pushback evergreen.
Anyway I'm sure this song was a pagan anthem to Baldur or whatever before the Romans colonized it.
Agree emphatically. Others have said this, but I think it's insane that anyone listening doesn't understand that both people are playing their roles; people who miss this are (almost always) doing it intentionally.
Besides, there are few things more pathetic than judging the past by today's current moral standards. In 200 years, plenty of things we think are just fine will be considered unimaginably monstrous - it will be seen as immoral to eat a vegetable because someone has determined that they're more alive than we give them credit for or something like that. Does that mean that all of us are bad people TODAY? Further, does it mean that our artistic/social/etc. achievements should be cast away as tainted by sins that are only sins in retrospect? I say no.
Besides, the truly stupid thing about this is that there are things happening today that are worth raging against that could actually make people's lives better. Cancelling past performers/politicians/etc is worthless virtue signaling, nothing more. It's the most useless and self-congratulatory form of activism.
It's only in our current retentive cultural impaction that anyone would read stupid shit into what is a fun playful song. Although, it's possible that women have never liked sex and would never in a million years act coy or flirtatiously. Just in case I'm wrong, I've already clamped on the cilice...