petek, 30. avgust 2013

Thicke's "Blurred Lines" and Miley Cirus and rape and whatnot

I've seen Thicke's original explicit video so long ago that I can hardly remember ... being put off by it and thinking - jeez, this is demeaning to women. And yet, as Thicke looks nice and shakes his booty in the rhythm of the song (which is, admittedly, quite catchy), they seem to forget all about it. Well, not me. And I'm a guy.

'Thicke's song, "Blurred Lines," doesn't endorse rape, as some have alleged, it does present the most tediously reductive view of sex and women with the idea of "a good girl" just needing to be liberated by alcohol and a penis to become "an animal". It's an idea that was satirised six years ago in Superbad by teenagers and yet remains as credible in pop songs today as it does in porn. It's one of life's ironies that pop music is supposedly a progressive and young person's art form, yet the messages it sends are generally as retrograde as the gruntings of an embarrassing middle-aged uncle at Christmas dinner." —Hadley Freeman, The Guardian'

From: Critics Roundup: What Everyone Said About Miley Cyrus’s VMA Performance | Vulture.com

"But you're an animal, baby, it's in your nature Just let me liberate ya!", "And that's why I'm gon' take a good girl .... I know you want it", "You the hottest bitch in this place", "But you're a good girl
The way you grab me
Must wanna get nasty
Go ahead, get at me"

Well, fine. But I follow some of the online life and news and I for one (and apparently, not for one, as it seems to resound in the comments of 'critics' linked to above) think it does create a problem - talking of one sex as Things. .. Sigh. You'll see, they'll be plenty more talk of Rape Culture in the future. Part of the future, precipitated by "meh, it's pop" attitude of today. Unfortunately. Well, we'll see. Maybe I'm just growing old and conservative (I let this be an option).

That being said, it's always good to see some humour reverberating through the digital tides and thus, a link to the Robin Thicke Blurred Lines Parody - #HungryGirl. You should check out some other titles in the flood of "Thicke Blurred Lines parody videos", like "Tan Lines".
  Resorting to humour is as always, a human response. (I believe, a much more productive one than resorting to violence, for example. Lenon agrees.) But will it be enough to save your little [baby] sister (2012, 2013), your teenage daughter, your wife on vacation? Some "reporters" just ride on the media waves ... and masses read/watch and otherwise consume it (example - "twerking" and Miley Cirus ... 'scientifically' explained).

On one hand, it is also true that nowadays, with media, the news spreads around waaaay faster. So, I guess these things happened in the past, maybe even at the same rate as they do today, only when in the past they were frowned upon or locally "contained", nowadays, they spread like virus over the net. Time will tell. Or not.



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