Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Tumblr Post: Former English Teacher Defends Controversial Christmas Song


It's that time of the year again. With the holiday season in full bloom, it's time to steer our attention to that one Christmas song that never fails to stir up the spicy debate about what it's exactly getting at. We have a former English teacher chime in on a tweet that condemns the infamous song, "Baby It's Cold Outside", with their analysis of what the song actually represents. 

1.

Text - Andrew Rannells @AndrewRannells I don't think any more people need to record Baby It's Cold Outside. I think we're good there. teachingwithcoffee It's time to bring an end to the Rape Anthem Masquerading As Christmas Carol

2.

Text - bigbutterandeggman Hi there! Former English nerd/teacher here. Also a big fan of jazz of the 30s and 40s. So. Here's the thing. Given a cursory glance and applying today's worldview to the song, yes, you're right, it absolutely *sounds* like a rape anthem. BUT! Let's look closer! "Hey what's in this drink" was a stock joke at the time, and the punchline was invariably that there's actually pretty much nothing in the drink, not even a significant amount of alcohol.

3.

Text - See, this woman is staying late, unchaperoned, at a dude's house. In the 1940's, that's the kind of thing Good Girls aren't supposed to do – and she wants people to think she's a good girl. The woman in the song says outright, multiple times, that what other people will think of her staying is what she's really concerned about: "the neighbors might think," "my maiden aunt's mind is vicious," "there's bound to be talk tomorrow." But she's having a really good time, and she wants to stay, a

4.

Text - That is the standard joke that's going on when a woman in media from the early-to-mid 20th century says "hey, what's in this drink?" It is not a joke about how she's drunk and about to be raped. It's a joke about how she's perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because she's living in a society where women aren't supposed to have sexual agency. Basically, the song only makes sense in the context of a society in which women are

5.

Text - and expected for a lady's gentleman companion to pressure her despite her protests, because he knows she would have to say that whether or not she meant it, and if she really wants to stay she won't be able to justify doing so unless he offers her an excuse other than “I'm staying because I want to." (That's the main theme of the man's lines in the song, suggesting excuses she can use when people ask later why she spent the night at his house: it was so cold out, there were no cabs availa

6.

Text - the woman has a voice, and she's using it to give all the culturally-understood signals that she actually does want to stay but can't say so. She states explicitly that she's resisting because she's supposed to, not because she wants to: “I ought to say no no no..." She states explicitly that she's just putting up a token resistance so she'll be able to claim later that she did what's expected of a decent woman in this situation: "at least I'm gonna say that I tried." And at the end of th

7.

Text - So it's not actually a song about rape - in fact it's a song about a woman finding a way to exercise sexual agency in a patriarchal society designed to stop her from doing so. But it's also, at the same time, one of the best illustrations of rape culture that pop culture has ever produced. It's a song about a society where women aren't allowed to say yes.which happens to mean it's also a society where women don't have a clear and unambiguous way to say no. Source: matchingvnecks #baby it'

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