The "Baby It's Cold Outside" controversy
Some radio stations have banned Frank Loesser's '50's era song of snowy-season seduction. When political correctness makes no distinction between flirtation and coercion, well.... people, honestly!
Why did the station not ban "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", which contains more disturbing phrases than you can shake a peppermint stick at?
"You better watch out, you better not cry"
Better not pout, I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is comin' to town":
A threat by an unnamed but apparently omniscient source.
"He's making a list and checking it twice
Where is Santa getting the list? Hacking?
Gonna find out who's naughty and nice..."
Dark stuff here: issues of privacy, and what exactly is meant by 'naughty'?
"He sees you when you're sleepin'
He knows when you're awake:
Sleeping children watched in their bedrooms! Surveillance.
"He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake!": hints of paranoia overlaid with bullying.
Contrast this with "Baby, It's Cold Outside". As usually sung, the man's trying to engage the woman in a little more hanky-panky; she's thinking—not very convincingly—about leaving. He asks for consent: "Mind if I move in closer?"; she makes a pretence of wavering: "At least I'm gonna say that I tried". These two mention their drinking and smoking: they ain't kiddies.
Oh, you want double entendre? Play "Santa Baby", the 1954 Eartha Kitt original. This went completely over my head when Mom and Dad put it on the Victrola, but "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" creeped me out by age 10, with its overtones of bribery and coercion.
The priggish "Baby, It's Cold" censors ban a reference to mutual attraction between adults while the anxiety-producing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" gets heavy rotation. This is messed-up merrymaking.
Rage against the sleigh.
"You better watch out, you better not cry"
Better not pout, I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is comin' to town":
A threat by an unnamed but apparently omniscient source.
"He's making a list and checking it twice
Where is Santa getting the list? Hacking?
Gonna find out who's naughty and nice..."
Dark stuff here: issues of privacy, and what exactly is meant by 'naughty'?
"He sees you when you're sleepin'
He knows when you're awake:
Sleeping children watched in their bedrooms! Surveillance.
"He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake!": hints of paranoia overlaid with bullying.
Contrast this with "Baby, It's Cold Outside". As usually sung, the man's trying to engage the woman in a little more hanky-panky; she's thinking—not very convincingly—about leaving. He asks for consent: "Mind if I move in closer?"; she makes a pretence of wavering: "At least I'm gonna say that I tried". These two mention their drinking and smoking: they ain't kiddies.
Oh, you want double entendre? Play "Santa Baby", the 1954 Eartha Kitt original. This went completely over my head when Mom and Dad put it on the Victrola, but "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" creeped me out by age 10, with its overtones of bribery and coercion.
The priggish "Baby, It's Cold" censors ban a reference to mutual attraction between adults while the anxiety-producing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" gets heavy rotation. This is messed-up merrymaking.
Rage against the sleigh.
Comments
At ici musique you can get many playlists from Radio-Canada and CBC2.
Duchesse, you've got spam...
I am happy to report that the two radio stations that I listen to here in Toronto - Classical FM.96.3 and the Zoomer station have both declined to participate in this ridiculous boycott!
Anyone listening to current rap or hip hop (even pop, e.g., Justin Bieber's "Hold Tight") will encounter explicit sexual content. Especially in rap, coercive sex is presented as a matter of course.
The whole notion of triggers disturbs me; I am not in favour of censoring speech or cultural products to protect persons from stimuli that potentially evoke past distress. I am all for persons turning away from what disturbs them. I love that when some young women are in clubs and the DJ plays a song glorifying sexual violence, misogyny, or racially-related hatred, they quit dancing, shake their heads no at the DJ, and march off the floor.
Margie: I'm glad persons are talking about it, and that stations refuse the boycott. If they accept, as I keep saying, they are going to have to remove all songs with lyrics that contain sexual innuendo (consensual, coercive and unclear). That leaves Christian rock, and there is very little Christian rock that really blows my hair back. Hmm, maybe instrumentals?
I may be in a different camp here because of generational differences... consent was beginning to be taught as the explicit, all-important buzzword we now know it as just when I started college, so I may have my antennae for it ratcheted up a few degrees higher, as it were...
Anyway, glad to read of different perspectives!
Anyway I love "rage against the sleigh". Over the last couple of years I have run a "theological reflection" as part of a course I mentor aimed at getting people to deconstruct the various components that make up our beliefs and attitudes, with a goal of reaching a more cogent and coherent understanding of our motivations and the roles we choose for ourselves in life. In the past we have discussed "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Santa Clause is Coming to Town". Both ended up being fairly deep and enlightening discussions and both discussions really reinforced the idea of how things that we take for granted influence us and our attitudes in ways in which we are often completely unaware.