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Threaded Order Chronological Order
| re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ | |
| Posted by: | Chromolume 10:02 pm EST 12/20/15 |
| In reply to: | re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ - Delvino 09:43 pm EST 12/20/15 |
| Putting everything under a PC microscope is something I hate about our current world. Though I understand how a lyric like "say, what's in this drink" can be repurposed to fit a current serious issue like the Cosby rapes, it was certainly not meant to be so controversial (or at all) when it was written, and I've never felt the song was more than flirtatious, the way it was obviously written to be. Geez - I'm surprised, that with the current revival of The King And I going on, no one has taken Hammerstein to task for "So many men and girls / are in each other's arms." I mean, that's certainly a bit more "graphic" than that song from Gigi that was getting all the attention last season...;-) Sometimes we just all need to relax, take a few deep breaths, and enjoy things for what they are, instead of having to read new offensive significance into every little thing. | |
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| re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ | |
| Posted by: | Kimmelhisway 02:55 am EST 12/21/15 |
| In reply to: | re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ - Chromolume 10:02 pm EST 12/20/15 |
| I'm with you! I'm so heartily sick of all this PC revisionism and faux outrage. It's stupid and it's harmful and it's disgusting, not necessarily in that order. Of course I recorded it with the roles reversed - Karen Morrow wanted Charles Nelson Reilly to stay. It was funny. | |
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| re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ | |
| Posted by: | PlayWiz 04:40 pm EST 12/21/15 |
| In reply to: | re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ - Kimmelhisway 02:55 am EST 12/21/15 |
| I agree. A lot of the people who are finding things to be offended about in previously inoffensive things are the ones with the dirty minds. | |
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| re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ | |
| Posted by: | Sam890 08:46 am EST 12/21/15 |
| In reply to: | re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ - Kimmelhisway 02:55 am EST 12/21/15 |
| You tell 'em Bruce. This PC claptrap has gone too far. Next they'll be trying to tell us there's something wrong with blackface minstrelsy and the good old songs like "All Coons Look Alike To Me". We yearn for the good old days when women knew their place and domestic violence was politely kept behind doors. We could have a laugh about lyrics referring to sexual aggression and hitting your wife if she gave you cheek - it was just all a bit of fun. I'm with you Bruce, this PC nonsense has just gotten out of hand! | |
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| re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ | |
| Posted by: | PlayWiz 04:47 pm EST 12/21/15 |
| In reply to: | re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ - Sam890 08:46 am EST 12/21/15 |
| It's not like they regularly play on the radio or other media that song you mention. Although years ago, when I was in London, this actress from South Africa Sheila Steafel decided it was a hoot to do a medley of old coon songs as part of her club act. As one of our classmates with us is African-American, we were outraged and very pissed of on behalf of our classmate, and we said something to the effect to the management. It's fine to get upset with blackface, especially when one sees that even Judy Garland did a film in which she was in blackface. But unless SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE is doing a sketch in which Bill Cosby is dressed in a cute little ugly Christmas sweater and singing "Baby, It's Cold Outside" to a revolving door full of sweet young ladies, the song itself is not a date-raper's rhapsody, for fuck's sake! | |
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| re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ | |
| Posted by: | enoch10 03:08 pm EST 12/21/15 |
| In reply to: | re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ - Sam890 08:46 am EST 12/21/15 |
| have they completely stopped teaching rhetorical strategies in composition classes? do you really think anyone - other than maybe (i prefer giving you the benefit of the doubt) you - find these two things comparable? possible subtextual sexism in a song and the physical expressions of dehumanization exemplified in the jim crow laws that followed 400 years of slavery? do you really not see how insensitive, tone deaf, and insulting that is? and anyone who'd like to chime in with some version of "oh, how pc" can i just head that off at the pass with anybody who thinks dismissing this with thinly-veiled longing for a time when blatant bigotry got more a pass is a moron. how's that for pc? political correctness is a real thing and (i think) often a real problem no matter how misused the term might be. we don't need to call out the faulty logic in labelling this song "sexist" or "pro-rape" or whatever nonsense it is exactly that's being bandied about by applying inappropriate terminology. this argument is silly enough at just face value. | |
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| Claptrap, indeed! | |
| Posted by: | portenopete 12:03 pm EST 12/21/15 |
| In reply to: | re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ - Sam890 08:46 am EST 12/21/15 |
| You tell 'em, Sam! That's exactly what Bruce was saying and exactly what Frank Loesser was writing about. It reminds me of the blatant sexual aggression in GUYS AND DOLLS when Sky gets Sarah drunk in Havana and then she unleashes her dormant racial hatred towards Latinos in the bar fight. (Not to mention Loesser's thoughtlessly cruel attitudes towards gender confusion in WHERE'S CHARLEY?.) I'm not a lover of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and couldn't care less if I never hear it again, but just because SNL fashions a (pretty funny and pointed) 20-second skit out of it doesn't mean I think it's somehow been revealed for the hateful, misogynistic screed it always was. It's always struck me as a very mid-century, slightly smarmy lounge song, not one that I would necessarily think of as "Christmassy" but not anything inherently offensive. (You could stick Bill Cosby into any song nowadays and it would shine a new and unpleasant light on the lyrics.) | |
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| re: Claptrap, indeed! | |
| Posted by: | Ann 12:36 pm EST 12/21/15 |
| In reply to: | Claptrap, indeed! - portenopete 12:03 pm EST 12/21/15 |
| The discussion didn't start with Saturday Night Live. There have been a few articles lately about the song and how it comes across. | |
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| re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ | |
| Posted by: | pierce 10:30 pm EST 12/20/15 |
| In reply to: | re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ - Chromolume 10:02 pm EST 12/20/15 |
| Sometimes we just all need to relax, take a few deep breaths, and enjoy things for what they are, instead of having to read new offensive significance into every little thing. Yes! | |
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| re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ | |
| Posted by: | BruceinIthaca 12:41 am EST 12/21/15 |
| In reply to: | re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ - pierce 10:30 pm EST 12/20/15 |
| I can be as PC as the best of them, but I always saw this song as a seduction duet for two equals (the line about what's in the drink suggests the woman still has control of her faculties). It is from a time when you couldn't simply write "Let's Stay the Night Together." It's a song for sophisticated adults, who enjoy a nightcap, a cigarette, and whatever else may happen. I don't find it "rapey" at all. | |
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| re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ | |
| Posted by: | Chromolume 01:14 am EST 12/21/15 |
| In reply to: | re: The creepiest classic of all: What should we do about ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside?’ - BruceinIthaca 12:41 am EST 12/21/15 |
| It's also a great example of oblique lyric writing. Her coy suggestion that she really can't stay is answered in turn with a coy excuse about the weather, etc...both of them not quite ready to say what they both know they really want. (He doesn't sing "but baby, stay here with me and let's get it on" - he simply suggests that it's too cold out there for her to leave, knowing she'll read between the lines. And then she answers back with another excuse, etc.) It's a game. A sophisticated game, as you pointed out. All in fun. | |
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