Baby, It's Creepy Outside

[happiestsadist]

It's the end of November, and that means I've been hearing Christmas music every time I leave my house for about a month already. Of course, that includes the perennially creepy "Baby, It's Cold Outside". I mean, Christmas isn't Christmas without a nice holiday date rape anthem, right? (Here's a link to the lyrics)The thing that really gets me,

Comments

[arthur_sc_king]

I never heard this song growing up. It only seemed to become popular as different people covered in the last 10 (?) years or so.

And yeah, when I first really paid attention to the lyrics, I was all "WTF?"

I'm guessing that it was intended to be all cute and nice rather than being meant to sound creepy and coercive. But then, 1944 wasn't a particularly enlightened time. Best consigned to the junk heap of history, this one.

[arthur_sc_king]

Dear Glub, it won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1949 (the songwriter sold it to MGM, who used it in their 1948 flick Neptune's Daughter). Lovely....

[happiestsadist]

That's the thing, it was presented as a normal kind of thing. How "seduction" (a concept that needs demolition) is supposed to go.

Agreed with you that it should be left as a relic of nastiness. That said, the idea of consent hasn't really evolved that much though.

[arthur_sc_king]

[Frank] Loesser wrote the duet in 1944 and premiered the song with his wife, Lynn Garland, at their Navarro Hotel housewarming party. Lynn considered it "their song," and was furious when Loesser sold the song to MGM.
Hell, a hubby and wife called it "their song". Yeah. Exactly.

[xanath]

Ahhh, romance in the '40s, when women were gals and men proved how much they loved them by beating the shit out of them. Good times. /sarcasm

[ms_daisy_cutter]

I was just saying to keori tonight that, although there are exceptions, the unironic use of the word "gal" is a fairly reliable indicator that the speaker or writer is a twit who finds it a horrific imposition to examine their assumptions.

[xanath]

GMTA.

I never liked the word "gal." Every time I ever heard it, save for an old movie, it was uttered by someone who also had something to say about "the colored" and "wetbacks," among other groups.

[happiestsadist]

YES. It's a very clear marker of awfulness ahead.

[ms_daisy_cutter]

Analogous "gentleman." If you believe that you're doing me some kind of favor by being polite to me because you're a man and I'm a woman, you're probably a sexist shitbag.

[pope_guilty]

NO GOD NO I DIDN'T WANT TO KNOW THAT