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

[x_creepy_doll_x]

I also hate!

[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.

[flewellyn]

Ugh, I woke up with that song in my head for some reason.

I had to go listen to something more palatable, like Ke$ha.

[happiestsadist]

I loled. That is a horrifying way to start the day.

[xanath]

Yeah, because nothing says love like, "Let me get you drunk enough to be too incapacitated to make your way home in bad weather, so you can't escape."

::washes bad taste out of mouth:: And I LOVE Christmas songs. It has to be absolute dreck for me to loathe a holiday tune, but this beats out my hatred for "Wonderful Christmastime" with a bullet. (And it should be put to rest with one.)

[happiestsadist]

Nothing says "love, romance and mutual attraction" like "hey, you're drunk and trapped *seductive eyebrow waggle*".

[starphotographs]

Oh god, don't even mention "Wonderful Christmastime." For some reason, that one was EVERYWHERE last year. I don't know how I lived to tell the tale.

[matrexius]

"Baby, it's Rape Inside" is creepy as fuck. "Wonderful Christmastime" is merely annoying as fuck.

[starphotographs]

I've always hated that song, if only because there's no way to record it that sounds like anything other than two people bickering. And then they blast it through every store in the galaxy for half a year. D:

I think "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" might tie with it in the Creepy Christmas Song Race, though. I mean... He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good. (So be good, for goodness sake!) And my partner thinks "Let it Snow" has some creepy undertones, so the whole thing is just full of wrong all around.

Goddammit, Christmas! You are supposed to be full of merriment, not creepy little songs about horrible invasions of privacy!

[happiestsadist]

"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" used to creep me out so much as a little kid for that reason.

[starphotographs]

The whole "coming to town" concept always sounded a bit ominous, too. Like he's going on a murderous rampage or something.

...

...Ohhh. It's actually about the Futurama Santa.