Exactly one year ago I finished off my blogging year with a post on gendered atrocities, focusing in particular on the Newtown shooting and the widely discussed gang rape in India. At that point, the hope was that these two events would at least not have been in vain, and that they would stir changes in the right direction. It seems that this did in fact happen in India, where the horridness of rape was given much more attention in the aftermath of the event, which triggered a firestorm of protest. (As for mass shootings and gun control in the US, to my knowledge nothing much seems to have changed since last year…)
And now, looking back on 2013, what strikes me as an absolute lowlight of the year is again something gender-related, at first sight of a much lesser degree of gravity – but only at first sight. One of the biggest hits of the year, Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’, is nothing short of a badly concealed rape apology (read the lyrics for yourself here). That millions and millions of young (and not-so-young) impressionable people should be exposed to the truly disturbing message of the song is very, very worrisome. The catchiness of the song (yes, I’ll admit to its catchiness, which is really the merit of singer, co-writer and producer Pharrell Williams — who, unlike Thicke, is a talented musician) only makes it worse, as it results in millions of kids singing ‘I know you want it’, ‘good girl’, and other horrific bits of the text. (It is particularly surprising that the three singers all seem fairly adjusted, family-oriented people; but what doesn’t one do for success…) The video is equally appalling, featuring three scantily clad female models interacting in unflattering ways with the three fully clad male singers (I’ll just mention hair-pulling and puffing smoke on one of the women’s face – see the video for yourself if you have to. Oh, and there is also an uncensored version!).
What is perhaps most disturbing about the whole thing is that, while the song provoked some heated reactions when it was released in March 2013 (among other things, it was banned at student events in several UK universities), what really set things on fire was Miley Cyrus’ performance of the song with Thicke at the VMA in August, which became the most tweeted-about event in history. So, as long as it was only the three guys and the three less well-known models performing pretty much the same act on the video clip, there wasn’t that much of an uproar; but when young lady Cyrus did the same on TV, the horror! Soon it was all about how out of line she was, but virtually nothing about Thicke’s participation, or even the complicity of the other musicians involved in creating this work of art that is ‘Blurred Lines’.
Some dissenting voices called on the double standards, and at least one blog post I came across discussed explicitly the importance of talking to our sons about Robin Thicke, not only to our daughters about Miley Cyrus. (As the mother of two very young but precocious, avid consumers of pop culture, this is already something I cannot bypass.) But overall, the general reactions have been disappointingly one-sided, and failed to point out that the real issue is with the very existence of songs like ‘Blurred Lines’ in the first place (and I know there is a lot more where this one is coming from…). In conclusion, I can only say that one of my wishes for 2014 is for less sexism and less veiled violence in pop culture – is that too much to ask for? (Never mind, I know the answer…)
UPDATE (January 3rd): As pointed out to me by a number of people, both here in comments and elsewhere, here's an appropriate response to 'Blurred Lines' (parody by Law students at the University of Auckland).
New APPS 
52 responses to “Lowlights of 2013: un-blurring the lines”
Btw, you can go ahead and reply if you wish to do so, and then I’ll close off comments on this post.
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Well okay Novaes. I’ll offer three specific remarks and three general ones.
First, by way of specifics, I do not think it is fair to say I’ve been distorting your view, though I am truly sorry it’s come across that way. We’ve gone rounds over what “comparable” and “not much less worse” amounts to, but it’s there in what you’ve written. Setting that issue aside, and for the purposes of moving on, I will use “comparable” to do whatever work “comparable” would have, could we have only come to some understanding.
Second, while you “very much object” to my vocabulary of disgust, it might do well to consider whether and to what extent people may be disgusted by comparing Thicke’s song to gang rape, calling it a “gendered atrocity” and a “rape apology.” These are heavy-handed terms themselves. One value of disgust-talk, it seems to me, is that it affords us a means of triangulating and sustaining shared sentiments regarding, e.g., how we ought to respond to a bit of twerking. And given that so much of what we do is driven by our sentiments, this triangulation helps us coordinate our activities and so come to live and breathe more comfortably with one another, whether in dance or conversation. If that’s right, then there should be little to no objection to talk of disgust when we find something disgusting. And if someone finds disgusting something we have ourselves done, then, at the very least, their voicing this disgust offers us an opportunity to reflect on and consider the merit of whatever it is we’ve done.
Third, I do not think your protestations against answering my questions in 15 hold water, but as I can tell you just don’t want to talk anymore, I’ll let it go.
Finally, some more general remarks. It seems to me that this conversation has, in some of the details, been emblematic of some of the blindspots of political discourse on the left. I will list three.
First, there is a focus on some putatively atrocious event that not all well-meaning people will agree is obviously atrocious, while it is put forward as though it is comparable (or comparable*) to something that is, as all well-meaning people most certainly WOULD agree, genuinely atrocious. This is problematic because 1) it can appear to trivialize the genuinely atrocious by associating it with something that is not obviously so, and 2) whatever value might be had in discussing the concern directly, the debate becomes fettered by associations that not all will agree are relevant.
Second, there is a tendency among some people (cough-Protevi-cough) to censor and shame those who do not share the view that the concern at issue is atrocious (seriously–you should have seen some of this guy’s emails). Combined with the first feature, this second one effectively shuts out of the conversation anyone who isn’t already settled on accepting that the concern in question is as its advocates characterize it to be. This policing of discourse ought to be disavowed by anyone interested in an open society and the free exchange of ideas–if views like mine are so abominable, show it in a criticism of the view (and I’ve made pretty clear that I do not suppose I am gilded in any of this and am willing to revise my view). But then, as Protevi has said, this is his blog and so he’ll do what he wants, as he has the right to.
Finally, we see that the partisans of the view profess to be offended and wish to be let out of the conversation. This isn’t nearly so pernicious as the censorship that appeared above, but it has the similar effect of making it seem as though there’s a ‘good guy’ in the conversation and a ‘bad guy,’ where the ‘bad guy’ is picking on the ‘good guy’. Now of course you are correct that you are under no obligation to converse with me, and I freely admit I can have sharp elbows. So I apologize if I said anything that was needlessly offensive.
And thank you for the conversation–this has, if nothing else, helped me sort out what I think about some of these things.
Also, please do check out that song above–quite a contrast with the sensibilities that something like “Blurred Lines” can cultivate (though I maintain that it, too, has its place in (some) well-lived lives).
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