By ZACHARY OLSAVICKY
Opinion Editor
I was a young white guy once, so I’ve seen first-hand how it can be difficult for other young white guys to grasp cultural concepts outside of the young white guy bubble. When your “cultural experience” consists of crushing Natty with your dudebros and talking about women in less-than-acceptable ways, it’s understandable how you become less sensitive to the world at large.
In a way, that’s what makes growing up so great; when you’re older, you have experience that teaches you how to treat other people and respect your fellow members of society. Perhaps, if you’re so motivated, you might even go out and try to elicit some change in the world as an adult, trying to leave it a better place than, say, your college dorm.
Not everyone grows up, though, and some dudebros age physically without developing a scrap of mental or emotional clairvoyance. A lot of these guys get middle-management jobs and have no impact on the world, but far too often, a meathead rises through the cracks and gets a wide-ranging platform to share their world view.
The latest dudebro to take the mic is Robin Thicke, with his vapid and terrible song ‘Blurred Lines.’ Accompanied by Pharrell Williams, who seems intent on being the sidekick in his own musical career, and T.I., rapper/maker of overpriced calculators, Thicke turns the sleaze up and writes four-and-a-half minutes of come-ons and coercive propositions. It’s almost a giant rape threat, as Thicke repeats “I know you want it” over and over and over, sounding like the drunk guy at the bar who is one step away from drugging someone’s drink. T.I. skips the nuance and explains that he’ll “give you something big enough to tear your ass in two.” (Like what, a boquet of roses?) “What rhymes with ‘hug me’?” Well, “slug me,” which is what I’m guessing a fair number of listeners would want to do by the end of the first verse.
The video is even worse, with scantily clad or nude models dancing around as the fully-dressed guys bump and grind against them. Williams carries a banjo, I guess because his audition for the Mumford and Sons’ ‘Hopeless Wanderer’ video was the same day. Hashtags are blasted over the visuals, because #thisishowwelivenow, and the whole thing look like it was run through a bad Instagram filter.
The song and video stirred a lot of discussion, and authors universally saw the video what it was for: lowbrow, misogynist drivel that joins a long line of musicians who exploit sexuality and rape threats to earn money. This hasn’t stopped it from reaching the top of the Billboard 100, but in a world where George W. Bush was re-elected by 62 million people in 2004, this isn’t very surprising.
Most people in a situation like this try to feign some empathy with critics. Thicke did not. Talking with GQ Magazine in May, he sarcastically commented that it was a “pleasure… to degrade a woman.” A sane adult might stop there, but good luck convincing one of his kind to lay off. The guys he balls with in his YMCA rec league might call him soft (among other unprintable names), and nothing hurts an adult dudebro worse than middle school-level insults.
After even more criticism, an adult might step back and look at their actions. You’re looking at the wrong guy to do anything like that. “It’s saying that men and women are equals as animals and as power,” Thicke asserted in an interview on The Today Show. I’d love to hear his explanation as to how men dressed in suits are equal to naked women. Further, where are the women singing on the track? Get a verse from Rihanna, or Katy Perry, or even Lana Del Ray if you’re desperate. Instead, we’re one step removed from a guest appearance by Ben Roethlisberger.
One of the more appalling defenses offered by Thicke is that the song and video are a ‘celebration’ of women. But in Thicke’s world, there’s only one type of woman: shy, with a rape fantasy, and 5% body fat. If you’re going to stoop to objectifying women with any sincerity, you have to recognize that not all women look like supermodels. To exclude any variety of body type—age, weight, height, creed, color—is to miss the point, and Thicke does so wildly.
With the amount of misogyny present, I can’t imagine why anyone with the least bit of self-esteem would enjoy the song. For men, it’s a matter of respecting women; for women, it’s a matter of respecting self. But misogyny is music is not a new ill, and people have been apathetic since time immemorial. Still, these kinds of issues generally lead to change. Public reaction to Paula Deen’s racism caused sponsors to terminate deals with her. The continuing saga of Carlos Danger, who you may know by the pseudonym Anthony Weiner, led to his fall from atop polls in the race for New York City mayor. Yet, whether it’s the particulars of the industry or prevailing attitudes about how men should treat women, the song remained a hit.
Of course, if you’re naïve and don’t take issue with misogyny, rape, objectification of women, an imbalance of gender power, and people who use banjos to look cool, you could at the very least dislike the song based on artistic merit. The beat is pretty much a ripoff of Nelly’s ‘Hot in Herre,’ and Thicke sued the estate of Marvin Gaye because the latter’s descendants thought it was plagiarism.
Let that sink in: he sued someone else because his song sounds like plagiarism.
And that’s the thing: if it’s not plagiarism, it’s a cheap attempt to ride the wave of this summer’s funk resurgence. Justin Timberlake began things in earnest with ‘Suit and Tie’; though not an outstanding song, it’s certainly good and it comes with the added benefit of his not coming on to his audience. Daft Punk hit the first peak with ‘Get Lucky’ (Where Williams is ‘up all night to get some’; dude, see a therapist), and instead of ripping people off, the group delicately pays homage to the sounds of disco. The best is yet to come; September sees the release of Janelle Monae’s second LP, The Electric Lady, which ought to blow the doors off pop music and set a high bar for contemporary R&B artists. In the meantime, go check out older soul, funk, and R&B artists. Remember that Marvin Gaye dude I mentioned earlier? His album What’s Going On is one of the finest albums ever crafted. Just about any Stevie Wonder album can reaffirm your belief in love as the driving force of human nature. And if you’re looking for something recent, 2012’s Channel Orange by Frank Ocean shows what those genres can be when meshed perfectly with hip-hop and rap.
What separates arstists like Daft Punk and Monae and Timberlake and Gaye and Ocean from Thicke is that they have the perspective to make good music. They understand how to recognize and pay tribute to those who came before them. Their tunes sound familiar, but fresh. Thicke, on the other hand, wrote ‘Blurred Lines’ in half an hour, and no artist can write a song in 30 minutes without borrowing whole parts of other people’s music
But when you’re Thicke, writing like he just shotgunned a can of PBR, you’ll sound as stale and tasteless as the beer you drink.