In recent
years, several radio stations around the country have bowed to the pressure of
the #MeToo movement to ban the Oscar winning Christmas season song Baby It’s
Cold Outside from their play lists during the holiday season. While these actions are well-intentioned,
they can also be counter-productive.
First, some
back story about the song composed by Frank Loesser in 1944. Loesser and his wife Lynn Garland would sing this song at
parties when entertaining, or an act was expected from all of the
party guests. It was the couple’s
exclusive party bit for years until Loesser sold the rights to MGM, who included
the song in their Esther Williams musical Neptune’s Daughter in 1949. From that point on, it has been covered numerous
times by a number of singing duos.
It was more
innocent in the context of the time it was written: the artistic and
destructive crucible of World War Two. This
was a time when many couples were separated by the global conflict: the woman
were at home keeping the (stereotypical) “home fires burning” and working in
the factories, while their men were off risking all in the fight against
bigotry and intolerance. The idea that
these people could be on the same continent, let alone in a cozy room protected
from the elements, could have been a very heart-warming antidote to the misery
and loneliness of fighting a war.
Sadly, the
song was not recorded in time to have this effect on the fighting heroes and
heroines of the Greatest Generation. Still, we can only imagine the effect on
morale it could have had if it had been recorded and rushed into mass
production like The Christmas Song and I’ll Be Home for Christmas.
Until a few
years ago, the song was always seen as a cute, possibly risqué, work of art
about a flirting couple debating the merits of the woman going home in a
freezing blizzard. The man invites her
to stay and because the narrative ends just when the woman consents to staying
(let’s repeat this part boldly, consents
to staying) it is left to the listening audience and their discerning
minds to imagine what happens next. We
can only conclude that since many people in the audience are now thinking that
it’s about date rape that we in the audience are a dirty-minded lot.
The fellow
in the song could have bowed to the strict moral code of the times, gave up his
bed for the night for the woman’s comfort while he slept on the couch. I would argue that this is entirely plausible
outcome which is, once again, left to the imaginations of the receiving audience. Regardless if the outcome did turn out to be
this innocent, the woman in the song does raise a valid point: the neighbors
will still talk.
I reiterate that
the song is a work of art subject to wide interpretation of its meaning like
all other works of art. We shouldn’t have to say this but perhaps we do: Baby
It’s Cold Outside did not invent the idea of using chemicals to seduce a lover. This idea has been around I dare say for at
least a millennium or two, or possibly three.
In that time, many of us of the male gender have for the most part behaved like
and conducted ourselves as perfect gentlemen.
While other times, we have allowed our hormones to conquer our logic and sense
of right/wrong and behaved like absolute pigs.
Now it
appears that the proponents of the #MeToo movement believe that banning this
song will put to rest these animalistic tendencies forever. Sorry, this is unlikely to happen. Reality must seem so inconvenient for the naïve
among us.
Banning the
song would be much like denying our history.
Now don’t make me play the “If-you-don’t-know-your-history-then-you’re-doomed-to-repeat-it”
card. This is not just a tenet of the history discipline; it’s common sense. If one makes a mistake that hurts others, and
doesn’t realize that he has hurt others, then he is most likely to do the same
action over and over again, and hurting more and more people each time he repeats
this same action.
Date rape is
a very serious problem and has hurt a lot of people. It deserves to be talked about so that more
people are aware of the gravity of this act.
Hopefully, it would happen less and less as time goes on, and also
hopefully it would happen regardless if this song and our attendant history are
swept under our cultural carpet as if the problem doesn’t exist.
The song, if
you choose to interpret it as recipe for committing sexual assault (and it is
your choice to interpret it as such), then it can be used as a teachable moment
of morality.
Granted that this should
not have to be taught, but judging from the many Weinsteins, Cosbys, and Ailes
of the world, it is clearly not understood as being wrong by everyone. In any event, banning the song is tantamount to
pretending that the problem doesn’t exist.
(Thank you for
reading. Nothing humorous to read here. Move along.)
