Thicke: Slicke or Dicke?

not seen or heard but gonna give thicke the unbenefit of the paltry doubt i have and dismiss him as a completely shit fucker whom i have neither the time nor the inclination for, whether he is an important cultural phenomenon or not

yeah i'm gonna rep for unrated one also. both vids are crass and sexist, unrated one manages to be hotter and more ridiculous (at some point you're just like 'good lord throw a shirt on already') plus when emily ratajkowski starts doing that goofy as hell dance w/ her titties out, man that is some cognitive dissonance. video's better than it should be on paper - some schmucks goof around w/ some half naked models, it's a coy 'cherry pie' video really and who needs that, it really does have all the style of a radio shack commercial minus the pathos of a ving rhames or a howie long.

in either version, the best thing about the video is t.i.'s dancing and the worst thing is pharrell's hat

n.b. Pharrell singing "You the hottest bitch in this place" to the goat.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/17/blurred-lines-robin-thicke-s-summer-anthem-is-kind-of-rapey.html

I don't get this. It's a song where a guy is trying to seduce a girl who already has a boyfriend or husband to cheat with him and have wild sex. There are a million songs like this. I don't see any "rapey" lyrics in it.

Like, the girl in the song is apparently grabbing him. There's a difference between saying "I know you want it" (i.e. "c'mon") in that context and, like, shouting "HEY, I KNOW YOU WANT IT!" at a random girl across the street.

The blogosphere requires perpetual outrage

Yeah, once a song becomes that popular, there just has to be clueless thinkpieces about it. When the Gotye song hit #1 there was the dumbest Jezebel post about hey the guy in this song probably wasn't a good boyfriend, he sounds like a creep!

I like Maura's nbd appearance in that article. Once you start singling out pop songs in which the guy sounds like a bit of a creep where do you stop? Lucky for Sting that Every Breath You Take predated Jezebel.

Frannie Kelley too! She's cool, I wish she posted here.

i guess it's a valid topic of discussion but i don't know the song is very obviously about thicke trying to coax a woman out of her shell, not trying to get her blackout drunk so he can fuck her

i guess it's a valid topic of discussion but i don't know the commercial is very obviously about psy trying to coax a pistachio out of its shell

I hate constructions like "kinda (bad thing)y" and "quasi-(bad thing)" that allow writers to demand a defense without outright claiming the offense.

I also don't think it does the end-rape-culture cause much of a service to casually throw around that kind of construction.

Yeah, "kinda rapey" is offensive all round

article itself is appreciated though, at least for showing how much sympathy (or the lack of it) affects ones perception of sexism/sexual aggressiveness.

a lot of the time in cases like this there's a real failure to understand that the visual aspect of pop music may bely the actual substance of the song - especially with mainstream/pop artists, i find their public image (a vague, nebulous thing that lends itself to kinda-constructions) is a lot more conservative/careful/rigid than the actual words they sing

in this case it's annoying b/c there's a valid discussion about misogyny to be had but calling the song "kinda rapey" is not it

Also, the default mode of writing nowadays is flippant. The worst sin is treating serious stuff seriously.

totally. i can't really do humorous writing anyway but i especially can't do it about stuff i know a lot about, or love a great deal. when i can write flippantly it's because i don't really care about my subject

I know there's a whole thread devoted to this tone of voice but I cannot wait for bloggers to stop hiding behind flippant-feeble "erm"s and "kinda"s.

Yeah, uh that skinhead band is a WEE BIT TOO holocausty for my tastes.

Haha

I cannot wait for things that are never going to happen also.

"Lucky for Sting that Every Breath You Take predated Jezebel."

actual lol

i mean i guess the whole 'any song where a man shows a sexual interest in a woman is now rapey' ideal espoused by some feminist blogs is very 'caricature of feminists in pcu' shit

and i mean i STILL listen to a lot of hard rock. so

tbf "i know you want it" is a step beyond the expression of sexual interest. A less sympathetic son of a tv star would get oodles of shit for a song that declares you "the hottest bitch in this place," reaffirms all that stands between you is your "good girl" status, and then offers drugs in the last verse.

also if the well-dressed men surrounded by topless women weren't doing vaudeville routines

kind of wish this feminist internet reaction existed when "give it to you" came out

one of the most uncomfortable songs to karaoke

someone put robin's vocal over puddle of mudd - "blurry lines" to show how much context matters

or just get chad kroeger to cover it

But "I know you want it" is bracketed by him talking about how she's grabbing him, and the earlier "you're an animal" lines seem to indicate that it's not a metaphor...

I dunno. All this stuff is so thorny. And there is so much worse misogyny out there that is actively denying of women's sexual agency, you know?

yeah there is, but if someone's skeeved by robin they're not wrong to be. and while i'm not much for outrage-culling, acknowledging that the cute can be piggish has its value.

Oh sure, and it's not like we're otherwise in some golden era for the way that male-female relationships play out in pop culture, either.

yeah, i just think that whether a song is gross or not probably shouldn't be judged primarily by our individual "can get it"-o-meters and if people are giving robin a pass for language they'd crucify chad for it's worth looking at why and whether it's anything more than taste in haircuts.

they should have replaced the models with Chad Kroger in the unrated version

But "I know you want it" is bracketed by him talking about how she's grabbing him, and the earlier "you're an animal" lines seem to indicate that it's not a metaphor...

― maura, Tuesday, June 18, 2013 2:08 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what if it's REALLY not a metaphor and the song is about the goat

yeah, i just think that whether a song is gross or not probably shouldn't be judged primarily by our individual "can get it"-o-meters and if people are giving robin a pass for language they'd crucify chad for it's worth looking at why and whether it's anything more than taste in haircuts.

― da croupier, Tuesday, June 18, 2013 2:16 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well except I think criticizing women for "giving robin a pass" because of their "can get it" o meters (which I'm not saying you're doing) starts to get into the territory of "denying womens' sexual agency." I mean it reminds me of those butthurt internet nerd comments that you always see about how "HARUMPH, GUESS IT'S NOT SEXUAL HARASSMENT IF HE'S HOT" -- well (1) no, that's not true, but(2) the "unwanted" part of "repeated unwanted advances" parts is kind of a key element of what makes something harassment.

Like, sorry butthurt internet nerd, you're not as hot as Robin Thicke, and women might want him to say something that they don't want you to say.

And that's a "might" -- it doesn't mean they do, but you're not entitled to some level playing field with Robin Thicke just because, and women shouldn't really be criticized for not giving you that level playing field.

i apologize for the implication but i didn't mean to primarily single out women re "can-get-i"-o-meters, or that personal preferences shouldn't affect one's perception of music - obviously men and women are influenced by their tastes, obviously tastes does influence our preferences, and they should. if someone gives robin thicke's "blurred lines" a 9 and chad kroeger's "blurred lines" a 4 because of haircut, genre, etc that's totally cool. i'm just saying if one's a sexy gentleman and one's a "kinda rapey" pig because of haircut and guitar tone, that's a sign we're not actually dealing with the content of the music. i never would judge someone for what they do or don't find hot, enjoyable, etc (well not seriously judge them), but I do think writers should be conscious of what they're responding to and letting slide.

itt guy who typed "pussy buffet" onto ILX on three separate occasions parses sexist language

i have no problem with rock guys being overtly into women though! shit, one of my favorite musical discoveries of last year was an extended girl-as-car metaphor by a guy whose physical appearance i only have the vaguest knowledge of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEYhapqsb3I

i mean there's always context. the rest of robin thicke's catalog would seem to indicate that he, y'know, likes women as human beings.

smart take

I think Thicke's got the same songwritery/model detachment as Chris Isaak that can make him flirt with models in a video without it coming across as entitlement or worse.

(Also because the dude is married and talks about his marriage and makes his wife the love object in all of his other videos!)

smart take

― balls, Tuesday, June 18, 2013 3:10 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

!

you have such an insane memory when it comes to ilxors

always nice to know there are dudes still thinking about dumb shit i said in 2005

haha i just remembered you were kinda ott zealous in yr defense of 'the whisper song' so it was kinda weird to see you go in on this much more innocuous thicke song (more weird to see to see those old responding to the larger debate voice pieces w/o the context of the actual larger debate, i can barely remember what you're responding to there though i think jessica hopper was involved). 'kinda rapey's too far for this track but it's obv skeezy, more so than default hair metal trax about girls (which when not obv ott gleeful misogynist could be kinda ott vulnerable romantic)(the only huge hair metal act i can think of right now that was really better in misogynist mode and they knew it was motley crue; g'n'f'n'r, cinderella, skid row, bon jovi were better bringing on the heartbreak), less so than kanye on his best day. video amplifies it obv (though bros playful disinterest probably mitigates a little bit) but it's there in the song also.

I'm predicting circles of dancing gals at nightclubs pointed at each other and mouthing "You're the finest bitch in this place" for the next 12-18 months.