“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is one of those Christmas songs that really
has nothing to do with Christmas — it’s just about cold weather, and also
sexual coercion.
Famously, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” written by Frank Loesser in 1944,
tells the story of a man and woman indoors on a snowy night; the woman
repeatedly tries to depart for home and is repeatedly told that it’s too cold
for her to travel. The woman, famously, asks, “What’s in this drink?” In the
original score, the male part was denoted as the “wolf” and the female as the
“mouse,” a predatory view of sex whereby the man must not woo but win that
suffuses the entire song. “No” is never “no” over the course of the song.
The song has been
defended as a narrative about a woman constructing her own excuses,
as it was difficult for a woman in 1944 to stay over at a man’s house because
she wanted to. However, it was also difficult for a woman in 1944 to say “no”
and be heard; the song’s repeated covers over the years simply indicate how
deeply ingrained in our culture is the idea (familiar from the work of Camille
Paglia) that saying “no” is merely part of the flirtatious dance between the genders.
Here are a few of the covers that have particularly creeped us out in recent
years. (“The 6 creepiest ‘Baby it’s coldoutside’ covers,” Daniel D’addario, Salon.com)
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liz kranz
Love, love,
love this tune. Love its sultry jazzy feel. The lyrics may be out of date, with
modern day connotations, but I do not think it is about date rape. The drink
has something that warms you like rum and gets you in the mood. Sometimes with
music the tune is more important than the lyrics—the tune is about two adults
enjoying each other's company and wanting a little more. Absolutely love it—it's
not at all like many of the modern in your face with sex tunes.
Emporium
@liz kranz
It's not impossible
that Daniel could come around to see this. But you see, his reaction is
determined right now mostly by the fact that he knows most of us see it as
lovely / charming and harmless.
Imagine him at court
with his sophisticated friends in the only great castle on the landscape.
Imagine that as much fun as they're having inside — which might well include a
lot of the testing and flirting and stuff-for-further-gossip as this song —
they might like to step outside, onto the grounds and beyond. And imagine that
it won't do to have the "temper" they've built inside have to maintain
itself midst the kind of aggressive notes uncowed people with totally different
cultural DNA, would grossly jostle them with.
So in preparation, he
and his friends try to bind weights to every pleasurable instinct we might have
— heavy pressure is applied to every one of these pleasures, so that as we
squeeze here and there to find some way to cope with the weights, there ends up
in the end much less fruition — smoke tendrils making their way from under
cobblestones, rather than trumpet noises out in clear air, that can essentially
without steeling yourself be walked through and ignored.
So he and his smart
crowd can range out of the castle onto the cobblestoned grounds, and beyond
across the paved landscape — if the party should carry them there.
After this mastery has
been demonstrated, a good long ranging across the total landscape, if one of
his friends brought up this song and pointed out its actually pleasing
resemblances to the sexual rivalry that so entranced people in the 30s, he
might even acknowledge the point, and in consequently hearing it again fresh,
enjoy it.
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