… and it is time to meet…
It’s “clearly mutual” only because it was written by and directed by men, and if the woman didn’t portray the part correctly they would have found someone else to do it.
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If you look at the still shot in that link, she is clearly apprehensive of his hands on her and is not touching him back in any way.
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If you look at the lyrics, it’s obvious that it’s very much a mutually consensual seduction. Just look at how easily she agrees to “Well, maybe just a half a drink more”. They both know how this will end up from the start.
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But did you watch the video? I can’t control the preview frame YouTube choses.
If you prefer, watch this upload instead, where the still shows Betty Garrett intimidating Red Skelton:
As I mentioned above, this song was written by Frank Loesser and his wife — I don’t know her name off the top of my head — to perform at parties.
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Honestly? I totally agree with you. It’s creepy to modern ears, especially modern ears that are determined to hear the worst from “I know you want it” in a song when it’s Robin Thicke, but give Pharrell a pass on way creepier lyrics in the same song. But they’re not going to change their minds. You and I know that, “Say, what’s in this drink?” is the woman coyly making an excuse to stay, claiming that the guy, say, mixed a strong drink rather than just her wanting to stay, because at the time it would have been completely unacceptable for her to just want to stay.
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I’m not surprised.
I think the thing that gets the most tiring is that we have to have this conversation each and every time the song comes up. It tends to revolve around a combination if viewing it through an early 21st century lens, and the single line, “Say, what’s in this drink?”
The song sets up a story where the woman has dropped by her beau’s house on a cold winter night. They talk in the first verse about how long she’s going to stay. She has “another drink” and stays longer, and then later in the evening it’s implied that she’s going to sleep over.
If we look at the text of the song, the woman gives plenty of indication that she wants to stay the night. At the time period the song was written (1936), “good girls,” especially young, unmarried girls, did not spend the night at a man’s house unsupervised. The tension in the song comes from her own desire to stay and society’s expectations that she’ll go. We see this in the organization of the song — from stopping by for a visit, to deciding to push the line by staying longer, to wanting to spend the entire night, which is really pushing the bounds of acceptability. Her beau in his repeated refrain “Baby, it’s cold outside” is offering her the excuses she needs to stay without guilt.
http://persephonemagazine.com/2010/12/listening-while-feminist-in-defense-of-baby-its-cold-outside/
I personally enjoy it the same way I enjoy coy dialog in movies from the era.
Having said all that…I didn’t like this video. It doesn’t feel like a tribute to MGM movies, it feels like two people performing a song in their living room. It’d probably get decent applause in a community theater Christmas program, but…meh…
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It could well be my male bias, but I always read this song as a bit of mutual flirtation, with both parties knowing the game they’re playing. After all, the man’s arguments are too lame to really persuade anyone…
Right after that she says:
I ought to say, no, no, no sir
At least I’m gonna say that I tried
She knows what society expects of her.
Here’s a different take on the song, in the response to this tweet
Quote: “So it’s not actually a song about rape - in fact it’s a song about a woman finding a way to exercise sexual agency in a patriarchal society designed to stop her from doing so. But it’s also, at the same time, one of the best illustrations of rape culture that pop culture has ever produced. It’s a song about a society where women aren’t allowed to say yes…which happens to mean it’s also a society where women don’t have a clear and unambiguous way to say no.”
This blog
http://www.manrepeller.com/2016/12/in-defense-of-baby-its-cold-outside.html
sort of agrees, but concludes,
“The counterpoint, of course, is that the historical context doesn’t matter. That perception is reality. That the song propagates the blurring of the word “no,” regardless of its original intention.”
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Two takes I can’t help but enjoy:
Tom Wopat and John Schneider duet “Put some Waylon on while I pour”
And this week’s Gilbert & Frank’s Amazing Colossal Obsession podcast with guest Mario Cantone, where Tony Curtis duets with a post-stroke Bette Davis at the 27m15s mark
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she wants to stay. She doesn’t want to be slut-shamed for staying.
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Exactly this, but it never fails.
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I think it could be interpreted several ways
1- I really like this person, even if I’m not ready to sleep with them, so I’ll have a little more to drink so I don’t turn them off.
2- I really want to sleep with this person, but the angel on my shoulder keeps saying no. Maybe another half drink will shut them up?
This song may be a cultural artifact, but the fact it is so heavily re-played today suggests that people feel the content is still relevant. But we should not be celebrating a person pressuring another into something they aren’t ready for (even if they want it). The only person who “knows” how this will end up is the male voice.
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I’m not going to get back into this debate. I’ve already had one post eaten arguing my side.
So I’ll just say that while I enjoyed the dancing, I’m a little disappointed that they only sang the first half of the song.
Also, while this song isn’t in the top 20…
Why the hell hasn’t a decent new Christmas song been written in the last 50 years?
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Maybe it’s a US thing?
In the UK, these are the Christmas songs:
(okay, still not new, but…)
I still like this best:
I guess there’s those two awful Lennon and McCartney things, too. That Elton John one?
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The way it was performed in the movie, not the way a married couple played around at private parties with their friends. As for being part of the original writing team, don’t forget that wives can be sexist too.
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This. Yes.
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