It’d be interesting to look at “relationship” songs and compare how many are about actual relationships (even if about heartbreak) versus stalking or other unhealthy behaviors. I suspect it would weigh disturbingly heavily towards the latter…
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Methinks you’re probably right.
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I have always interpreted the song that way and as sad commentary on the men oogling the young girl.
Still love that version though.
ETA as an aside the movie that clip from is a fun if dated ‘beach party’ (ski party in this case) film. Get Yourself A College Girl.
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Oh, Astrud’s voice is lovely…
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One additional facet of the issue is that someone who is persistent and attractive is seen completely differently from someone less attractive, even when the actions and words are more or less the same.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with persistence, as long as it is done within the rules of propriety and etiquette. Of course those things are rarely taught any more.
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[The Hollywood producer leans back in his chair, his index fingers pressed together and held against his pursed lips. He rocks back and forth for a few seconds and then begins nodding.]
Producer: Yes. Yes, I like it. Good #MeToo marketing potential.
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Do you think there was ever a period in human history when society had more respect for the free agency of women (including the right to say “no”) than we have now?
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A while ago I re-watched most of the episodes of the M.A.S.H. TV series, shows I’d howled over back in the day. I was dumbfounded to see what a despicable creep Hawkeye Pierce was. He touched all the bases of textbook sexual harassment, including regaling women with sexually-suggestive jokes, trapping a woman in a corner with his face inches from hers, bear-hugging or pressing his body against other women, etc. ad infinitum. The victims usually didn’t appreciate the attention, but shrugged it off with a “boys will be boys” attitude. And Hawkeye was the hero, the guy we (male) viewers were expected to admire. Which we did, because he was so “delightfully wacky.”
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There was also a scene in the original M.A.S.H. movie in which Hawkeye and pals humiliate Major “Hot Lips” Houlihan by pulling up the walls of the shower tent while she’s inside so they can publicly settle the question of whether she’s a real blonde.
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And a toned down female version:
(sorry Adele, I love ya, but this particular song is bit stalker-y)
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Hell, even the “Hot Lips” moniker is creepy. They picked that up while literally spying on her having sex.
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What an unlikely implication, how did you get there from me asking if someone else might revisit their statement?
Um, yes, that one definitely needed a sarcasm tag. Still, thank you for clarifying.
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That is interesting.
For a moment, I wondered why there are so many movies where stalking behavior was presented as positive. But that is not the right question.
“Every breath you take” is a song about a stalker, no doubt about that. An obsessive, creepy stalker. But it does not present the stalker in a positive way. People did that on their own, male and female listeners. The right question is therefore: “why did they do that?” People, left on their own to interpret the behavior of a stalker, will see this behavior as positive. “Romantic” or whatever.
My personal feeling is that there is something deeply wrong at play here and it is not about movies only.
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That’s one of the reasons I prefer British romantic comedies in general, this trope is much less prevalent, if at all present.
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Love Actually of one of the (admittedly slightly less egregious) examples examined, but you may be right on average.
I mean, with that particular song, yes. But in the vast majority of cinema where the protagonist stalks the love interest, she changes her mind about him in the end.
And I mean, look, there’s nothing wrong with romantic overtures. But when someone signals that they’re not interested, ignoring their right to be left alone is stalking, and that’s not ambiguous. No one is saying don’t make rom-coms or movies that incorporate rom-com elements. But a cultural awareness of agency can lead to them being written better. Dramatic tension often depends on overcoming some obstacle, but that obstacle doesn’t need to be the love interest’s rejection.
I’m starting to wonder how many commenters actually watched the video.
For better or worse, I can’t hear that song without seeing the penultimate scene from Blues Brothers.
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Nevermind the Poe effect and the tongue in cheek emoji indicating a sarcastic post being completely missed. Now you have me curious. Just why is it factually inaccurate? I’m curious.
Yeah, kinda the point don’tcha know.
You don’t say…
You tried to be clever and it faceplanted. That’s fine, it happens to all of us. But do you think the failure to communicate is on the part of all the people who didn’t get the sarcasm, or because maybe your delivery needed work?
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Our culture has – for as long as I’ve been alive, at least – said that women are to be pursued, and men are the pursuers. It’s about damn time that shifts, and I like that attention is being called to this. Not you asking someone to revisit their statement.
It was a continuation of my thoughts, not a direct response to your comment. The “attention being called to this” is the video in this post, and all the other things that are happening around this subject in our culture these days.
Will it shift? I have no idea, but at least something seems to be changing.
ETA “…how did you get there…” if you’re asking me to diagram my thought process, I’m afraid I can’t do that. My mind flits all over the place. Some days it’s shocking that it remains in my skull.
I wonder how much of that is the tune setting the tone. A lot of people – from my experience – don’t really examine the lyrics of the songs they like. They may pick up on bits and disregard the rest.
This is just me flitting from thought to thought again:
Back when that song came out, there wasn’t an internet to hop on to look up the lyrics of a song.
Unless you owned the album, you were only hearing it when it played on the radio. If you were like me and my wife were when we were broke-ass teens; you would sit ready to record a song you liked from the radio the next time it played and hope the DJ wasn’t taking up to the post (old school Napster).
Sting wasn’t mumble-mouthed, so it wasn’t hard to catch the lyrics if you were paying attention. But again, not many people give the radio their full attention. When the song first came on, they may have caught the tune and the tone. The next time it came on they may have though, “Oh! There’s that song with the sound I liked,” and started humming along.
Also, it was the 80s. We were positively steeped in the message that persistence wins the good guy the girl all throughout our culture. Even if we did catch the lyrics, we may have read it as a song about a good guy trying to get the girl of his dreams.
Earlier this week my wife had remarked on how she just realized that a Beatles song she loves is actually a bit stalker-ish with a few of the lines, and she had missed it all these years. I can’t think of which song it was off the top of my head though.
In a lot of these cases, I think it’s as though the fish are finally becoming aware of the water. Hindsight is 20/20. [insert other aphorisms here].
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