Blurred Lines: The Date Rape Song Essay

Robin Thicke’s music video to his song “Blurred Lines” avidly contributes to the patriarchy, while portraying sexism, gender standards, and beauty standards. His music video can be analyzed from a feminist theory approach, as it’s evident that his song and video contribute to a patriarchal society and its inherently sexist and sexualized ideologies. The ideology behind the song and music video is purely sexual and about male dominance. The lyrics to the song and actions in the video exhibit extreme over sexualization and objectification of the women. Analyzing this piece of popular culture through a feminist approach opens up a provoking conversation about how popular culture functions in a patriarchal culture. Analyzing pop culture though a feminist theory can allow for a larger variety and more in-depth analysis about the social aspects and political agenda within popular culture.

“Feminism has not prepared them for this,” states Camille Paglia in her essay “Rape: A Bigger Danger than Feminists Know.” The “them” in Paglia’s statement is referring to women, and she is discussing the topic of date rape. Susan Jacoby, on the other hand, writes in her article “Common Decency,” that feminism is not responsible for the rising cases of date rape, but that it is the men who are at fault. Paglia’s argument is insightful and accurate, but Jacoby’s writing is flawed and not well-researched. Paglia includes all rhetorical appeals and persuasive techniques, while Jacoby lacks in some departments of persuasiveness and fills the gap with logical fallacies. Comparing both of these papers will help the reader see why

Paglia’s editorial discusses an extremely controversial topic in current society and will undoubtedly will have readers who disagree, because there are opinionated points. Rape is also a very touchy subject, especially if the opinion on the issue is unwarranted. The editorial itself is not a lengthy read, and does not provide much support for various claims. As a result, many of the points can be argued against and are sure to infuriate a handful of readers who have other views. Date rape is difficult to discuss because coming to a conclusion without much explanation is bound to make some readers upset.

The Gayes’ lawyers simply decried Thicke and Williams as outright liars who emulated and copied one of legendary R&B hits, ‘Got to Give it Up’. An expert from Gaye’s family insisted that there were eight discrete elements present from ‘Got to Give It Up’ that were used in ‘Blurred Lines’, including the bass rhythm and melody, while Thicke and Williams denied these similarities. However, although Williams may have not explicitly copied Gaye’s song as he declared that he was simply emulating the R&B vibe, paying homage to the musician,

Cerena Leaffer “Come on babe it's your lucky day. Shut your mouth, we’re gonna do it my way. Come on baby don't be afraid, if it wasn't for date rape I'd never get laid”. These are real lyrics from the popular song Date Rape by Sublime. They don’t really connote warm, fuzzy, or safe feelings, right?

Date rape happens a lot when people are in college, more women than men but it’s still something that happens more than it should and I ask what are the colleges doing on campus to prevent this from happening to more college students. I think that colleges are trying to stop date rape from happening as best as they can but I also believe there is a lot more they could be doing to try and stop date rape.

Every two minutes, somewhere in the world, someone is sexually assaulted. Of these approximately 248,000 victims, about 87,000 were victims of completed rape, and 70,000 were victims of sexual assault. Up to 4,315 pregnancies may have resulted from these attacks. Calculations based on the (National Crime Victimization Survey). Rape is often misunderstood. For one reason rapist are usually portrayed as a stranger, his motivation is entirely sexual, and the victim is always a young and sexy female. The truth is not all rapes are the same. The victim doesn’t have to be a young beautiful Female, older woman, men and kids get raped to. The victims, rapists, and motivation can be very different depending on the one committing

Flores goes on to ask, "Why aren’t we critiquing wealth by taking hits at golf or polo or Central Park East? Why not take to task the bankers and old-money folks who actually have a hand in perpetuating and increasing wealth inequality? I’m gonna take a guess: racism.”; and in layman terms - why not write a song about how 'white people'; because 'white folks' are the ones that cultivate wealth disparity. To extrapolate such assertions is ludicrous because this would mean that the song could be interpreted as an assault on Miley Cyrus' erratic song "We Can't Stop" as Lorde sings "tripping in the bathroom" (Lorde, 2013) which may be referring to "And everyone in line in the bathroom [.] Trying to get a line in the bathroom" (Cyrus, 2013; Ellis, 2013) - where 'line' refers to cocaine. These meritless claims are rampant in the music industry, and function solely to impel controversy and outrage to amass accordance for their elitist

“On Date Rape” is an article written by Camille Paglia, which argues the young women of today pay not much care about their safety while they’re enjoying the freedom with men. The author points out that a woman should pay more attention to their safety while they spend their time with men, because a woman is likely becoming a victim in a rape case. In this article, the author also implies that even the law will protect women from the rape, but women themselves should build up a self-protection awareness to keep them away from the rape crime. However, even this article points out a main argument about self-protection awareness is necessary for a woman, but more or less of its points become fallacies of this article. In additional, the focus of my article is about to analysis the article by Camille Paglia, “On Date Rape”. For the following paragraphs of my article, I’ll summarize her article paragraph by paragraph briefly and analysis main fallacies of her article in detail.

One of the hottest American singles in 2013 generated critical reaction towards the music business. The American production Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and T.I portrayed a “grey area” between consensual sex and assault. Despite a positive reaction towards listening to the music, an erotic content of lyrics and music video caused a controversy among followers of the song. The ubiquitous song titled “Blurred Lines” is a genuine message of the “thin line” between what disparaging on a woman. Both the music video and lyrics depict a negative connotation and representation of a woman’s integrity in society. It is considered to be a parody however the way it’s being expressed shows it is not positively correct. The 21st century has showed many changes in society especially in regards to human rights and equality. Multiple campaigns have been made by woman urging for equality and unfortunately is being contradicted by the music video. Female models are portrayed and advertised as sexual objects, the actions made show how they will do everything to satisfy their owner’s needs and give them pleasure. Through the visual and hearing aid, the ideology of woman is shaped by specifically

Taoism speaks of the yin (female) and yang (male) as both possessing qualities of each other. There is an active yang that exists in even the most passive women and negative yin which exists in the most positive man. This psychological truth suggests that neither female or male in Taoism is treated less than the other because both play significant roles in propelling the ch’i (vital essence, the breath of life or way of life) along the supreme path. On the contrary, “Blurred Lines” focuses on the inequality of female and male and the objectification of women. The sexual script of the music video shows that women are inferior to men; as Robin Thicke repeatedly orders the girl around and calls her an “animal.” The women in the video of “Blurred Lines” are portrayed as sex objects to the males. The females are wearing minimal clothing and dancing around erotically. Taoism would not allow such objectification of women as we preach “harmonious interaction of yin and yang” (Tannahill 165). If I were to fix this scene, I would suggest that the girls in the “Blurred Lines” video be portrayed as equals to Robin Thicke and not referred to as “animals.” This fix would be done by allowing the women to interact with the men in the video to create something greater together to reflect the Taoist way of

Everyone may have different views on the video but this is the way I analyzed it. After watching the video “Blurred lines” I can see that it portraits many masculine and feminine messages.The masculine messages this music portraits is to be a man you have to control of a woman.”I know you want it ” stating that they are on control. Another manly message is that a man doesn't get rejected. “You can't drink with someone and expect this not to happen” This is supporting that man shouldn't get rejected and if they do they still will continue with anything they please to. In the video males are dressed up in suits which i do believe that when a man is dressed up it makes them feel in power and confident on appearcance.

Blurred Lines is a popular summer song that is constantly played on the radio. A song like “Blurred Lines” should not be played on public radio. A big problem with “Blurred Lines” is that it attempts to normalize disrespectful behavior towards women. Robin Thicke teamed up with rapper T.I. and singer-producer Pharrell to deliver arguably this summer’s most popular song. The song “Blurred Lines” has placed number one on the billboard hot 100 and has sold over one million copies. Critical reception of the track is mostly positive. Yet with the success comes a not so positive response. When first listening to the song a person might find themselves nodding your head to a catchy tune, but perhaps once a person listens closely to the lyrics some people may not want this song on their iPods.

The song lyrics of this video contain references to more explicit sexual behavior. For example the lyrics, “You’re far from plastic, talk about getting blasted” make women seem like plastic models and provides the message that it’s okay to use women for sex. The song is said to perpetuate rape culture by rejecting the concept of clear sexual consent: there should never be any “blurred lines” relating to sex. A music video called defined lines was created in response to this music video in order to challenge the message portrayed by “blurred lines”. The roles were reversed where the men in the video were portrayed in a sexualized manner and the women were wearing suits. It is obvious after watching the defined lines video that sexualizing men seems ridiculous and yet women are sexualized so often that it has become a definite part of our

College-age adults are known to be high risk for sexual violence and most studies show that one in three women have experiences some type of sexual assault whether it was through physical force or harassment. These statics are known by most women on college campuses to ensure that women know and understand that this could happen to them. The issue is more than ensuring that women are aware of how protect themselves and know how to avoid these situations because it shouldn’t even be happening. When women are taught that they should know how to defend themselves we are saying that this type of behavior is normal and inevitable. We should shift from this dynamic and start teaching both men and women that this behavior is completely unacceptable and that sexually assaulting or harassing someone is NOT normal. This paper will mostly focus on incidents of rape and sexual assault on college campuses and what the outcome and reactions of these incidents were.