Litnet

“Suggestive”, “misogynistic” and “demeaning” are three words which came to mind while I was watching the music video for Robin Thicke’s song “Blurred Lines”. The video, which has gone viral, has seen a number of parody versions emerge, with videos including Bill Clinton, Star Wars, Jimmy Kimmel and his sidekick Guillermo, and even a cover with “cougars”. The parody that caused the greatest stir emerged on 30 August and involved three law students performing a “feminist” parody, where roles were reversed.

The chart-topping single, featuring singers Pharrell Williams and TI, has received over 137 million views on YouTube since it was released on 26 March 2013. This includes both the clothed version and the “unrated” one, where the women are semi-nude. It features the three male singers with three almost-nude female dancers on a set. A cream-coloured backdrop provides the setting, and the six on set engage with various props, including a kid (baby goat), bales of hay, a large die, a stuffed dog, a bicycle mounted on top of another bicycle, and a bed.

The three women involved in the video are topless, clad in only heels and skin-coloured thongs. They engage with the men by dancing around them provocatively, assuming suggestive positions and letting their bare breasts and bottoms bounce around.

The rhythm of the song is funky and the beat catchy. Layered on top of the beat are row after row of evocative lyrics, some of which go:

Yeah, I had a bitch, but she ain't bad as you
So hit me up when you passing through
I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two.

These lyrics, which, at the same time as referring to women as bitches, describe a sexual situation where Thicke promotes anal sex, with a penis large enough to tear the woman’s “ass in two”. These lines are insulting and appalling, and suggest a sexual act which is rarely spoken about, in an overt, arrogant manner. Furthermore, critics of the video have complained that it is about blurring the lines between consensual and non-consensual sex. “Non-consensual sex” translates to mean “rape”.

Robin Thicke’s single has been on the receiving end of major criticism, with allegations that he plagiarised Marvin Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up”, released in 1977.

One of the more interesting things to emerge out of the grey area that Thicke seems to have transgressed, involves the three above-mentioned law students from Auckland University. Adelaide Dunn, Olivia Lubbock and Zoe Ellwood, all aged 22, performed the song as a feminist parody, where they step up to the insults Thicke spews and propagate for more “Defines Lines”, as the alternative title of the parody presents. Some of the lines go:

Need a universal role reversal,
In real life not a dress rehearsal.
Gotta resist all the gender roles,
Time to put misogyny on parole,
Put exploitation on probation,
Time for you to witness our liberation!
There's more to life than penetration,
And sexual discrimination.
So tonight we ignite our civil rights,
Resist chauvinism …

The parody, released on 30 August, mirrors Thicke’s video, except that the gender roles are inverted or reversed. The sexual nature of the video has been toned down dramatically in comparison, with three male models wearing tight white underwear. The men perform humorous tasks for the women, such as massaging their shoulders and painting their fingernails, while one man crawls on all fours connected to a leash, like a dog.

The three sing about the song being a “manifesto of the modern age”, where “it’s time to undermine the masculine confines”. The tone of the video is light and has a tongue-in-cheek attitude.

In an article in The New Zealand Herald, written by Morgan Tait and Lincoln Tan, the law students said, "We understand that it is a common theme in the media for particular men to have videos with women frolicking around and stuff like that. But the attitude of the whole thing came across to us as being quite arrogant; especially with the issue of consent, some of his lyrics were quite questionable and a bit presumptive."

The storm around Thicke’s video continues, with the University of Edinburgh Student Association banning the song, which they claim “trivializes rape and promotes an unhealthy attitude towards sex and consent”. Last week the University of Leeds banned the song from being played in any of the three nightclubs and two bars on campus. The song “undermines and degrades women,” said Alice Smart, an officer at Leeds’s student union.

The parodies around Thicke’s song prove that women don’t need men to liberate them, nor do women appreciate or enjoy the demeaning manner in which they are so often sung and spoken about.

This contribution was produced as part of a collaboration between LitNet and the University of Stellenbosch's Department of Journalism in 2013.