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Oh baby it's cold outside… That's a tricky song, well it's not really but a few years ago the silly pop-culture warriors on Twitter started acting as if the song was all “rapey” with the male in the song trying to pressure the woman into sex. The problem was they were absolutely ignorant of the correct cultural context in quite a misogynist way.
In the era the song came from women could not be seen as openly actively wanting sex so they had to play flirting games like the one displayed in the song. The reason the modern “rapey” interpretation is misogynist is because it strips the woman off her power and agency and casts her as an innocent, sexless child with low intelligence, instead of an adult woman with sexual needs actively participating in a game of flirtation with the man she's chosen.
Understanding cultural context is vitally important if we don't want to come off at idiots. History, geography, and time all blur this context but usually all you need to do to get the right feel for is to take a moment to familiarise yourself with a few other examples of contemporary media and absorb those differences. Rarely do you need to do more than that, but sometimes wider cultural study is needed. The very worst mistake you can ever make though is to look at something only through modern eyes in complete isolation from examples of stuff from the same time and place. At best, you will NEVER properly understand it, at worst you will come out with all sorts of idiotic theories like the Baby Its Cold Outside morons on Twitter.
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Un Re Stop Comics - Quatermass and the Pit! This is some freaky Delia Derbyshire early Doctor Who stuff. Freaky fractured soundscapes of mind twisting terror and wonder. This track sucks you into another dimension where you see with your ears and hear with your skin. You brain will never be the same!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Oh Baby It's Cold Outside lyrics - https://genius.com/Idina-menzel-baby-its-cold-outside-lyrics
Featured comic:
Cometman - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/feb/20/featured-comic-cometman/
Featured music:
Un Re Stop Comics - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Un_Re_Stop_Comics/ - by lagoticspy, rated E.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Quackcast 676 - Baby it's cold outside, cultural context
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Feb. 27, 2024
Baby it's cold outside,
Banes,
Cometman,
cultural context,
Drunk duck,
Featured comic,
Featured music,
Gunwallace,
Kawaiidaigakusei,
Ozoneocean,
Quackcast 676,
Tantz Aerine,
Un Re Stop Comics,
Webcomics hosting
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usedbooks at 10:30AM, March 1, 2024
@ozoneocean: And yet, somehow, not as horrifying as this toothy, horny, illustrated duck couple.
Ozoneocean at 4:04PM, Feb. 29, 2024
@usedbooks - A penguin has a pretty horrifying beak, tongue and gullet- depending on the species. MOUTH SPIKES!!!!!
usedbooks at 3:50AM, Feb. 29, 2024
@PaulEberhardt: Re: Ducks with teeth. Only egg teeth, which is not a tooth. However, geneticists activated some inactive genes in chicken DNA to create toothed chickens (to see what a chicken ancestor, ie, a dinosaur, would look like). Those are pretty horrifying. And Geese have terrifying serrations on their bills and tongues that resemble teeth. (Geese are obligate herbivores and use those formidable tools for grazing. They are also mean af.)
PaulEberhardt at 11:27PM, Feb. 28, 2024
@J_Scarbrough: You're echoing my feelings. The way these things spiral out of control, thanks to people who I'm rather sure want to muzzle everyone just because it gets them levels of attention they know they'd never come even close to get or deserve for any actual achievements, is worrying, and I hope it won't be the one thing the 2020s will be remembered for by posteriority, if at all. I've got no problem making fun of them and risk being called a chauvi for that - sensible people like you guys here on the Duck, for instance (This Quackcast and the commments are excellent proof that people on this site tend to have their heads screwed on right) can easily tell what's really going on, and it's the best line of defence against being muzzled and dumbed down I can think of. So... (@allthemlovelygurlz:) PQ me a selfie and your phone number if I'm wrong, but ducks with teeth really exist, don't they? 😉
Ozoneocean at 7:53PM, Feb. 28, 2024
Fair enough
J_Scarbrough at 10:39AM, Feb. 28, 2024
@Ozoneocean I apologize. I just really hate what the whole movement has become. I agree that it started out with a very noble and worthy cause, giving women the voices they needed to speak out against sexual harassment in the workplace that otherwise went unreported because of the influence men had over them . . . but it quickly spiraled into a parody of itself; demonizing handshaking, and even hugging your own children? We're going to end up with a generation that will know nothing about greeting etiquette, or expressing affection for your loved ones.
marcorossi at 5:16AM, Feb. 28, 2024
A very late pedant comment, but Mexico is actually part of North America, not of Central America, even if everyone thinks the opposite because they are Latin Americans. Just look at the map. From wikipedia: "Mexico (Spanish: México),[a][b] officially the United Mexican States,[c] is a country in the southern portion of North America." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico
Ozoneocean at 7:07PM, Feb. 27, 2024
@usedbooks - hahahaha! Teeth with ducks is the new thing. They'll all be doing it now :D
usedbooks at 6:09PM, Feb. 27, 2024
Also, can I just add that while the song is not at all an issue in historical context, the image for this week's podcast is hands-down the most disturbing image ever produced on this site (including the hyper violent p0rn comics). Ducks. With teeth AND lips. Nightmare fuel.
Ozoneocean at 5:11PM, Feb. 27, 2024
@plymayer - that's not quite how it was, though that's how it seems, yes. It's more that she's already going to let him stay and he pretty much knows it, but they have to go through the dance of verbal sparing first.
Ozoneocean at 5:09PM, Feb. 27, 2024
@Hapoppo and @J_Scarbrough - Yes the "black people like fried chicken" thing is alien in Australia, that's a purely American trope and doesn't translate at all.
Ozoneocean at 5:08PM, Feb. 27, 2024
@Hapoppo - that's tricky. Sex work IS work and OF is a valid work option. The thing with videogame women VS OF girls is one is a fiction largely made by men and the other are real women making money for themselves. They don't really sell their bodies, what they're doing is monotising men's lust (or "thirst" in today's language haha)! Sexy video game characters do that too in their own way. Personally I think both are fine.
plymayer at 5:07PM, Feb. 27, 2024
I never did get the rape song thing with Baby it's cold outside. She had all the power. He was begging her to let him stay. Only someone obsessed with rape could make it about rape.
Ozoneocean at 5:04PM, Feb. 27, 2024
@J_Scarbrough - Please don't call women bitches, even if just in the context of Metoo. Mettoo did go too far because of people jumping on the bandwagon and expanding it to dumb things but it was also extremely necessary and still is in many ways because when there is a power imbalance people will take advantage of it and men in Hollywood were definitely doing that to women on a large scale.
Ozoneocean at 5:01PM, Feb. 27, 2024
@usedbooks I love Lucy and her thing with Ricky WAS problematic on occasion, but yes we have to temper that with the fact that Lucy was actually in power there and by producing that show it was a massive step forward for women.
J_Scarbrough at 4:06PM, Feb. 27, 2024
@Hapoppo North America (the United States). Central America is Mexico. But yes, it's a stereotype that has been around for countless decades, that Black people love to eat fried chicken (and watermelon). Apparently, from what I understand though, KFC is huge in Asian countries, such as South Korea and Japan, the latter of which is so popular to have for Christmas dinner, that you meal has to be ordered two months in advance!
Hapoppo at 10:19AM, Feb. 27, 2024
I remember an episode of Game Grumps where Ross, an Australian-born cast member, was talking about an Australian KFC commercial where a white Australian was surrounded by a bunch of black Caribbeans rooting for the opposing team in a football stadium, so he offers up a big bucket of KFC to make friends. Apparently this started a whole big kerfuffle about black people and fried chicken, but my understanding (and I'm sure there are some Australians here who can confirm or debunk this) is that the stereotype is exclusive to central America. So basically people just looked at it from the lense of current year U.S. politics, as these Twitter activists tend to do.
Hapoppo at 9:59AM, Feb. 27, 2024
@J_Scarborough - The MeeToo lunatics are nothing if not inconsistent. The same weirdos who call it objectifying women in video games if they don't look like Jerry Lewis will chant "sex work is real work" if anyone criticizes an Onlyfans model. And don't get me wrong, no shame if you create for or patronize OF, you earn or spend your money the way you want. But sexy video game women are by necessity empowered ass-kickers usually with a backstory, while OF models are literally being paid to show their bodies.
J_Scarbrough at 8:57AM, Feb. 27, 2024
It was really the MeToo bitches who got this song banned from the airwaves because they said it was a "rape song," yet those same exact women absolutely swoon over Ed Sheeran for being oh-so-romantic, despite how he clearly objectifies women in his songs, such as "Shape of You," in which he basically sings about a woman being nothing more than a sex object.
usedbooks at 4:18AM, Feb. 27, 2024
My sister will not watch I Love Lucy. She is appalled by how Ricky treats Lucy like a child, hints/jokes at what we'd now call domestic violence, etc. I personally love the show. The jokes and gags are timeless. Lucy and Ricky have good one-upmanship of each other, etc You don't throw out the entire show just because of the time period it was created in. It was stunningly progressive for its time. It even featured one of the first mixed-race couples on screen. They can't (and shouldn't) edit it to make it more enlightened. Historical social norms are fascinating. The problem appears only when we don't acknowledge that they were yes, kinda messed up. Because there ARE some dumbasses who want to emulate that nonsense and take society backwards. Historical context is key. It shouldn't be erased but also shouldn't be admired.