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The L. A. Times didn't print my letter, but they printed this today:
'Baby, It's Cold Outside' and the 'War on Christmas' stir the snowflakes on both sides
DEC 13, 2018 | 3:00 AM
'Baby, It's Cold Outside' and the 'War on Christmas' stir the snowflakes on both sides
The 2017 Christmas tree lighting ceremony at New York's Rockefeller Center. (Angela Weiss / AFP/Getty Images)
To the editor: ’Tis the season for rhetorical uproars. (“They’re just fine with ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ — and ‘bring home the bacon,’ ” Readers React, Dec. 8)
My seasonal song-list includes “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,”a 1940s standard beloved for more than half a century. “Baby” was recorded in an era when “making love” referred to innocent flirtation, and not to sexual activity.
Thus in the 1950s, when pop music singer Jo Stafford crooned “Make Love to Me,” and rockabilly artist Buddy Knox enticed his “Party Doll” by avowing “I’ll make love to you,” listeners never envisioned bedroom activities, a big no-no in the music of that prudish era.
Yet now some feminists suddenly feel the lyrics of “Baby” intimate sexual harassment — which, in turn, draws derision from some conservatives, who themselves bewail the “War on Christmas” being waged by those who exclaim “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.”
It’s most appropriate that this frigid month brings out snowflakes on both sides of our cultural divide.
Rona Dolgin, Los Angeles
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The English major in me sees this issue as a case of pejoration, which is usually about a word's meaning changing for the worse over time (becoming more vulgar etc.). But even with various aspects of popular culture - minstrelsy comes to mind - this kind of thing happens fairly regularly as cultural norms shift.
So for those who wanna get all academic, here's a good overview of my favorite pairing of semantic terms, amelioration and pejoration.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2014/3/15/1284995/-Origins-of-English-Amelioration-and-Perjoration
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You lost me at "the english!! "
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How well I know, Bill.
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This is a front page article in today's N.Y.Times, where its print headline is: A 40's DUET REFRACTED IN THE #METOO ERA LENS. I'm sorry I can't link you to it, but I recommend you look it up online if possible, for the various videos -- and for the thousand-plus Comments.
How ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ Went From Parlor Act to Problematic
Frank and Lynn Loesser used to perform the song together at parties.
Credit
Anthony Camerano/Associated Press
Image
Frank and Lynn Loesser used to perform the song together at parties.CreditCreditAnthony Camerano/Associated Press
By Jacey Fortin
Dec. 13, 2018
1125
Rock Hudson did it with Mae West. Ray Charles did it with Betty Carter. Lady Gaga and Joseph Gordon-Levitt did it with a modern twist.
And somewhere along the line, the 74-year-old song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” became a holiday standard, in heavy radio rotation, playing overhead in department stores, and covered on Christmas albums.
“I’ve got to get home,” the woman sings in the duet. “But baby, it’s cold outside,” the man replies. “The answer is no,” she protests later. By the end they’re singing the chorus together.
Now, a long-simmering debate over the lyrics has reached a boil. The annual holiday culture wars and the reckoning over #MeToo have swirled together into a potent mix. Say — what’s in this drink?
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Several radio stations have pulled “Baby” from the air. Arguments have erupted on social media, and multiple panels on Fox News and CNN have latched on to the debate.
William Shatner has emerged as a vocal champion of the song. “You must clutch your pearls over rap music,” he told one critic, urging him to listen to a 1949 classic version on YouTube.
To some modern ears, the lyrics sound like a prelude to date rape. The woman keeps protesting. “I ought to say no, no, no, sir,” she sings, and he asks to move in closer. “My sister will be suspicious,” she sings. “Gosh, your lips look delicious,” he answers. She wonders aloud what is in her drink.
“I think the song has always been creepy, but we didn’t have the words to explain why,” said Lydia Liza, 24, a singer-songwriter.
But some believe this to be a case of political correctness run amok. “Do we get to a point where human worth, warmth and romance are illegal?” the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson argued on Fox News.
Faced with protests, radio stations are doing their best to walk the line. “I gotta be honest, I didn’t understand why the lyrics were so bad,” Glenn Anderson, a radio host for Star 102 in Cleveland, wrote in a blog post last month after the station pulled the song from rotation. “Until I read them.”
“Baby” is usually sung by a man insisting and a woman resisting, but not always. In “Neptune’s Daughter,” the romantic comedy that brought the song to the silver screen — it won an Academy Award for best song in 1950 — it was performed twice, and the gender roles were reversed the second time for comedic effect.
“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” had humble origins. The composer Frank Loesser, known for “Guys and Dolls” and other Broadway hits, wrote it in 1944 for himself and his wife Lynn Loesser to perform for friends in their living rooms.
On their original score, the parts were labeled “Wolf” and “Mouse.” But the couple performed it as a flirtatious song, said their daughter, Susan Loesser, 74. “In those days, in the entertainment business, you had to bring an act to parties,” she added. “This was their act.”
Editors’ Picks
Frank Loesser - Baby It's Cold OutsideCreditCreditVideo by A Trip Down Memory Lane
In an unfinished memoir, her mother recalled performing the song at one such party. “Well, the room just fell apart,” Lynn wrote. “We had to do it over and over again and we became instant parlor room stars. We got invited to all the best parties for years on the basis of ‘Baby.’ It was our ticket to caviar and truffles.”
Frank later sold the song to the movies, against Lynn’s wishes. (They divorced a few years later.)
Rock Hudson and Mae West rehearsed “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” for an Academy Awards performance in Los Angeles in 1958.
Credit
Associated Press
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Rock Hudson and Mae West rehearsed “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” for an Academy Awards performance in Los Angeles in 1958.CreditAssociated Press
As decades passed, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” which makes no mention of any holiday, became a Christmas standard.
There had been criticism over the years, too, but it seems to have reached a crescendo this year.
“We’re all kind of mystified,” Susan Loesser said. “The #MeToo movement, which I approve of, has really overstepped in this. You have to look at things in cultural and historical context.”
One of the earliest critiques came from Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian writer whose work influenced modern Sunni Islamism and who went on to become a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Upon visiting Greeley, Colo., in 1949, Mr. Qutb wrote angrily about a church dance where the minister dimmed the lights and went to the gramophone to put on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
“The ‘Father’ waited until he saw people getting into the rhythm of that erotic song,” Mr. Qutb wrote in an article for an Egyptian magazine, according to a translation by John C. Calvert, a history professor at Creighton University in Omaha.
Decades later, as discussions of date rape and consent became widespread, listeners began to notice just how often the woman says “no.”
There have been a few parody versions about date rape, including a 2015 video from Funny or Die, in which a man physically restrains a woman who is desperate to escape. She knocks him out with a fireplace shovel.
But the song has been defended by some feminists who argue that it tells the story of a woman who wants to spend the night. They note that her stated reasons for leaving are not all her own — she mentions a worried mother, talkative neighbors and one vicious aunt — and that she’s looking for excuses to stay.
Lea Michele and Joey McIntyre performed “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” at Disneyland last year.
Credit
Matt Petit/Disney Parks, via Getty Images
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Lea Michele and Joey McIntyre performed “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” at Disneyland last year. CreditMatt Petit/Disney Parks, via Getty Images
Judith E. Smith, a professor of American studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, said the song was written as World War II was upending societal norms; more women were entering the work force, and military deployments were interrupting traditional courtships. Women were starting to exercise more sexual freedom.
“It’s alluding to both men’s and women’s sexual desire in a playful way, but it seems to me there isn’t really any issue about consent,” she said.
But in the #MeToo era, some say it makes sense to look at those old lyrics with fresh eyes.
“I think a lot of men and women were blind to the power men had over women,” said Ms. Liza, the singer-songwriter. “And I think as we move forward, things totally transform, and we can put names to those feelings.”
She wrote her own version of the song, which she performed in 2016 with Josiah Lemanski, who sings that she can leave whenever she likes. “Baby, it’s cold outside” becomes “Baby, I’m cool with that.”
Lydia Liza and Josiah Lemanski - Baby It's Cold Outside (Live on The Current)CreditCreditVideo by The Current
Ms. Liza said she thought the original song was melodically beautiful. But stories of sexual abuse or trauma inspired her to work on a new version. “I think people need to be open-minded and listen to women, listen to survivors,” she said. Proceeds from her song support organizations that help survivors of sexual violence.
Heated debates notwithstanding, it appears that “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is growing more popular, not less.
One San Francisco station that pulled the song earlier this month, KOIT-FM, reversed course after a survey determined that most listeners wanted the song to be in rotation. And according to Billboard’s sales chart for holiday-themed digital songs, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is rising in the rankings. Three cover versions appear in the Top 50, more than any other title.
At least Mr. Shatner can rest easy. But if past years are any indication, this battle is far from over.
“It’s a shame that the actions of people like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby have left people with a bad taste in their mouths over this song,” Ms. Loesser said of her parents’ creation. “It’s lasted now for about 70 years. Pretty good for a party song, no?”
Alain Delaquérière contributed research
A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 13, 2018, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: A ’40s Duet Refracted in the #MeToo Era Lens. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
READ 1125 COMMENTS
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Yesterday's NYT Letters section led off with responses to the front page article:
LETTERS
Flirtation, or a Prelude to Date Rape? A New Look at an Old Song
The lyrics to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” have stirred up a debate in the #MeToo era.
To the Editor:
Re “A ’40s Duet Refracted in the #MeToo Era Lens” (front page, Dec. 14), examining the lyrics of the holiday standard “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”:
This is the quintessential example of political correctness taken to a ridiculous extreme. I’m in my 70s, as is my wife. We are both ardent supporters of women’s rights and are happy to see abusers finally being called out and, in some cases, brought to justice. I don’t need lessons in “feminism” from anyone.
But taking issue with a song from the 1940s that was nothing more than a cute, flirtatious exchange between two people obviously attracted to one another is, to be generous, misguided. This is precisely the kind of nonsense that makes those people resistant to appropriate societal change dig their heels in. It gives them ammunition to tar all such progress with a derisive brush.
MacKenzie Allen
Santa Fe, N.M.
To the Editor:
Your article didn’t mention one of the most objectionable parts of the song. She sings, “At least I’m gonna say that I tried,” meaning that she will falsely say that she tried to resist.
The implication is clearly that women falsely claim that they tried to resist and oh, isn’t that just typical of women.
That and the possibility that she is being drugged — “Say, what’s in this drink?” — is what makes the song so offensive. There’s more here than that she wants to leave and he is trying to get her to stay and ain’t that adorable.
Ellen Radin
Scotch Plains, N.J.
To the Editor:
So now the old chestnut “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is being targeted by some #MeToo enthusiasts. But if this song is offensive, what about “Là ci darem la mano,” the beautiful duet from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”?
In the duet, the Don rather forcefully persuades Zerlina (who is in her wedding dress, about to be married to Masetto) to run off with him to his nearby villa. Will this have to go, too? And why not ban the entire opera? After all, its hero is a serial seducer and likely a rapist as well, whose servant Leporello tells us he has “seduced” 1,003 women in Spain alone. Sorry, Mozart; this kind of behavior is no longer acceptable.
I completely sympathize with the women who have been abused by the Weinsteins, Cosbys and O’Reillys of the world; I found Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony quite credible and Brett Kavanaugh’s subsequent tirade odious. But perhaps the #MeToo movement needs to step back for a moment and give more consideration to what it really wants to accomplish.
Charles P. Cook
Cresskill, N.J.
To the Editor:
As the director of the Young Conservatory at American Conservatory Theater, for many years I used “Baby It’s Cold Outside” as a duet in our cabaret series with students in training. I always reversed the roles, with the woman pursuing the man, with him saying “I really can’t stay,” and the woman taking on the “But baby, it’s cold outside.” For our contemporary young female performers this proved such a better scenario. And our audiences always love the switch.
Craig Slaight
San Francisco
To the Editor:
Listen to Blossom Dearie and Bob Dorough perform “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and, hopefully, you will hear what I hear — the genuine affection expressed and the obvious delight the audience experienced as this love story unfolds.
Remember, this song was written to be performed as an amusing party act, not to be picked apart 74 years later. Come on, people, let’s not lose our senses of humor over a darling duet from 1944. We have more serious work to do.
Maris Thatcher Meyerson
Berkeley, Calif.
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