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Friday Exasperated Mommy Blogging

[ 31 ] April 23, 2010 |

I don’t know which version of the video below has the worse message for young adults: this one, in which pop artist Kesha promotes binge drinking and capricious, careless, drunken sex:

Or this parody, in which Barely Political promotes the promotion of binge drinking and capricious, careless, drunken sex, as long as it’s just to dupe one’s fans:

Either way, I’m ready to glitter-puke from hearing it over and over.

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  • Midwest Product

    I’m not convinced “artist” is an accurate descriptive term for Ke$ha.

  • Grover Cleveland

    Who knew progressives were such prudes?! Then again, there is the case of Tipper Gore.

  • rea

    We shouldn’t have videos promoting promiscuity and binge drinking among young adults–that’s what college is for.

  • yoyo

    Love the autotune vomit in the parody.

  • Josh E.

    Not promiscuity! Won’t someone please think of the children young adults? These kids and their devil music!

  • Evan Harper

    Grover, there’s nothing especially prudish about being upset by a 3m30s advertisement for children being alcoholic whores. (And nothing especially progressive about Tipper Gore, either, but that’s another story.)

    • Josh E.

      Damn straight! Damn dirty whores should stay indoors until they are old enough to move into the home of the man their parents have arranged for them to marry.

      • Actually, I agree with Grover and Josh. It’s not representations of “promiscuity” per se that troubles me, it’s representations of capricious, careless, drunken sex. I’ll edit the above.

        Pop cultural glamorizations of careless drunken sex doesn’t trouble me because such acts are “immoral.” They trouble me because such acts dangerous and self-destructive, and because middle school girls really do model themselves after the messages in pop music and film. So being concerned about my middle-schooler glamorizing reckless sexual behavior is not really about prudishness anymore than it’s prudish to hope that my children will drive sober and put on seat-belts when I’m not around.

      • Evan Harper

        Yes, that’s right. Objecting to the glamorous depiction of a teenage girl who drinks an entire bottle of whiskey in the morning before riding her bicycle off to bum a ride to an all-night party hosted by creepy adult men who “want to touch [their] junk,” at which they pass out, is exactly like supporting arranged marriages.

        • Josh E.

          Why do you assume she’s a teenager? Wikipedia indicates the “artist” is 23. Also, most clubs do not allow teenagers in, even if they are “alcoholic whores,” as Pat Robertson might say.

          • Evan Harper

            Gosh, I don’t know? Because in the video, she lives with her parents and her pre-teen siblings, and rides a bicycle?

            Look, if you want to object to the word “whore,” fine, it’s an inappropriate word and I shouldn’t have used it. But for God’s sake, don’t pretend there’s nothing objectionable here. This is a music video for children, depicting an (adult) artist as if she was a child, getting pass-out drunk in the presence of creepy adult males. And this is depicted as glamorous, liberated behavior. This is horrifying, and you can’t dismiss it with sneering references to Pat Robertson and Tipper Gore.

            • “This is horrifying”

              Let’s all take five.

            • John

              My interpretation of the video was that those people are not her family at all. She passed out at some random house the night before and those are the people that live there. Their shocked looks at her make the most sense in the context of them thinking “Who the fuck is this woman? Why is she in our house?”

              • MaryRC

                You’re right, that’s not her family. She pulled a Robert Downey Jr and wound up in some stranger’s house. She’s not in the family photo, she was sleeping in the bathtub and if that was Mom dropping the pancakes, it’s a little late in the day for her to be so shocked at her daughter’s appearance. The girl didn’t get to look that wrecked overnight. And as for glamorizing binge drinking, I don’t know, am I the only one that sees this and thinks my god, what must that woman smell like?

    • Actually, I agree with Grover and Josh. It’s not representations of “promiscuity” per se that trouble me, it’s representations of capricious, careless, drunken sex. I’ll edit the above.

      Pop cultural glamorizations of careless drunken sex don’t trouble me because such acts are “immoral” or because I’m a prude, however. They trouble me because such acts are dangerous and self-destructive, and because middle school girls really do model themselves after the messages in pop music and film. So being concerned about my middle-schooler glamorizing reckless sexual behavior is not really about prudishness anymore than it’s prudish to hope that my children will drive sober and put on seat-belts when I’m not around.

      • Malaclypse

        and because middle school girls really do model themselves after the messages in pop music and film.

        Is the link above any worse than this or this? I say this as the parent of a four-year-old who has always loved both these songs.

        • stickler

          Western civilization has been all tied up in knots about youth culture since at least the 1830s. That’s when the waltz became the boogeyman du jour. And, hell, have you read the Sorrows of Young Werther?

          Not that Kesha or Poison or the Monkees or whatever her name is, is any kind of valuable artist. But this trope is very old.

          (Of course, my daughter is still in grade school so I can remain sanguine about popular culture. I’m sure I’ll be more uptight in a year or two.)

      • Grover Cleveland

        Respectfully, because I know your point here is a quick reply on a blog, but I think there is a slight contradiction in what you say.

        You note: “Pop cultural glamorizations of careless drunken sex don’t trouble me because such acts are “immoral” or because I’m a prude, however. They trouble me because such acts are dangerous and self-destructive, and because middle school girls really do model themselves after the messages in pop music and film.”

        Don’t at least some prominent ethical theories hold acts that are “dangerous and self-destructive” to be “immoral”? For example, someone in the Aristotelian tradition might argue that something that is inconsistent with human flourishing – which would certainly encompass a “dangerous and self-destructive” act – is immoral. Moreover, a simple utilitarian could argue that the intensity and duration of the pleasure gained from such “dangerous and self-destructive” acts would be far outweighed by the intensity and duration of the pain (especially given the possibility of acquiring a life-threatening disease, etc).

        Therefore, you are troubled by the behaviors because you think they are are “immoral”! And don’t worry about being a “prude” – a certain amount of it is socially useful and we’d be far worse off without some number of public scolds. On the other hand, we have to be careful about taking pop culture figures too seriously or thinking they will lead to moral ruin – especially since the older generations tend to always believe the younger ones are being corrupted by the changing world around them.

        And I responded partly because I just found it funny that a progressive/liberal would be so troubled by the kind of things I usually associate with the causes of New Right conservatives and neoconservatives like Gertrude Himmelfarb!

        I look forward to your next castigation of immoral public behavior! Better scolds than the state leading the charge for or against social change!

        • Grover:

          A) Even if you are right that such acts are “immoral,” it doesn’t invalidate my statement that this is not the reason I object to glamorizations of them in pop cultural artifacts.

          B)I find it funny that you think objecting to the sexual objectification of young women is not a progressive/liberal value.

          • Grover Cleveland

            For the record, your original post was not about the sexual objectification of young women. It was about binge-drinking and promiscuity.

            And the historical record is not exactly filled with liberals opposing promiscuity. Indeed, isn’t the “sexual revolution” usually celebrated by liberals (not to mention the “free love” movement)? And isn’t the typical liberal answer to the problem of promiscuity “safe sex,” not “stop being promiscuous”?

            Regardless, we actually agree. The objectification of women and promiscuous, self-destructive behavior are both things we should be concerned about, regardless of our political philosophy.

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  • catclub

    Share and enjoy at the bottom of the post seems a little out of place.

    Of course, it is the motto of the computer company (name escapes me) that made a drink for Arthur Dent that was almost, but not completely, unlike tea.

    Translated, the motto became ‘go stick your head in a pig.’

    Douglas Adams was a genius.

  • Some Guy

    Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. Bazinga.

    Are lots of kids into 60’s acid rock? I’m out of the loop these days, being almost 26 and old and all.

    I dunno, glamorization of short-sighted hedonism isn’t really anything new. One could make the argument regarding the amplitude of the current iteration of it, though. Bikinis for pre-teens, for example, which I’m strongly against (if nothing else, they look STUPID).

    I’m just shocked that someone named “Ke$ha” would promote short term pleasure over long term benefits.

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  • yoyo

    Why is there another yoyo posting here. Do you use that name anywhere else?

  • Lu5cus

    This song and video makes me think that about six months (or six weeks) ago some A&R guy at the record label thought to himself, “You know what would make a lot of money — an Amy Winehouse for the tweener set, that’s what.”

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  • I’d never heard of this person or this song before, but my thoughts were, 1) Musically it’s not good, but not worse than a lot of other pop music. 2) When I was in high-school I used to read MaximumRockandRoll, the punk rock magazine, all the time. There was a big controversy at one point when one of the old punks started arguing that bands like Poison or some others were more subversive than most punk bands because they promoted rebellion to more people, even if it was in a sort of accepted form. There was something to that idea. This can be seen in the same way. That’s to say, this stuff is mostly harmless, and sometimes it can even do some good.

  • dave

    If you haven’t got the lines of communication open sufficiently with your child to be able to convey that this kind of behaviour is dangerous, you’re probably doomed to irrelevancy in their life-choices anyway.

  • Walt

    I don’t get your objection to the parody.

    • I object because although the parody critiques self-destructive behavior, it legitimates the glorification of self-destructive behavior in music and film for money.