Whats in This Drink Mean Baby Its Cild
Generations have their own language and music, their own codes and assumptions, and if you're over 30, you just accept that there are things that younger people are doing and saying that you don't understand.
Yet this is what's weird: Even as we accept the mystery of the younger generations, all of us, young and old, tend to assume that the past is an open book, that we can look at the artifacts of a previous generation and pass judgment on their motives and practices. We assume that nothing is hidden, and that anything which meant something then means the same thing now.
Which leads us to that staple of the Christmas season, "Baby, It's Cold Outside."
Now, this is a song I've never liked, but I dislike it for reasons that have nothing to do with the controversy that it has created in recent years. Written by Frank Loesser in the early 1940s, it debuted in a 1949 film, "Neptune's Daughter." It's a duet, in which a man tries to get a woman to stay the night by saying that it's cold outside, while she keeps telling him that she has to go.
At one point, she asks, "What's in this drink?" This has led some to assume that she is being drugged, and that we are witnessing the musicalized version of a date rape in progress. In any case, he is being persistent, even after she says, "The answer is no," which has been interpreted as sexual harassment at the very least.
Indeed, interpretation seems hardly necessary. If you are young, and you hear the song for the first time, that's what the song seems to be about. And it doesn't help for an older person to come along and say, "But it didn't mean that then!" You might think, so what? Maybe the generation of 1949 and the generations that followed didn't care enough about these issues, but now people are woke enough to realize what this song has meant all along.
But no, that's not it, at least not all of it. This is where actually knowing something about a generation becomes significant.
"Baby, It's Cold Outside" is a product of my grandparents' generation. That generation is gone now, or they're 100 years old. But I remember those people well, and I can tell you something that bears significantly on this song … That generation wasn't having sex. Really. Like, almost never. Like, it's amazing there was a generation after them. For sure, there's no sex happening in the world of that song, and no expectation of sex on the part of the woman or the man. At least, not until they're married.
What's actually going on in the song is that the two people are playing — the kind of play our elders indulged in, not in order to have sex, but in place of it. So he comes on like the aggressive guy, but he's harmless (and both know it), and she pretends to be coy, but she has the power. And instead of having sex, they'll just sit there and smoke two packs of cigarettes, and then she'll take a cab. Really, that's what's going on in the song.
When I was a teenager and first heard "Baby, It's Cold Outside," I didn't like it, either, because it all seemed tame and pathetic. Here they are, reverting to these classic sex roles. He's acting super masculine, and she's acting super feminine, and it's all a big phony act, and nobody's having any fun. But then again, I came of age in the 1970s, and we were more natural about these things — and if you don't believe it, take a look at the drawings in "The Joy of Sex."
Anyway, the seduction rituals of the previous generations are always repellent — the sociological equivalent of imagining your parents and grandparents in the bedroom — and this won't change. Just think how a future generation will feel listening to the new, updated "Baby, It's Cold Outside," as John Legend sings, "It's your body and your choice" to Kelly Clarkson.
They're going to think nobody was having any fun in 2019. In this case, they might even be right.
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Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicle's film critic. Email: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle
Whats in This Drink Mean Baby Its Cild
Source: https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/you-cant-understand-baby-its-cold-outside-unless-you-understand-when-it-came-from
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