FlameHairedGirl

This is getting kind of ridiculous.

shoutout to the theatre kids that aren’t actors

to the stage managers who manage to balance friendships and being authoritative in rehearsals

to the technicians that do extra training in welding and access equipment and so many other things to make themselves more hireable

to the techs and stage management who just sometimes want to wear colour but are instead in show blacks all the time

to the stage managers who get stuck mediating the tension between directors and designers who are older and supposed to be more mature than you

to the techs who injure themselves, deal with it, and keep working (or are told they aren’t allowed and are so annoyed about it)

to the designers that have to compromise what they want because the director doesn’t like it or there isn’t enough time/budget/equipment

to the casual crew members who just like theatre and want to be involved but aren’t trying to make a career of it

to everyone who tries (and sometimes fails) to fit in friends and healthy eating during tech week

to everyone who has ever done a year-long unpaid (or barely paid) internship in the hopes that it will lead to a job opportunity

to everyone who has ever worked really hard on making/finding a prop only to have it cut in tech or dress

to the design assistants that have to figure out when and how to become designers in their own right

to anyone who has ever managed to avert a crisis backstage where there’s barely any light and you can’t talk

to anyone who has ever had to make the decision to stop the show because some crises just can’t be averted

to everyone who struggles to understand unions

and the list goes on and on

im gay

A movie about

Mae Jemison

Starring

Samira Wiley

CAN WE JUST TALK ABOUT HOW ON POINT EVERYONE IS HANDLING THIS CASE.

It’s directed beautifully, they subtly show feminism without exclusively bad mouthing men, and without hesitating they show the issue of how girls are viewed in India. I can safely say that the level of misogyny is in a lot of Asian countries, households and community, it really hits close to home.

They even mentioned the reality of underage marriage and why it’s a problem.

So. Here’s the thing. Given a cursory glance and applying today’s worldview to the song, yes, you’re right, it absolutely *sounds* like a rape anthem. 

BUT! Let’s look closer! 

“Hey what’s in this drink” was a stock joke at the time, and the punchline was invariably that there’s actually pretty much nothing in the drink, not even a significant amount of alcohol.

See, this woman is staying late, unchaperoned, at a dude’s house. In the 1940’s, that’s the kind of thing Good Girls aren’t supposed to do — and she wants people to think she’s a good girl. The woman in the song says outright, multiple times, that what other people will think of her staying is what she’s really concerned about: “the neighbors might think,” “my maiden aunt’s mind is vicious,” “there’s bound to be talk tomorrow.” But she’s having a really good time, and she wants to stay, and so she is excusing her uncharacteristically bold behavior (either to the guy or to herself) by blaming it on the drink — unaware that the drink is actually really weak, maybe not even alcoholic at all. That’s the joke. That is the standard joke that’s going on when a woman in media from the early-to-mid 20th century says “hey, what’s in this drink?” It is not a joke about how she’s drunk and about to be raped. It’s a joke about how she’s perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because she’s living in a society where women aren’t supposed to have sexual agency.

Basically, the song only makes sense in the context of a society in which women are expected to reject men’s advances whether they actually want to or not, and therefore it’s normal and expected for a lady’s gentleman companion to pressure her despite her protests, because he knows she would have to say that whether or not she meant it, and if she really wants to stay she won’t be able to justify doing so unless he offers her an excuse other than “I’m staying because I want to.” (That’s the main theme of the man’s lines in the song, suggesting excuses she can use when people ask later why she spent the night at his house: it was so cold out, there were no cabs available, he simply insisted because he was concerned about my safety in such awful weather, it was perfectly innocent and definitely not about sex at all!) In this particular case, he’s pretty clearly right, because the woman has a voice, and she’s using it to give all the culturally-understood signals that she actually does want to stay but can’t say so. She states explicitly that she’s resisting because she’s supposed to, not because she wants to: “I ought to say no no no…” She states explicitly that she’s just putting up a token resistance so she’ll be able to claim later that she did what’s expected of a decent woman in this situation: “at least I’m gonna say that I tried.” And at the end of the song they’re singing together, in harmony, because they’re both on the same page and they have been all along.