Hi there! Former English nerd/teacher here. Also a big fan of jazz of the 30s and 40s.Β
So. Hereβs the thing. Given a cursory glance and applying todayβs worldview to the song, yes, youβre right, it absolutely *sounds*Β like a rape anthem.Β
BUT! Letβs look closer!Β
βHey whatβs in this drinkβ was a stock joke at the time, and the punchline was invariably that thereβs actually pretty much nothing in the drink, not even a significant amount of alcohol.
See, this woman is staying late, unchaperoned, at a dudeβs house. In the 1940βs, thatβs the kind of thing Good Girls arenβt supposed to do β and she wants people to think sheβs a good girl. The woman in the song says outright, multiple times, that what other people will think of her staying is what sheβs really concerned about: βthe neighbors might think,β βmy maiden auntβs mind is vicious,β βthereβs bound to be talk tomorrow.β But sheβs 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 β unaware that the drink is actually really weak, maybe not even alcoholic at all. Thatβs the joke. That is the standard joke thatβs going on when a woman in media from the early-to-mid 20th century says βhey, whatβs in this drink?β It is not a joke about how sheβs drunk and about to be raped. Itβs a joke about how sheβs perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because sheβs living in a society where women arenβt supposed to have sexual agency.
Basically, the song only makes sense in the context of a society in which women are expected to reject menβs advances whether they actually want to or not, and therefore itβs normal and expected for a ladyβs 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 wonβt be able to justify doing so unless he offers her an excuse other than βIβm staying because I want to.β (Thatβs the main theme of the manβs 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, heβs pretty clearly right, because the woman has a voice, and sheβs using it to give all the culturally-understood signals that she actually does want to stay but canβt say so. She states explicitly that sheβs resisting because sheβs supposed to, not because she wants to: βI ought to say no no noβ¦β She states explicitly that sheβs just putting up a token resistance so sheβll be able to claim later that she did whatβs expected of a decent woman in this situation: βat least Iβm gonna say that I tried.β And at the end of the song theyβre singing together, in harmony, because theyβre both on the same page and they have been all along.
So itβs not actually a song about rape - in fact itβs a song about a woman finding a way to exercise sexual agency in a patriarchal society designed to stop her from doing so. But itβs also, at the same time, one of the best illustrations of rape culture that pop culture has ever produced. Itβs a song about a society where women arenβt allowed to say yesβ¦which happens to mean itβs also a society where women donβt have a clear and unambiguous way to say no.