Sunday, February 23, 2014
Fraternity Song
Last week I was enjoying my night
out, my friends and I were on a bus to a fraternity event, when something
struck me as being really off. The atmosphere was fun and everyone was
enjoying themselves singing along to this particular fraternities songs. I have to preface this by saying I have
a lot of friends in fraternities who I have a lot of respect for, but this song
essentially is the story of a sexual assault. I realized as everyone is happily
singing along just how ingrained rape culture is in our society and how little
we realize that we are condoning it at times. This song especially struck me
after our documentary viewing last week. It seems really harmless at times to
sing along to a song without thinking about the lyrics, I do it all the time,
but it seems wrong that we would allow this to continue. There is no reason
that music can’t be fun and enjoyable in a positive non-degrading manner.
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I think this is a perfect example of how we don't always realize what we are listening to or endorsing because our culture teaches us to not care about what it is and just sing along.
ReplyDeleteI agree we do not always think about the lyrics of the song we sing. I have to change the radio station several times when certain songs come on the radio and my daughter is in the car. Sometimes its easiest to not have the radio on at all.
ReplyDeleteMolly I completely understand! This happened for me completely with Blurred Lines this summer. I worked with high school students for the summer, and one day we were driving down the road with the radio blasting and it came on. I was driving a car of 12 16 year old girls screaming "you know you want it" at the top of my lungs when it really hit me. It is sad that we live in a world where rape culture is so perseverative that we don't even notice it.
ReplyDeleteThat moment of realization must have felt awkward!
ReplyDeleteHowever, since you realized and reflected on the meaning of the song, I think you accomplished something in the direction towards raising awareness of rape culture issues. If people would do this on a larger scale, I think it would become more difficult to not realize the meanings of things like songs; of course, always easier said than done...