I was thinking about Harvey Weinstein, Roy Moore, Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., and all of the other people who've been accused of sexual harassment or assault the other day, and it occurred to me that there's maybe one person in the world who's really happy about all of these recent allegations: Roman Polanski. I'm sure he's in Europe somewhere, pointing at the TV screen and saying to his friends, "You See! I'm not so bad! I'm just like all the rest!"
I'm trying to be funny, I guess, with that, and maybe I shouldn't. Maybe there's nothing funny to say about sexual predation. But I was thinking about Roman Polanski because I was thinking about the difference between 2017 and the 1970's and 1980's. We've come a long way. Back then, the kind of behavior that is getting people fired from their jobs and blackballed was celebrated in hit songs. I'm not kidding. Check out these songs below, which should be on every pedophile's .MP3 playlist.
First, from the rock band that was the most popular rock band among middle school students in the late 1970's/early 1980's, here's a song about an adult celebrating getting a minor drunk and having sex with her, despite her parents' objections (and though I don't assume this to be necessarily autobiographical, it's interesting to note that Dennis DeYoung was 29 years old when this song was published in 1976):
That's a non-single from a big band, not something you might have heard before. But here's one of the biggest songs of the 1970's, one that declares that the speaker always "gets it up for the touch of the younger kind":
And lest you think this was a seventies phenomenon only, here's a song from the 80's hair band Winger. Again, though it isn't necessarily autobiographical, Kip Winger was 27 when this song was released in 1988.
And who can forget the creepiest, sleaziest song of them all? I swear, this one makes me feel gross just listening to it. The video makes it even worse. Oh, and holy crap! I just looked on Wikipedia. Benny Mardones was THIRTY-FOUR YEARS OLD when this song came out in 1980. Makes that scene at the window in the video even more disturbing!
What's my point? Nothing, really. I just was thinking about how far we've come since the 1970's. And though we certainly shouldn't forgive the heinous behavior of the people being accused, it's interesting that these may have been some of the songs they listened to in their youth.
1 comment:
Interesting. I didn't even recognize the Mardones song until I played it. The implication of the subject's age never occurred to me when I used to hear the song. Of course, at the time, I was just dreaming of becoming the 16-year-old girl being swept away. I must also add that I was dreaming of a young man my own age doing the sweeping...
This kind of discussion reminds me that we can't judge those who married a 14-year-old in medieval times because they only lived to be 30-ish. That said, behavior and life expectancy change and the mores of the time change with them. So while it "was" done that way, it's not done that way anymore.
It's an interesting conundrum. What behavior do we excuse "because of the time" and which do we not? What is the litmus test? I certainly have no definitive idea. An argument could be made for when labor laws were passed and children were allowed to be children again. Another argument is when a child has reached the accepted end of primary education.
I'm perfectly happy to think my son will never date. ;-)
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