I wouldn't accuse anyone on this blog of being "out of touch," but I do find that people are amazed when I know even one song that's being played on Top 40 radio. We tend to focus on ideas that are very important (politics, philosophy, feminine pronouns), but often disregard practices that are happening every day among thousands of people. In other words, we're not "good" culture theorists around here.
That's fine, but at the same time I'd like to draw everyone's attention to one bit of cultural fluff that has disturbed me to my very fundament (and that's not a pleasant place to be). Witness exhibit A: an R&B/hip-hop song currently occupying the number six position on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, T-Pain's "I'm N Luv (Wit a Stripper)." T-Pain, whose album title boasts that he is a "Rappa Ternt Sanga," has graced us with a slow-burning, synth-laden ballad complete with finger snaps and a sweet, almost coy vocal delivery. As you can tell from the song title, however, this particular ditty is distinguished from a thousand other mediocre R&B "girl let me rub you down, let me rub you DOOOOOOWN" R. Kelly-esque slow jams by its subject matter: Mr. Pain has, indeed, fallen in love with a stripper.
Strip club songs are nothing new. They are a dime a dozen in the misogynistic world of rap; just think of Lil' Jon, who seems to spend all of his time and most of his money trying to get women to put their thong in their mouth (I am similarly reminded of the "Whisper Song" and David Banner's "Play," which I shall return to momentarily). In a more general sense, the strip club song corresponds to the white, middle-class, mainstream conception of the titty bar: it's a place where men can escape the hassle of domestic fidelity and responsibility and enter a world where, for a little while at least, they can again rule as patriarch and the female is reduced to mere sex object. In this way strip clubs are similar to Athenian symposia, which offered members of the aristocracy a chance to recreate the world they had effectively lost to democrats, a world of high manners, flute girls, prostitutes, fine food and drink, homosexuality (an elite practice), and general superiority. Of course, contemporary American strip clubs are much more bourgeois: there is no qualification for entry (aside from age), the music and media (sports television) are typically traditional American, and interaction between patron and dancer is bound up in some form of cash payment. However, these men, whatever their socio-economic status, are attempting to reclaim, like the Athenian elite, a lost form of power: patriarchy. The woman is returned to her "correct" role as provider of sexual titillation, free from all emotional involvement and even basic human recognition. The underlying assumption, however, is that when the strip club-goer leaves the establishment, he loses his connection with this chauvinist microcosm and must reassume his normal relations with the female sex. He either denies visiting the strip club to his wife or cites it as a special privilege ("What I do out with the boys is my business"). The spheres are kept separate.
Not recently, however. I wish to examine one form of the discourse of strip clubs, the urban R&B/hip-hop song. For a long time, this type of song respected the dichotomy between "what I do with a lady" and "how I treat a sex worker." Marvin Gaye, Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross, even R. Kelly and a host of others sang provacatively about enticing ladies into love-making, but in every case the singer is dealing explicitly with "a lady." Although the ultimate object of the song is always sex, one must go about it using the correct formula: a woman is charming, she is elegant, I take her coat for her, I pour her wine, I never make unwanted advances, I treat her with some form of respect until she is ready to give herself to me.
Then there is the strip club song. The dialogue between male pursuer and female persued breaks down; now the song is a rallying cry among men, a narrative of going with your close friends to the club and collectively ogling the flesh on display. Any interaction between man and woman is reduced to a series of barked commands: do this dance move, remove this article of clothing, perform this sex act on me, etc. It is always assumed that the command is obeyed. The woman is an automaton which responds correctly to the input. At the same time, the man grants the woman enough emotion to respond favorably, orgasmically, to her situation. The assumption is that she enjoys it; moreover, in the male fantasy, the woman's desire for his manhood, the power of his phallus itself, obviates the need for payment. The woman will perform for free because her sexual desire eclipses her "professional duties." Her stripping is not so much her job as her ultimate gift to man.
T-Pain's song effectively bridges these two very different song structures. The singer addresses the woman with sweet nothings: her eyes are "butter pecan brown," she has the "body of a goddess." At the same time, in a moment of complete ridiculousness, she is described as "droppin low, coming down from the ceiling." T-Pain's professed goal is to "get her over to my crib to do that night thang." He wants to take the stripper out of her environment and into the "real world," which is usually restricted to wives and girlfriends. The patron and stripper interact on a "higher" level than usual in the strip club song: she "looks at me right in my eyes," they recognize each other as individuals and potential lovers. This sort of interaction was previously in the domain of the party or the dance floor, where the participants are more or less equals. Now the singer has "chosen" a non-equal, a woman who dances for pay, and she reciprocates. There is no higher mission, however, no
Notes From Underground attempt to save the woman from her position in life. There is no "redemption of the prostitute," she remains as such. This is the irony of the song, the reason why T-Pain delivers his lines with a hint of embarrassment.
Can you believe it? I have crossed that all-important line.
(As an aside, the guest verse by Mike Jones completely satisfies all the conditions of the strip club song I mentioned earlier. The strippers are "God's gift to earth," they represent "a woman's worth," they "show him love," "they know I never pay." But, and here is the payoff of the song, he "must admit, I'm in love with a stripper." Like the lead singer, he blurs the lines between the sacred and the profane, the acceptable and the vulgar.)
No one should mistake me for saying that strippers are in fact vulgar or profane. These conceptions are all contained within the discourse itself. Nor do I blame women for engaging in stripping in the first place, because often this is the most lucrative profession available to them. However, I do strongly disagree with those who cite stripping as an empowering practice, or one that can grant women some sense of control over men. It is an inherently degrading and vicious establishment, and no libertarian argument about the "free choice of entering into such a contract" will persuade me otherwise. T-Pain's song only makes things worse, first by telling his audience that it is ironic that he would display affection towards a mere stripper, and second by giving the impression that the sexual squirmings in his song in any way constitute something close to real love.
Of course, "I'm N Luv (Wit a Stripper)" is an ephemeral pop song that no one will remember (hopefully) in a few months' time. But insofar as it adds something to the culture, that it leaves its sleazy fingerprint on the smudgy bare buttock of the discourse of sexual objectification, it is a danger. Because if you think about, for the next few months the song will be played in hundreds of clubs, memorized and danced to by literally thousands of teenage girls. Is this what should pass as popular music? Isn't it rather a failure of the feminist movement, since this kind of trash is a hundred times worse than the dumb 60s misogyny of the Rolling Stones, the Stones who wrote "Stupid Girl" and "Under My Thumb"? I apologize for pontificating so long on something as unworthy as a Top 40 song, but what the hell does this tell us about ourselves? About how far so many people have to go in their conception of women? To quote from Adorno and Horkheimer, whose thought provoked the general tone of this post, "Works of art are ascetic and unashamed; the culture industry is pornographic and prudish." What happens when it is both pornographic and unashamed?
Why don't you post a few pics so I can see if your girlfriend was cute enough for me to care.
Posted by: Pigballs at March 28, 2006 09:03 AM