Before I participated in the protest of Robin Thicke’s concert at the Agganis Arena last week, I was constantly asked, “Why do you think the song is offensive? Aren’t there other songs that are equally as ‘bad’ with regards to the treatment of women?”
Unfortunately, yes, there are too many popular songs that encourage violence or harassment towards women. However, the explicit title and lyrical content of “Blurred Lines” pinpoints a large problem: the idea that consent is a blurred line. Upon hearing the song for the first time, I hoped it was my own misinterpretation of the lyrics. Then, the music video came out. No! Robin Thicke, really? He must have something to say about this.
All three of us [Thicke, T.I. and Pharrell) are happily married with children, we were like, “We’re the perfect guys to make fun of this.” People say, “Hey, do you think this is degrading to women?” I’m like, “Of course it is. What a pleasure it is to degrade a woman. I’ve never gotten to do that before”
~Robin Thicke, GQ Magazine
I can’t get over how perfectly Thicke’s quote adheres to a creepy and manipulative formula. In other words “I am able to do [insert awful thing here] because I am really just a “good guy”. Since the lyrical contents of the song consist of phrases that rapists have used on their victims verbatim, the song goes past “degrading” and heads towards being triggering and destructive. This is not the first time that a student body has protested the song. In fact, twenty student unions in the UK have banned the song.
However, protesting Thicke’s concert was not simply about his song; rather, the protest focused on sexual violence and harassment that a quarter of women experience (on average). As a participant, I gathered that the Humanists of Boston University focused their protest on 1. Spreading awareness of rape culture and 2. Pointing out that the popularity of media that endorses nonconsensual sex is a huge problem.
Many students agreed that Thicke’s lyrics normalize sexual harassment, and signed a petition created by the Humanists of Boston University to cancel the concert. After receiving more than a thousand signatures on change.org to get Thicke’s concert cancelled, the status of the concert did not change.
The protest ended up consisting of the Humanist group at BU, along with men and women who showed up to support their effort in raising awareness of rape culture and sexual violence. “In the weeks leading up to the protest…some said ‘That’s stupid it’s just a song’, but it’s a tiny bit of a really big issue”, said Jessica Allen, a BU student. Attention from concert- goers and news sources had sparked attention previous to the concert, which has caused a buzz through social media. Another protestor, Julie Williams said “People find it easier to be antagonizing online, so we had a lot of rude comments online, but people have been generally supportive [in person] here”.
I left the protest with frozen fingertips and a mind full of thought provoking reactions from passersby the Agganis Arena. Many people came up to protestors and directly asked what the protest was about. Most concert attendees observed posters with statements like, “Society says ‘don’t get raped’ rather than ‘don’t rape’” and “consent is not a blurred line”. Fortunately, there was nothing blurred regarding the protest’s goal- to take one step closer to ending rape culture and sexual violence.