Controversial Music Video - Blurred Lines

Blurred lines by Robin Thicke has caused a lot of uproar this year, because of its rape based lyrics and the indecent video presenting women as brainless objects.



There are two views on this video and song: one being the 'feminist' view where people are outraged and believe that the song has too many connotations to rape and 'grooming', and the other view is how Thicke is very respectable to women and how the song "doesn't" encourage rape culture.

Robin Thicke has hit back at student leaders over claims his worldwide No1 Blurred Lines is part of “rape culture”.

But he has dismissed the students’ stance as “ridiculous” – and insisted that he wrote the song for his wife.
(What even?)

The music video suggests sexist stereotypes of how women should dress (in other words have no clothes on) for men's pleasure, and also by having the men fully dressed in suits suggests their power over the women.

The events in the video also suggests a man's bar as there are women strutting about for the men but not enjoying themselves: there is a scene with one of the models coughing because of Thicke smoking and also another model looking in the camera bored.

There is also a scene in the music video where Thicke pays another man. This suggests that he is paying for a woman, like the another man owns a whore house. This again shows how the video and song is disrespectful to women and shows how they are just for pleasure.

Even though the creators of this song says that it is not rape based, the costumes in this video fits well with the fact of it being rape based. For instance in the clean version, the women are wearing white suggesting innocence. However the style of there clothes are sexual, but suggests how rapists tell the courts that the victims were dressed teasingly. The nude one could also suggest innocence as they are not wearing anything sexual: they are more pure and simple. There are two men in this music video who wear black suits and sun glasses. The colour black holds its typical connotations of 'bad guy', in this case referring to rapists. The sunglasses make them seem like they are hiding - used as a disguise. But they also suggest that the singers are trying to be 'cool' - being cool gets the girl.

Some of the audience believes that the song is more about how the girls boyfriend is trying to control her and that the singer wants her to cheat on him:

This is a good point, but in general there are more people who believe this song is very rape based. For instance a lot of people pick up on the lyrics 'Give you something big enough to tear your ass in two' and 'He don't smack that ass and pull your hair for you'. 

An article comparing lines from the song to what rapists have said to there victims

Worth the read, but I'm a bit disturbed by it :(

http://www.psmag.com/culture/mouths-rapists-lyrics-robin-thickes-blurred-lines-66569/

There has been many parodies made to this song, all agreeing that Blurred Lines is sexist and disgusting:

This parody purely takes the mick out of the song, video and singers.



This version however focuses more on making a serious point to how the original song is extremely offensive to women.



Even though there has been many bad things said about the music video and song it has gone viral on the internet because of people always wanting to make fun of it.