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Date Rape Anthem: The Gits’ “Spear & Magic Helmet,” our first anti-rape anthem inspired by the Looney Tunes set. Thanks to commenter basketcasey for the tip.
Relevant Lyrics:
You jump out from behind
Two against one
You said, “You’ve been a bad girl,”
Then you slapped her right across the face
What could be going through your mind
This does no one good
I suggest you buy a cage
Cause I’m full of rageThen you raped her
You left her in the alleyway
I know I have to see you
And all I think of you is right
Could’ve gone on after you
You’re nothing but filth and scum
Now I have to wail on you
And your reputation
Just because you see her there
You think it’s all fair and square
All I fucking see in you
Is one goddamn lame excuse
Spear & The What Now?: The title of the song comes from the 1957 Merrie Melodies short, “What’s Opera, Doc?” In it, Elmer Fudd attempts to kill Bugs Bunny, as per the usual plotline, except this time Fudd is costumed as the Viking god Thor, and the stock storyline parodies the operas of Wagner. Well aware that Fudd is no god, but just a plain old wabbit hunter, Bugs ridicules Fudd for wearing his absurd “spear and magic helmet.”
Fudd: I’m going to kill the wabbit!
Bugs: Oh mighty warrior t’will be quite a task. How will you do it, might I enquire to ask?
Fudd: I will do it with my spear and magic helmet!
Bugs: Your spear and magic helmet?
Fudd: Spear and magic helmet!
Bugs: Magic helmet?
Fudd Magic helmet!
Bugs: Magic helmet.
Fudd Yes, magic helmet!
The Gits track, by the band’s singer/songwriter Mia Zapata, is directed at a man among the speaker’s group of friends who has raped a woman. (Two years after the track was recorded, Zapata would be found raped, murdered, and abandoned in a Seattle, Wa. street). Like Fudd’s thirst for bunny wabbits, the rapist feels entitled to prey on women simply because they are there (“Just because you see her there / You think it’s all fair and square”). In the cartoon, Fudd’s “spear and magic helmet” are constructs that falsely empower him to “play God” over all other creatures. The rapist’s “goddamn lame excuse” is that he’s built a “reputation” that allows him to get away with raping women. Like Fudd, the rapist has nurtured a false sense of superiority in order to convince himself that it’s morally acceptable for him to teach lessons to women he deems to be “bad girls.” But just as Bugs always outsmarts Fudd, the song insists that the rapist’s actions will come back to bite him in the ass.