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Date Rape Anthem: Whitest Kids You Know‘s “We Gun Make Love (Until You Wake Up)”
Relevant Lyrics:
We gon make love until you wake up
We gon make love until you wake up
We gon make love until you wake up
Girl I want you so bad I can’t get enough
Why It’s So Rapey Unfunny: The Whitest Kids You Know, a popular American sketch comedy group, presents its rape jam in the form of cultural commentary. Lyrics like “even though you’s passed out / We can still have fun” and “Just bob your head with me / Ill bob your head / Here we go” are clearly attempts to satirize the rapey rap songs so popular with kids today. Add a completely zonked rape victim and copious amounts of date-rape drugs, and you’ve got the fixins for a hilarious viral rape video.
Because we’re dealing with jokesters here, it’s not enough for us to establish that the Date Rape Anthem is rapey; we must also establish that it’s not funny. And this Date Rape Anthem is not funny. Here’s why:
a. It’s a fake rape video. So, that’s working against it.
b. When I wrote about the Onion‘s many rape jokes, I established somewhat of a Rape Joke Litmus Test: If it makes fun of the way the media and popular culture mishandle rape, it could be funny; if it makes fun of rape, it probably won’t be funny.
While this song intends to ridicule popular songs filled with rapey seduction tactics, I don’t see a lot of spot-on cultural commentary here: I mostly just see some dude making fun of raping women. Over and over and over again.
c. While we’re at it: When I say that “rape” isn’t a joke, I mean that literally. “Rape—-ha ha!” is not a sustainable comedic model for men and women past puberty, and repeating a rapey line 24 times over does not a satire make. If you’re going to use rape as a springboard for your jokes, shouldn’t you, like, write jokes?
d. I know the seduction of the passed-out rape victim is supposed to make me laugh, but I have this weird personal reaction to men seducing passed-out rape victims: They make me ill. The “she wanted it” looks she gives him before she passes out aren’t helping.
e. From YouTube commenter hornetline: “haha, i found out about this video at my colleges orientation at a seminar about how to avoid date rape.” While it is almost funny to imagine how misguided this sexual assault primer must have been—-make sure to cover your drinks, ladies, and you’ll be good to go!—-it’s actually really depressing.
This song makes fun of rapists, sure—-but it also severely warps date rape. The song implies that men who sexually assault women are entirely obvious about it. Observe how uproariously evil the Big Bad Rapists is! He pours cups full of white powder into his victim’s drinks. He drags unconscious women off the dance floor to have sex with them. He does this all in public, in front of all the victim’s friends and dozens of eye witnesses. In short, he acts nothing like a real rapist.
When presented with the Whitest Kinds You Know’s version of a rapist, people laugh because he’s so over-the-top terrible. When presented with real rapists, however—-your husband-rapists, your boyfriend-rapists, your third-date-rapists, your celebrity rapists—-these people aren’t laughing at him. They can’t even recognize him. After all, if the alleged sexual assailant doesn’t look like the Big Bad Rapist they’re comfortable making jokes about, what’s left to do but defend him?