I realise I’m venturing into unexplored territory here but I’ve never felt so compelled to voice my dislike over something so much and, let’s face it, this is a blog that all about voicing my dislike of things.
I’ve felt ambivalent about Robin Thicke since I heard his Blurred Lines song. It’s insanely catchy, yet hateful in many and varied ways. For example, the open, rampant misogyny (not remotely excusable under any sort of ‘irony’ defence) that sees Thicke blow smoke in a woman’s face to make her cough, explain that he knows ‘you want it’ in a threat of sexual assault that’s not even concealed, call women ‘bitches’ and boast about having a large penis (as a rule of thumb – no pun intended – if you have to boast about the size of your dick you ain’t got a big one). Robin Thicke even makes me hate the name Robin – and that’s my name.
His friend TI, ladies, also boasts about having a big penis and would like to ‘tear your ass in two’ with his own cock. He’d like to sodomise you to the extent that he makes your ass bleed. He’d like to cause you profound rectal trauma. He wants to bum you so hard he causes you physical injury. That’s nice, eh?
While I like looking at women with no clothes on, the unrated video for Blurred Lines is just indefensible. If you attempted to defend it on any grounds imaginable you’d just start uncontrollably dribbling and quickly fall into unconsciousness – that is to assume you’re not dribbling or unconscious already, which I think you’d have to be.
Speaking of tits, Pharrell is a tit. Stronger swearwords just don’t work as he’s not actively obnoxious, just a tit. He’s a tit. A twerp. A berk. A dick. A fanny. A knob. In Liverpool parlance he’s a blert. In Hartlepool lingo he’s a doyle or a rarf. But mainly he’s just a little tit. He’s a falsetto Norman Wisdom in a bacofoil suit.
Anyway, Robin Thicke has since split up with his missus, who presumably tired of him prancing around with topless models, sticking his fingers up the bumholes of adoring female fans and grinding his crotch against the asses of teenagers.
So Robin Thicke has had an idea. He’s devoted his entire album to her – it’s called Paula – and revealed a ghastly song called Get Her Back in which he purports to reveal a series of creepy text messages between him and his wife. It’s basically stalking across the medium of Youtube and MTV: the virtual equivalent of hiding in bushes and pushing illegible tear-and-jizz-stained scribbles – varying between declarations of undying love, sexual longing and sexist passive aggression – through the letterbox of an ex.
The whole Robin Thicke story is so appalling because it’s validating a kind of objectification, emotional abuse and sexual control thought eradicated decades ago. It’s normalising the behaviour of men who cheat on their partners, degrade their partners and control their partners and think they can make it up with a bunch of flowers and emotionally illiterate apologies. It’s an extension of the Rihanna / Chris Brown situation where a man beats his partner to the point where she’s hospitalised and goes on to be even more successful than he was previously.
An element of this that confuses and disturbs me is that both of these men have fanbases largely consisting of women – and are very much playing to the dynamic of a horrible ‘I hurt you, but (or because) I love you’ shtick. That’s down to how these men are marketed and how they portray themselves – what’s so fascinating about it is that it shows you can essentially sell misogyny to women, which is some going.
Perhaps you’re wondering what this is doing on a website about adverts. You’ve got me there. No, this is not an advert. Unless you count it as an advert for how awful Robin Thicke is. Which it is. And he is. Utterly fucking awful.