Ignorance and Innocence
Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 9:04PM | by Otter Luke Holzmann, whose affiliations with his parents' company Sonlight are not clear to me, posted on the Sonlight Blog a little object lesson about Dance Central. In it, he referenced the infectious Soulja Boy hit, "Crank That."
Thinking this was amusing in an evangelical blog, I challenged Luke to "Supaman that fresh Sonlight customer."
Luke averred that his wife particularly likes the line, "Superman, Ohhhh!"
The actual line, for those unfamiliar with urban slang, is ambiguously positioned between "oh" (the noise a woman makes during intercourse) and "ho."
There's naturally nothing wrong with Luke being a little on the naïve side.
But when several people commented to him on the subject, he made this curious statement:
Thanks for the heads up, friends. I hadn't looked up the song on urban dictionary because, well, I find the content there horribly inappropriate. Though, I will admit: I have sometimes found the site helpful when I'm particularly baffled by a modern idiom.
I had briefly looked up the words on lyric sites hadn't seen the phrase urban dictionary records. I much prefer to keep the words nonsensical: "superman" and "ohhh!" <smile>
We challenged Luke on this: my own comment was this:
Luke, this is moral incoherence of a really rare order.
The song is aggressively misogynistic and offensive. I have no problem with you saying, "Yeah, but I like it for reason X, so I listen to it anyway." I do that a lot. But let's just call it what it is: it's winking at a value you don't approve of because of its redeeming (?) merits.
But bowdlerizing it so that it doesn't say what you don't want it to is an offense against both truth and the artist.
As you know, the word "bowdlerize" comes from Thomas Bowdler's attempts to present the works of Shakespeare with all the naughty and immoral bits left out. His audience was Victorian women, whose ears (he felt) should not be subjected to Shakespeare's rougher language.
Soulja Boy is no Shakespeare. But the operation you're performing here is the same.
Make no mistake: Soulja Boy celebrates his ability to "Superman that ho."
You imply in your comments that you were "innocent" of the meaning until some garden serpents sent you that way. That's just lazy-brain, Luke, and made worse by the implication that ignorance and innocence are identical. It's also, coming from a public Evangelical, disturbingly indicative of Evangelicalism's determination to remain mired in the brain of a Victorian woman, as conceived of by Thomas Bowdler.
Man up. You like a dirty song. Say so. It's really okay. The Apostle Paul apparently liked a raw bit of language now and then... though I'm not the guy to make the case that Soulja Boy is in the stadium with Paul.
Luke's reply, in part (and the thing I want to address, since the comments section at his blog seems to be down):
Your critique of my "implication that ignorance and innocence are identical" is interesting. I would put this more in the camp of meat sacrificed to idols. For me--especially before I had any idea of the completely improper "proper" lyrics--this song held no issue for me. For those, the opposite is true. Having seen that they feel I am pushing them toward sin, I am happy to remove the reference as I am not interested in nudging anyone toward evil. But, back to the point: Ignorance did make me innocent.
Evangelicalism can commit itself to some pretty far-out positions.
Luke's is really startling though for the naked self-justification here. Meat sacrificed to idols? Wha....?
Surely some will be offended by his use of the song. But I for one have no issue at all with him liking it, so long as he understands it and what he's doing.
The meat-offered-to-idols here is of course taken from the book of 1 Corinthians, where Paul famously enjoins stronger consciences to bear with weaker ones.
But Luke's affection for Soulja Boy's "Crank That" is nothing but an aesthetic approval. If he wishes to remove the reference to the song from his post (and he has now done so), that's his business. But the trouble isn't, and never was, that he liked a misogynistic (if rather catchy) song: it was that he preferred to pretend.
You can't say that meat offered to idols was bought in the downtown deli and then say it's the fault of the weaker conscience that you're not eating it.
You have to man up. You have to say what it is.
More disappointment from Evangelicalism.
More reason to mistrust those whose "holiness" is sentimental and childish.
Yeah. It still pisses me off.
Otter
Luke's added the following in his comments:
It took me way too long to realize that the unstated meaning of these comments has been, "Please remove the reference." Once someone said that, I acted immediately.
I do still claim initial ignorance to both the dirty lyrics and the Hannah Keeley thing... though the irony is incredible. Is it not? <smile>
"What about the scripture about being careful to do what is right in all men's eyes?" ...isn't that kind of the point of the meat/idols passage as well? If you realize that something is problematic for your brothers and sisters, stop it. As I have done and am happy to do.
I think he's starting to get it... well, he's starting to get the message from some of his interlocutors.
Except that I, for one, don't think he should have removed the reference. I think it was expedient to do so: his client base isn't going to like Soulja Boy's challenge to their sexual imagination. I'm sure he didn't really want that.
I think rather that what's right in this case is that he be honest. "I like a song. I was shocked to discover its meaning." A meaning obvious to everyone who deals with life outside the Christian ghetto.
The really interesting thing now, as Luke and the Sonlight women retreat once again from the world by stopping their ears against the offending noise, is the huge chasm between the evangelicals and the world that they believe is going to hell.
Reader Comments (3)
Word.
Comparing "Crank That" to "meat sacrificed to idols" is laughable. One (sacrificing to idols) was not done to humiliate and denigrate a segment of the population. It wasn't done to offend others. It was a religious act that the priests and people who worshiped those god(s) did in what they considered righteousness. I seriously doubt that Soulja Boy ever considers righteousness. Eating with so-called pagans was an attempt to proselytize, but somehow I doubt that Luke will be enjoying an evening meal with Soulja Boy. Luke would probably be horrified to be seen with him and vice versa!
This isn't about protecting the weaker brother (unless by that you mean a parent who is protecting a child from truly offensive material or protecting women from the abuse the song glorifies), instead this is, as you pointed out, willful ignorance and the dismissal of reality.
Christians are supposed to be "in the world but not of it", but I don't think that includes listening to rap like Soulja Boy, unless one is working within communities of young men who listen to such music. In that context, perhaps on could use the "meat sacrificed to idols" argument, but not when the people who complained about the song (and who are your "ministry" ...er...target audience) are mostly Evangelical Christian women. Given the song's strong misogynistic lyrics, it is not at all surprising that they would be offended.
Thanks, Jennifer. Great points.
I think when Evangelicals congratulate themselves on being in the world but not of it, they really need to take a hard look at themselves as well as the social contexts of those scriptures.