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Baby, it's cold outside
We're all familiar with the song, and many people (by which I mean me :-)) never thought of it as politically incorrect until the past year or two. It was just a funny, light-hearted, exquisitely well-crafted song. And it still is.
Wait, sexual coercion is funny? No, of course not; that's not what's funny. The wordplay is funny. The clever, unexpected rhymes are funny. The two people talking over one another, and occasionally landing in harmony together, is funny, in the great tradition of patter songs from Gilbert & Sullivan to Sondheim (with perhaps a detour by way of Robert Altman).
And, frankly, the conflicting interests and the attempts at persuasion are funny because they're so universally human. Scarcely an adult human on the planet has not, at some point, tried to persuade the object of hir romantic interest to stay around and do something together (whether sex or a movie or church or a ride in a surrey with a fringe on top). The other, "I really must go" side of the song can be interpreted in different ways: either she really unambiguously doesn't want to stay, or (as I've always interpreted the song) she's dealing with an id/superego conflict between a desire to have fun and concern over what "the neighbors will think." Both cases are, again, near-universal human experiences, and therefore fodder for a good song.
In either case, of course, what she ultimately does is her decision, not anybody else's. But as I pointed out here, there has to be a legitimate place for persuasion in a romantic relationship, or nothing will ever happen unless both parties independently think of the same thing to do, with the same degree of enthusiasm, at exactly the same moment. The problem is that the line between persuasion and coercion is extremely fuzzy, and extremely subject to differing interpretations. Parts of the song are clearly on the "persuasion" side, while other parts (most obviously "say, what's in this drink?") hint at coercion. How you feel about the song as a whole depends on how much coercion you perceive and how you weight it against the appeal of clever songcraft and universal human feelings.
Wait, sexual coercion is funny? No, of course not; that's not what's funny. The wordplay is funny. The clever, unexpected rhymes are funny. The two people talking over one another, and occasionally landing in harmony together, is funny, in the great tradition of patter songs from Gilbert & Sullivan to Sondheim (with perhaps a detour by way of Robert Altman).
And, frankly, the conflicting interests and the attempts at persuasion are funny because they're so universally human. Scarcely an adult human on the planet has not, at some point, tried to persuade the object of hir romantic interest to stay around and do something together (whether sex or a movie or church or a ride in a surrey with a fringe on top). The other, "I really must go" side of the song can be interpreted in different ways: either she really unambiguously doesn't want to stay, or (as I've always interpreted the song) she's dealing with an id/superego conflict between a desire to have fun and concern over what "the neighbors will think." Both cases are, again, near-universal human experiences, and therefore fodder for a good song.
In either case, of course, what she ultimately does is her decision, not anybody else's. But as I pointed out here, there has to be a legitimate place for persuasion in a romantic relationship, or nothing will ever happen unless both parties independently think of the same thing to do, with the same degree of enthusiasm, at exactly the same moment. The problem is that the line between persuasion and coercion is extremely fuzzy, and extremely subject to differing interpretations. Parts of the song are clearly on the "persuasion" side, while other parts (most obviously "say, what's in this drink?") hint at coercion. How you feel about the song as a whole depends on how much coercion you perceive and how you weight it against the appeal of clever songcraft and universal human feelings.