In Defense of Poppery, XIV: Bed Intruder song

Pop example: The Autotune the News "Bed Intruder" song, featuring Antoine Dodson, his sister, and the news team and footage from the incident of attempted rape in Huntsville, AL

The issues: Because of some of the popular and critical reception of this song, it seems important to me to address the reasons we might need to defend this song, on at least two levels.

First, it's popular, and pretty much anything popular seems to need a well-rehearsed defense to make people think it might also be significant.

Second, it's a video made by two white boys about a violent incident in an impoverished and largely black community. It practically screams "exploitation."

Some critics have pointed out the exploitative potential of the video -- see the Wikipedia critical reception section for this song -- and its problematic use of Antoine's words and look as a possibly comic aesthetic, without consideration for the actual events that inspired Antoine's passionate speech. Making attempted rape the subject of a popular song is fraught with obvious issues, particularly since this song wasn't confined to its usual "gangsta rap" home.

What redeems it: Some people may be laughing at Antoine Dobson, in which case, some of these critiques are necessary and valid. I furrow my brow to think that two white boys made the video that caused Antoine's words to become the household catchphrases they are now. And it is problematic to make a joke out of attempted rape.

But here's the thing: I don't think people are laughing at Antoine. Anyone laughing at Antoine is completely missing the awesomeness of his speech, which is that Antoine is laughing at and standing up to a potential rapist.

On the one hand, Antoine warns of the pervasiveness of violence in "the projects," implying that rapists are everywhere, and that people should "hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husbands cause they're raping everybody out here." But rather than being the histrionic cries of the cartoon white people in Bowling for Columbine (the South-Park style insert on why white people like guns so much), Antoine's warnings come with enough self-possession to continue on, explaining to the intruder how dumb he is.

As alarming as it would be to have someone enter your home and make an attempt to do violence against you, Antoine's reaction to the situation when it happened was similar: he and his sister fought back, and the attempt failed.

Now that is a narrative that we need. Not the all-knowing horror-movie manipulator (a la The Collector), who is already in your bedroom before you even know it, whose whims must be obeyed to the letter, or you die, but the bumbling, stupid criminal who can be thwarted by people willing to take immediate action to stop him.

Not that all criminals can be thwarted by unexpected and immediate action -- but I bet most can be.

And then Antoine, clinching his and his sister's victory over this idiot, gives a television interview in which he repeatedly mocks the potential rapist. "You are so dumb. You are really dumb. For real."

This is how every rapist should be treated. He should be mocked in a national venue.

Obviously, rape is serious, and as a crime it should be taken very, very seriously -- in part because it strips women of power and their choice in an extremely intimate and personal context. So what better response than to do the same to the rapist, exposing him for the idiot he must be? If rape is about power, it seems to me the best response is to forcibly and immediately strip that power away. Antoine's speech and the subsequent video do that extremely effectively.

We're not laughing at Antoine. We're celebrating with him, and admiring his victory, and his attitude toward a situation that could have seriously traumatized his family, and the rest of us if it had happened in our homes.

Now if this victory makes people say to themselves "see? People living in the projects are fine! We don't need to do anything about poverty!" then that is a serious problem.

Maybe Autotune the News and Antoine can make a video mocking those people next.

Note: This defense of poppery refers only to the Autotune the News and Antoine Dobson version of the song. While "researching" this video (that is, listening to it repeatedly and head bopping along), I also found a version done by a choir at Liberty University for their Christmas coffee house. It's entertaining -- particularly at the end, when they sing "you are so dumb" to the tune of "Carol of the Bells" -- but it substitutes the word "taking" for "raping," which I find both inevitable (considering the university context), and offensive (considering the original context).

Subtracting the idea of rape from Antoine's speech completely nullifies the victory I outlined above, making the song into a mere meme instead of a personal and political statement of strength, and I wish someone had problematized this hammy and milquetoast (I might even say cowardly) version of the song before it was performed at Liberty -- but that may be a gripe for a different blog post, perhaps on the exigencies of working at or attending an evangelical institution.