February 28, 2001

3:47 AM

Top Brazilian performers refuse to sing it. A big-city mayor begged radio stations not to play it. Women say it is degrading and dangerous. It's the Face Slap, an uptempo ditty about a woman who asks her lover to hit her.
posted by crushed (22 comments total)

If I were a DJ, I might not play it simply because it is offensively dumb. Otherwise, it's probably relatively harmless. Quite sensible women have asked mild me to pretend a lot worse than that I am just slapping them, and they have quite enjoyed the results. Still, I don't think I would play out those games on the dance floor.

posted by pracowity at 4:05 AM on February 28, 2001

This idea has been around in music for years: see "He Hit Me And It Felt Like A Kiss".
posted by tobyslater at 4:17 AM on February 28, 2001

Masochism is SOOOO dangerous, run!
posted by john at 4:25 AM on February 28, 2001

As I understand it it's a male singing about doing the slapping, so the correct pop parallel is "Smack My Bitch Up" by the Prodigy, rather than the Crystals' "He Hit Me". So it's not a masochism thing, I don't think.

The lyrics sound deplorable, though it doesn't seem like the dancers are taking them very seriously, and the press outcry will hopefully cause more good - by bringing domestic violence into the spotlight - than the song does harm.

What the article doesn't mention is how fantastic the Brazilian 'funk' stuff is, from what I've heard - a really exciting fusion of raw singing, Miami bass rhythms, rave noises and samples.
posted by freakytrigger at 5:14 AM on February 28, 2001

Sorry. that should read "not just a masochism thing".
posted by freakytrigger at 5:24 AM on February 28, 2001

> As I understand it it's a male singing about
> doing the slapping ...

The article quotes the song as saying 'When we make love, what does she ask for? S-S-Slap in the face,' which sounds like a female asking a male to slap her, and doesn't sound like 'Change my pitch up, smack my bitch up' (whatever that means) to me.

They quote a female 'sociologist and psychoanalyst' thus: 'It's all make-believe - pretend sex and pretend pain' and 'It's not insidious, because the woman joins the dance as an equal, provoking the man but ducking away from him.'

The worst thing about the song is that it's just so stupid.
posted by pracowity at 5:47 AM on February 28, 2001

It doesn't sound like equality to me. Sounds more like bad taste. There's nothing fun about misogyny. I don't think it should be censured, but I wouldn't want to have anything to do with it.
posted by Loudmax at 6:50 AM on February 28, 2001

"...the woman joins the dance as an equal, provoking the man but ducking away from him."
...men pretend to slap their partners, women sway right and left as if reeling from the fake blows.

If the women are ducking the blows then why do they act as though they've been hit?

Anyway, if the woman in the song is literally asking for him to do it, I'm not sure why anyone would find it promoting domestic violence. More than likely it's only harming people by being a really stupid song. So, why do you think so many are finding it deplorable? Are they censoring it simply because that makes them look as though they're trying to do something about the problem of domestic violence?
posted by crushed at 7:02 AM on February 28, 2001

Now I can't get that damned refrain hit me baby one more time out of my head. How is any of this worse than singing about killing your wife? The publicity this is getting is the worst part.
posted by evixir at 7:14 AM on February 28, 2001

"Anyway, if the woman in the song is literally asking for him to do it, I'm not sure why anyone would find it promoting domestic violence."

Because it promotes the rationalization that "She was asking for it." Domestic abuse sufferers are never asking for it, nor do they deserve it and setting this kind of violence to a catchy dance tune just trivializes the whole situation.
posted by jennyb at 7:24 AM on February 28, 2001

Well, 'Hit me baby one more time' was supposedly referring to calling Britney's pager, or so the record execs said.

However, the insidious thing about a refrain like that was that while it had an innocuous excuse that a 10-year-old can parrot to her concerned mother, it also suggested it was setting the singer (already enough of a fantasy-object in her sexy-schoolgirl kit) up as actively inviting male violence.

That's exactly what this Brazilian song does too, minus the aggressive record-company publicity, which the world's media have very willingly provided instead. We'd never have had to know about the thing otherwise...
posted by CatherineB at 7:54 AM on February 28, 2001

There's already a follow-up, a catchy number called "Disfigure My Face with Acid If I Sleep with Someone Else, Baby."
posted by dhartung at 8:06 AM on February 28, 2001

What good would not knowing about it have done? I'm personally heartened that, if Brazil is so macho, there's been an outcry over it.

Pop culture outcries are a good indicator of what a society thinks is acceptable or unacceptable - in this case the pendulum seems to have swung towards the 'un'.

Evixir: it's worse than singing about killing one's wife perhaps because it's generally assumed that killing somebody is a bad, extreme action, whereas the danger here is of making a bad action seem everyday. When Jimi Hendrix sings about Joe going to kill his wife the listening audience is made to realise that this is an exceptional situation: songs like "Tapinha" offend because they seem to normalise the violence.
posted by freakytrigger at 8:19 AM on February 28, 2001

What good would not knowing about it have done? I'm personally heartened that, if Brazil is so macho, there's been an outcry over it.

Pop culture outcries are a good indicator of what a society thinks is acceptable or unacceptable - in this case the pendulum seems to have swung towards the 'un'.

Evixir: it's worse than singing about killing one's wife perhaps because it's generally assumed that killing somebody is a bad, extreme action, whereas the danger here is of making a bad action seem everyday. When Jimi Hendrix sings about Joe going to kill his wife the listening audience is made to realise that this is an exceptional situation: songs like "Tapinha" offend because they seem to normalise the violence.
posted by freakytrigger at 8:19 AM on February 28, 2001

Everything old is new again. Apart from the examples cited above, there's always the Rolling Stones: "Under My Thumb"=we're naughty and kinda misogynistic! "Brown Sugar"=we're naughty and kinda racist! Manipulating public outrage to sell records may be cynical and ham-fisted and obvious, but its effectiveness is certainly proven.
posted by Skot at 8:54 AM on February 28, 2001

Manipulating public outrage to sell records may be cynical and ham-fisted and obvious, but its effectiveness is certainly proven.

But, this doesn't sound like a marketing ploy, in contrast to the Stones or Britney.

The worrying thing here is that that suggests it's a spontaneous expression of an attitude towards women that has resonated with the attitude of sections of Brazilian society.
posted by CatherineB at 9:21 AM on February 28, 2001

[Skot] Everything old is new again.

Cranky bastard! Can't the kids at least enjoy the idea that they created something new for a few years? Why do you have to destroy their dreams? What about the children? Won't anyone think of the children?
posted by daveadams at 9:27 AM on February 28, 2001

CatherineB, it sounds exactly like a marketing ploy to me. I'm certainly not trying to trivialize very real problems with attitudes and behavior towards women in society, but the idea that anyone--anyone--could release a song like this and say with a straight face that they don't understand what the problem is or why people don't understand it's a joke is purely bald-faced disingenuousness.

As long as daveadams needs me, there shall forever be Cranky Bastard, Champion of Crushed Dreams!
posted by Skot at 10:45 AM on February 28, 2001

Anyone here hear the popular "booty house" track called "Beat that Bitch with a Bat"?

Booty house is a genre of electronic music that features sexually suggestive or otherwise naughty lyrics over a pounding dance beat.

Oddly enough, girls often call this music their favorite.
posted by brittney at 7:31 PM on February 28, 2001

If "the public is outraged", the song wouldn't get played. No one is forcing the Brazilians to dance. Clearly, *some* people want to listen to the song, and any kind of intervention other than the market, I believe, would be damaging to the concept of individual liberty.

Although, frankly, "Tapa Na Cara" isn't an especially good song; it's much more old-school samba than any type of funk.

Peace,
Kevs
posted by Kevs at 8:42 PM on February 28, 2001

Freakytrigger: I was under the impression that "smack my bitch up" was a reference to getting the woman in question high on "smack". Or something. At least that's what the Prodigy claimed after it was released.
posted by davidgentle at 7:33 PM on March 1, 2001

"Because it promotes the rationalization that "She was asking for it." Domestic abuse sufferers are never asking for it, nor do they deserve it..."

Sigh. I had a feeling when I typed it that somebody was going to take it the wrong way. The song says, according to the article, "When we make love, what does she ask for? S-S-Slap in the face". This is not the figurative "Aww, she was asking for it, that bitch" rationalization. It's a literal request.

...and setting this kind of violence to a catchy dance tune just trivializes the whole situation. Trivializes a woman enjoying S&M? Yes, people should be upset when a something makes domestic violence out to be something less horrible than it really is, but this song does not do that, judging by the article.
posted by crushed at 9:44 PM on March 1, 2001