"Baby, It's Cold Outside"

Love the Holidays! 

One reason that I love the holiday season is for the cultural clashes that surface. Some are more significant than others. My pal, Patricia Dalton Fennell, has produced and does vocals on Chris Pasin’s new holiday album – “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Therefore, this controversy is on my radar.

Read reviews HERE

In an interview by HLN-CNN, Carol Costello was clearly looking for a hot button to use regarding the storm blowing around the holiday classic song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”

The song is a beautiful romantic conversation involving a call-and-response duet with the “cold outside” excuse to prolong the lover’s cuddle. Somehow, early in our 21^st century, the “politically correct” police began to allege that the song is sort of a date-rape anthem.

This may be somewhat of a stretch.

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was composed in 1944 by Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls and How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying). It was first recorded in 1948 and used in the 1949 film, Neptune’s Daughter, a romantic comedy starring Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalbán, Betty Garrett, Keenan Wynn, Xavier Cugat and Mel Blanc. The film was very successful and has been nominated to be one of the American Film Institute’s best musical movies. The song, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

The context of the World War II era and the immediate post-war years might be thought, in retrospect by some, to be “innocent” but I think not. We were involved in the second world war of the century when the song was written and, in the late ‘40s, the film industry was fairly conservative in matters regarding sex due to the restrictions place upon it by the Hays Code.  In fact, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was a replacement for Loesser’s “Slow Boat to China” which was thought inappropriate by the Hays Office.

Projecting our values backwards in time is difficult. There is no denying that the male "caveman" and his romantic methods were crude and abusive. The evolution of male-female relationships has been slow, and sensitivity has always been overpowered by impulse and raw emotion. We like to think of ourselves as intelligent, rational and civilized. But, history has proven that we are not necessarily as advanced as we often think.

My conclusion is that “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is both humorous and romantic. The notion of “date rape” is symptomatic of a glass half-empty. Sure, it can be superficially viewed as date rape, but that requires some analytical assumptions that are based on conjecture rather than solid evidence.

The popularity of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” with artists of today is due to the idyllic nature of romance. There is a very polite interaction going on. Perhaps, that is what is so romantic about it. 

My pal, Patricia, is a thoughtful woman. She not only has a beautiful voice and vocal style, she is no stranger to the issue of sexual misconduct, having provided assessment and treatment for sex offenders, victims, and families in situations involving incest, assault, and school-based sex crimes.

Here are some performances of the song, give a listen and decide how you feel about it.

 

The album Baby, It’s Cold Outside, recorded by Chris Pasin and Friends, is at No. 45 and is this week’s “biggest gainer” on the Jazzweek jazz chart.

See also Stephen Leon's article on Patricia Dalton Fennel's blog, "Live, Care, Create"

Traveling to Find Our Holiday Lights

Over the years it has occurred to me, on more than one occasion that the energy and cost that travel requires may not be so important to a happy and contented life. Friends and family are the fundamental ingredients for a blissful existence. On the other hand seeing other places, and how their inhabitants occupy their environment, does enrich us in ways that are both subtle and profound. How do we know that, if our lives did not include a broad geosocial point of view, we could be as happy? Would there be the same feeling of fulfillment? How would we see ourselves had we not seen and listened to others with different opinions and worldviews? Many of us can blame the failed politics of the Cold War, Vietnam, and our local draft boards for our first exposure to the world beyond the innocence of youth.


Historically, Americans shared a very isolated refuge from the rest of the world. The United States had been formed by people who wanted, or needed, to escape from various forms of oppression. Our isolation was our security. Then along came Darwin and Malthus who upset the applecart with ideas that punctured the romanticized bubbles of closed-minded thinking that we humans are so capable of. Our growing literacy gave us access to greatly expanded ideas, along with a whole lot more. We wanted an a varied diet, better tools, stylish as well as functional clothing, greater variety of all kinds of thinking and stuff. We had united a rather large array of cultures in a rather large area that was rich in resources and ideas that could be traded for the benefit of all. Sharing goods and services throughout the world should be good for everybody, right?


Humans are social animals. We depend on one another for survival – men, women, physical strengths, mental aptitudes, and various combinations of these – we must have learned as cavemen that life is better when we work together. However, the antithesis is that we are not perfect animals. We have flaws and idiosyncrasies. Our ability to work together requires that we meet challenges, and we learn that our failures are very real. Thus, we are insecure about the very concept that makes us stronger. There is a yin and a yang to human existence that is complex and often incomprehensible.

Now, you are asking, during this holiday season, what is this about? The answer is simple. Our family, our friends, our acquaintances, frenemies, adversaries, our travels, and our exposure to others with their different ways of doing things, their ways of coping, are necessary elements in making us all better prepared for life’s challenges. Valuing our relationships in the world we live in is a key to finding real happiness.


It is easy to say that this is something that we’ve learned after decades of living, but that’s not true. We learn as we go and what we learn evolves with time and experience. Knowledge is defined by an array of things – who we have interacted with, when, what else may have been happening in our lives at the time, what we have read and learned before and after, and so much more. It’s complicated.

Most important is the realization that everyone that we encounter along the way has more than the potential to influence us in some way. With every personal association in our lives, we have gained context, as well as perspective. We learn sympathy, empathy, disdain, and respect. We learn that all contacts can turn on a light in our hearts and brains and provide meaning to something else. For this reason, the holiday season gives us an opportunity to reach out and tell others that we owe them our gratitude for making our lives better. The act of doing this makes us happy. Personally, I’m still not feeling content. There is no possible way that I can express my pleasure adequately. Maybe you won’t read this. Maybe you won’t read it in the spirit that it is meant. Maybe I should have realized sooner. Maybe I should have articulated sooner. Maybe next year.


To all the holiday lights in our lives, your brilliance shines every day. May the coming year bring both happiness, contentment, and light to you all.