Jesus.
What can I say about Piqued Jacks?
I mean, it’s not their fault that I have to link to a washed-out video from a pre-party because it’s still got better audio than the actual national final performance from San Marino.
Speaking of San Marino, how about we review their entrant from last year, Achille Lauro’s Stripper?
This (actually very smart) performance had:
- Repeated invocations of ‘Like A Virgin’, sex toys, and Playboy
- A man in a see-through glitter body stocking
- Two performers in cages
- A kiss on stage
- The singer writhing on a large mechanical bull
And somehow, this year’s representatives from San Marino manage to be even sleazier while remaining fully dressed.
Like An Animal embodies a specific idea of erotic content that I can pinpoint to the 1990s. They’re trying to be the eroticism of the Red Shoe Diaries or that scene in Basic Instinct or the movie Wild Things. Except that none of those things are really erotic, when viewed from the lens of today.
They’re all kind of grubby and titillating and the brainchild of a bunch of men who wrap up their desire to see boobies in female empowerment messages. There’s an undertone to this kind of content that sex is about a predator-prey relationship, rather than something that consenting adults do to feel good.*
Do you know why we’re getting a lot of documentaries these days about the exploitation of Britney and Pam Anderson and Brooke Shields? Because this type of eroticism was designed to use women and then spit them out.
And maybe Piqued Jacks aren’t bringing any of this at all to the song. Maybe they were just sitting around and trying to come up with different ways to put animals in a song.
But the whole effect is super sleazy. This is a song that would be played in a New Jersey strip club. Or as the soundtrack to a bikini car wash. Or as the end credits to one of the movies mentioned above. And I just hope we’d have moved beyond seeing women as prey to be caught and devoured and won. It’s just … ick.
*if that’s your thing, and you can find consenting adults with whom to do this predator/prey kind of thing, good for you! But it’s certainly not for everyone.
dudepoints.fun 