Originally Posted by Telegraph Blogs
When it comes to being zealously intolerant of anything remotely saucy, student unions put even the stiffest, most archaic religious institutions to shame. In recent years unions around the UK have banned everything from Eminem songs to The Sun to Zionist speakers, lest students' pristine, childlike minds be permanently corrupted by anything so foul as witty rap, Page 3, or a man saying – horror of horrors – that Israel is not such a terrible place. Why there hasn't been a student uprising against this top-down infantilisation, against this Mary Whitehouse-style covering of students' eyes and ears by joy-loathing, debate-allergic union reps, is one of the great mysteries of modern times.
Now, Edinburgh University's student association has banned the best pop song of the year so far – Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines – from being played anywhere in uni. As part of its policy to "End Rape Culture and Lad Banter" on campus, it has squished Blurred Lines on the basis that it "promotes an unhealthy attitude toward sex and consent".
I genuinely can't decide what is the most depressing aspect of this sad act of petty censorship: the fact that Edinburgh's student association has an actual policy to "end lad banter", as if unions have the right to tell students how they should speak; or the fact that student unions now consider their male charges to be so morally fickle, so animalistically automaton, that they think one song might be enough to push them towards committing rape; or the fact that Edinburgh's students have been denied the basic human right to twerk to a song that has been No1 in 40 countries and which is loved by youth everywhere (with no evidence that it has caused any global spike in rape).
Like every censor in history, from Torquemada to the Twittermob, Edinburgh's student union is driven partly by prudish disdain for certain words and images, but more profoundly by a fear of what impact those words and images will have on certain people's putty-like, impressionable minds. The motor of censorship is always a misanthropic fear of the unpredictable mob, a super-snooty concern that some people – Them, not Us, obviously – are so bereft of moral conscience and so weak-willed that one video nasty might be enough to turn them murderous or one glimpse of a Page 3 girl might forever warp their view of womankind. So it is at Edinburgh Uni, where the ban on Blurred Lines seems driven by a view of male students as latent robotic rapists, whose brutish instincts might be unleashed as soon as they hear the funky opening beats of Blurred Lines.
Of course, Edinburgh's ban comes after six months of non-stop hysteria over Blurred Lines. No other song of recent times has attracted as much venom and ire as this one, particularly from feminists, who have branded it wicked, misogynistic and – get this – potentially damaging to the "wellbeing of half of the global population".
I find this shrill campaigning against Blurred Lines depressing, because what it's really saying is this: there is no area of life that can be free of PC strictures. Not even pop music. It is one thing to ask that people speak respectfully and correctly at work, in school, and in professional public engagements – I agree with that. But surely there can still exist realms of life where we can shake off the strictures and speak foully, gruffly, incorrectly, for thrills or larks? Surely popular music – that one-time arena of rebellion against social mores and experimentation with new forms of expression – doesn't have to comply to the same codes of thought and conduct we'd expect when at a board meeting or talking to school kids? Actually, it seems it does. Just as football fans in rowdy stadiums are increasingly being asked to speak as if they were taking tea with Edith Sitwell, so pop music makers are now called upon the send the "correct" message about women, gender, sexual equality and speech codes.
I'm sorry, but if you look to popular music for moral guidance, you're an idiot. That's not what it's for. Its aim should be nothing more than to make you hum, sing, smile, tap your toes, and maybe even swing your pants. Blurred Lines does that in spades and that is the only basis on which it should be judged. Leave it – and our pop and private lives more broadly – alone.
