Review Of Sublime Video Essay, Research Paper
The music
video that I chose to write my paper on, is called "Date
Rape" and it is performed by Sublime. I’ve seen the video
plenty of times and I taped it back in 1993 when I first got
their album 40 oz. to Freedom. The song is about a man
that picks up a lady in a bar and rapes her. He winds up
going to court and the judge finds that, "he was full of shit,
and he gave him twenty-five years." Then it talks about the
man going to jail and even getting "butt raped by a large
inmate." The video is much like a movie in the way that it is
displayed. As the song goes on and on the video
accompanies the lyrics by showing what the man looked
like (which in the song was with "a double chin and a
plastic smile"). At the beginning, the video shows the man
go into the bar and getting the attention of the lady. He
convinces her to take a ride in his van and forces her to
succumb to his will by saying, "if it wasn’t for date rape I’d
never get laid." After he is finished he lets her out and she
files a police report and then "she took the guy’s ass to
court." She goes to court and low and behold, the judge is
the great Ron Jeremy (of porn fame). Ron sentences the
man to twenty-five years of imprisonment and later it shows
a depiction of the guy being raped in prison. The video says
a great deal for women and actually won a couple of
awards for their "anti-rape message." Although Sublime’s
lead singer, Brad, claims that it was just a song he wrote
when he was high, it received a rather large acceptance by
many women’s groups. The video sends this message out
to the viewer as well. Any man that will rape a woman will
almost definitely hate getting butt slammed in jail by a large
inmate. This is truly a great music video that not only gives
a meaningful message to the audience, but accompanies the
song very well. Unfortunately, there will not be anymore
videos by Sublime because of their lead singer’s death three
months ago. Although Bradley may be dead, he and his
band-mates have left behind a brilliant video with a
powerful message: don’t rape, or you’ll get butt-slammed.
Courtesy of chew (1994) University of Maryland