While students around the country join Emma Sulkowicz’s fight against flawed campus sexual assault policies, a new song by popular duo Play-N-Skillz is glorifying rape culture to the catchy tune of telling women to quit resisting and drink up already. The video, which came out in late October, has already been viewed more than 600,000 times.
Sample lyrics include: “A shot of vodka? I can’t. Tequila? I can’t. After party? I can’t. Girl-on-girl? I can’t. Literally I can’t. Literally I can’t.”
This back and forth banter is repeatedly met with a resounding: “Oh my god. Shut the fuck up!”
On the surface, “Literally, I Can’t” is a weak, and late, attempt to poke fun at an internet-established joke about a woman’s inability to utter concrete sentences to describe their unbridled excitement/disgust/horror/delight. But the result is an incredibly offensive mantra with an equally repugnant video starring fratty dudes in “STFU” varsity jackets, imploring the prude sorority girls of LIC to give in and let loose.
Lovely, no? As for a purely musical assessment, the song is just insufferable. Envisioning bros singing along to it, red Solo cups at the ready, is eye roll-inducing. But when you recall that Sulkowicz is still out there literally carrying the weight of the issue, that’s when it gets truly heartbreaking.