Review Of Sublime Video

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate February 2001

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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