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