Ben Shapiro, WAP and the banality of the porn generation

In Mike Judge’s 2006 film Idiocracy, an early over-the-top indicator of future Earth’s stupidity is the number-one movie in the country: eight-time Oscar winner Ass, which is nothing but 90 minutes of its title proudly displayed.

It turns out, though, that Judge’s vision of the future was not over-the-top at all. In fact, it was shockingly tame. Idiocracy took place in 2505, but Ass only took until 2020.

The most popular song in America right now is Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s ‘WAP’. The title is short for ‘wet ass pussy’, and the lyrics get even less Shakespearean from there. The song is accompanied by a big-budget, hyper-sexualized music video that has already been viewed on YouTube close to 100 million times in five days.

Ben Shapiro, the Daily Wire founder and podcast host, is being roundly mocked for his disgusted reaction to ‘WAP’, which included his recitation of the song’s lyrics.

Ben Shapiro reads "WAP" lyrics pic.twitter.com/bIVH1Pnwvx

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) August 10, 2020

Shapiro puritanically used the phrase ‘p-word’ rather than ‘pussy’, even though the latter has become a prominent part of US political discourse for four years now. The word even has an associated hat worn by millions of people who attended nationwide protest marches implicitly endorsed by dozens of major corporations.

‘If you listen to the actual show, not just the 1:30 clip, I’m obviously mocking the hell out of the song. The segment is 10 minutes long,’ Shapiro told Cockburn in an email.

‘I’ve been doing straight reads of rap lyrics for years on the show as both tongue-in-cheek mockery of my own nerd-dom and because the lyrics are garbage. One of the more irritating features of Twitter is the determination to ignore the joke in order to laugh at the “unintentional” humor. I said “p-word” because my show appears on the radio. I literally said in the segment that I was bleeping out certain words because I was avoiding FCC violations.’

Someone made a remix of Ben Shapiro singing WAP 😭💀 pic.twitter.com/zC7TSkFW1X

— Sam 😌 (@leftistthot69) August 11, 2020

The attacks on Shapiro by Team Sex are immature and silly. At the same time, Shapiro’s horror is overwrought. The dreadful part of ‘WAP’ isn’t how transgressive it is, but how mainstream and, in some ways, banal it is.

Cockburn is no sheltered prude, so he is well aware that ‘WAP’ is far from the first piece of functionally pornographic popular music. But it may be the first piece of pornographic music to be treated as though it is important and worthy of celebration. Complex explains that the video is groundbreaking for subverting the ‘stereotypical submissive, stay-at-home wife figure’. Evidently, pop music is full of this ‘wife’ stereotype and concomitant paeans to traditional marriage. Who knew?

CNN, meanwhile, writes that Kylie Jenner’s guest appearance in the ‘WAP’ video is controversial, not because of its hypersexualized content, but instead due to ‘the frustration some Black women felt seeing Jenner, a White woman, in a video that seems to celebrate Black women owning their sexuality.’

The sex in Cardi and Megan’s new video is so unsexy, then, that CNN prefers chattering about racial politics instead. When did that last happen during an amorous liaison? Obviously, ‘WAP’ isn’t being celebrated because it’s erotic, and certainly not because it has a compelling point to make. Instead, it’s being praised for the same reason Soviet critics praised socialist realism: because it reflects the pre-approved political ideology of the moment.  In 1990, a teenager might bring out a copy of 2 Live Crew, the rude hip hop group, when his parents weren’t home. In 2021, parents will be having their 11-year-olds listen to ‘WAP’ to ensure they are properly cultured, and properly degraded.

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The irony, of course, is that as American culture drowns in proud hypersexuality, Americans themselves are increasingly unsexed. In 2019, almost a quarter of American young adults, and nearly 30 percent of young men, hadn’t had sex in the past year, and a year of coronavirus lockdowns are unlikely to encourage further coupling. As actual physical intimacy vanishes, though, young people have become ever-more-avid consumers of ever-more-extreme pornography, with some becoming so addicted they seek psychiatric help.

‘WAP’ isn’t a bold declaration of proud, independent female sexuality. It’s a fight song for the porn generation, a blue-check production to which you are required to sing along.