Hello, Fluffsters!

I’ve been thinking about the fox song that was talked about in yesterday’s post, and I realized I may have been wrong about it.

Maybe. In fact, it might actually be fairly offensive, when you stop to think about it.

What? No! That is to say, I’m not offended by “the fox song insulting my intelligence.”

On the contrary, it just communicates at a brainier level than most expect.

I don’t care.

Here’s why I think this song is potentially offensive: after thinking about it, I realized that foxes are typically thought of as introverted type creatures. According to wikipedia, they typically live alone.

Many of the other animals mentioned throughout the song (dogs, cows, elephants, and birds, for example) live in groups. By using the groupish animals as a type of counterexample, the composers are clearly setting this song up as a contrast between two groups: Extroverts (group lovers), versus introverts (solitary types).

Now, that simple classification itself isn’t too much of a problem. As I’ve ranted about earlier, people tend to try to put others into boxes. It’s annoying, but that’s not the purpose of this rant.

No. The purpose of this rant is threefold, because the song can be seen as insulting both introverts and extroverts. And animals.

Actually, Fluffy, it’s not that complicated. Here is my analysis:

How The Fox Song Can Offend Animals.

As I mentioned earlier in the post, the singer goes through and talks about different types of animals, and what they say. He then goes on to talk exclusively about the fox. This dismissal doesn’t qualify as equal opportunity for all animals. In fact, there are a number of animals he doesn’t even mention that have equally perplexing noises, or lack thereof. What about the giraffe, for example? Why don’t they have their own song? Or chorus line? And how about parrots, too? They’re great imitators- what are their natural noises? Does anyone truly know? How do we know that parrots’ natural noises haven’t been tainted by child birth? But do they even get mentioned? No!

And then the fox itself. The artist doesn’t even try to be reasonable with what the fox might say. Furthermore, they use what must be a computer generated fox to indicate what they really think sound like. All foxes that watch that video will likely feel insulted.

And then there’s the introvert/extrovert aspect.

Why the fox song might upset extroverts.

Extroverts. They love groups and attention, right? Well here, they only get a second on camera. Tops. They’re introduced, given a single line, and then dismissed. This is unfair. Why can’t extroverts have more camera time?

Also, they’re being so casually dismissed. By indicating that we know what the extroverted animals say, that says we know all that we need to about those creatures. If you further that argument to extroverts in general, you’re indicating that you know exactly what an extrovert is going to say all the time, and that it doesn’t matter! That’s very offensive! It also indicates that what people say is all that matters. Well, whatever happened to “actions speak louder than words,” Mr. Ylvis?

Ylvis also presents foxes as mysterious, and therefore awesome. The others are presented as unmysterious, and therefore uninteresting.

But that’s not all.

Why the song could offend introverts.

The entire song is about trying to get someone (who doesn’t want to say anything) to speak.

By choosing a fox, which is one of the more introverted type of animals, Ylvis plainly decided to make this a metaphor for all introverts.

That means that all the artist says about foxes is meant to apply to introverts.

So when Ylvis sings “What does the fox say?”, he’s actually saying “What do introverts say?”

Now, on the surface this doesn’t appear to be an entirely offensive question. But upon deeper analysis, the true intent can be seen, and thus indicate the potentially malicious idea behind this. In reality, there are at least two problems behind this question.

The first, and the most obvious one, is the inherent idea that Ylvis deserves to know what you’re saying. He’s not saying, “please, dear introverts, would you tell me what you’re thinking? Or what you’d like to say?” No. Instead he’s writing a song, comparing introverts to a single type of animal, demanding to know what introverts are saying. (Side note: That also seems to imply that he thinks introverts speak an entirely different language. Thanks a lot.)

The next problem, and one that can only be understood by the greater context of the song, is the indication that all introverts think exactly alike. The analysis here is also fairly straightforward. The composer uses many different types of extroverted animals, all of which say something different. Now, the composer just uses a single fox, to represent all the shy introverted people. He clearly thinks they must all say the same thing.

That’s not all, though. Oh, no.

The artist then tries to come up with ideas for what the introverts foxes might say. Or so they claim. In reality, can anyone deny that they’re just using this as an opportunity to make fun of the quiet folks, by making up loud obnoxious things that introverts clearly would not say, and are thus trying to bully all quiet people into conforming to the artist’s standards?

As I said, the song could easily be considered offensive.

Of course I don’t! I just wanted to rant about it in a way that you’d be forced to defend the song.

Funny, though. And it worked, didn’t it? You did claim the song wasn’t actually that bad.

Anyways, Fluffsters, happy Monday! I hope you have a good one.