Someone Needs to Tell Maroon 5 There's Nothing Sexy About Sexual Harassment

It seems Maroon 5 has been taking the “How to Terrify Women” class at the Robin Thicke School of Music. In the band’s latest song, Animals, lead singer and  “sexiest” creepster alive Adam Levine sings about “preying” on women while promising to “hunt you down” and “eat you alive”. (I don’t think he means this in the good way.)

You might think, given all the international focus on violence against women and sexual assault of late, that one of the biggest musical acts in the world might not be that into writing, releasing and promoting a “hit” that tries to make terrorizing women seem “sexy”. But instead of considering the message they’re sending to the  3.4m people who report being stalked in the US alone, the band doubled down and made a video even more disturbing than the song.

In the new music video, Levine stars as a sociopathic stalker who works as a butcher. (At least he’s got a job, eh, ladies?!) The  famously annoying singer – who we know is supposed to be crazy because he’s wearing standard-issue serial killer glasses – skulks in dark alleys to take pictures of an unsuspecting woman, going as far as breaking into the apartment of his “loved one” and laying next to her as she sleeps. This woman, by the way, is played by Levine’s new  wife, the Victoria’s Secret supermodel Behati Prinsloo.

In between shots of Prinsloo seductively stripping, we’re treated to images of Levine, shirtless, in a meat truck, where he proceeds to play with, punch and hug said meat. (We get it, you like women/meat!) After Levine’s “character” is rejected by the woman in a nightclub, he fantasizes about having sex with her in a cascade of blood.

And who said romance is dead?

I’m sure Levine and his bandmates think they’ve done something edgy here – ooh, so dark! – but there is nothing “alternative” about showing women being stalked, hunted, raped or killed because it’s something that  happens every damn day.

What’s particularly disturbing about Animals is that the song’s message – that men are “animals” with no self control – implies there is nothing we can do about issues of sexual violence. If sexual predators are “animals”, or “crazy”, than it absolves us of social responsibility ... because you can’t control an animal, amiright? It’s just in their nature. (A fairly insulting vision of male sexuality, I must say.)

Maroon 5’s Animals also comes on the heels of  a Time article from professional provocateur Camille Paglia, who argued, apparently in all seriousness, that a culture that condones and glamorizes violence against women isn’t the problem - “evil” is. “Young women do not see the animal eyes glowing at them in the dark,” she wrote.

But men aren’t animals, and neither are rapists or stalkers – they’re people. People we’ve raised, people who have grown up seeing “sexy” images of battered women, people who have been brought up to think that women’s sole purpose to be available to them. You can call that “evil”, I suppose, but it’s a man-made wrong no matter what you name it.

Levine sings that “you can run free ... but you can’t stay away from me.” But we can. And we probably should.