#MeToo did not exist in 1986. Sexual harassment did. (Which is not to suggest that #MeToo ended sexual harassment, or even that #MeToo ended sexual harassment in the middle of televised interviews — ask Mel B, who would no doubt say that it is just as hard to be a black woman in pop music and on TV as it was in the eighties, give or take.) It is gratifying that this clip has the title “Serge Gainsbourg Vs Whitney Houston,” if only because “Vs.” makes it less depressing. “I want to fuck her,” Serge slurs to the host, as if the goddess to his right were deaf and dumb and maybe literally inanimate, and as if he had anything resembling a chance; then, as if this were not already bad enough, he reaches out and actually tries to touch her hair. Houston acts amused, in the way that women act ‘amused’ when really they’re appalled. She would later tell Variety that she could not believe a program like this could exist, that a woman could be treated like this live on television and that nobody would say a single thing in her defense. "Are you sure you're not drunk?" she asks Gainsbourg. "You've got to be!" The subtext, I think, is: “to think I’d actually fuck you.” Even in a moment of humiliation, my God, there is nobody more luminous than Whitney — watch this and try not to miss her. You can’t; it’s impossible.