Programme - it was alright in the 70's FUCKING HELL!

[PatButchersLostEaring]

Anyone else watching this and feeling utterly shocked that it was only 40ish years ago?

There was Lynda Bellingham and Jenny Eclair.

Fair point on the actresses maybe actually being older than 16.

It was channel 5 so wouldn't expect an in-depth balanced view particularly.

I grew up in the 70s, so I'll watch it, probably cringing the whole time. It really was a different world in many ways, every ism you can think of ran rampant.

Saw thread title and logged on to say exactly the same as SirChenjin. Infact, I had been thinking of starting a similar thread myself ... it's great that paedophilia and sexism are not tittered at on television now.

But we have we actually progressed?

Now we have Kim Kardashian's arse, Miley Cyrus's everything, Robin Thicke's backing singers naked and wanting their arseholes violated, extreme violent pornography and videos of people being beheaded in the name of religion all available within a couple of seconds on the internet.

So that's better then?

It was Channel 4.

I couldn't really take to the woman who played the randy god daughter.

God yes, the goddaughter. Nowadays if we encountered someone behaving like that, we'd presume they'd been groomed.

I agree with Mintyy, have we really come so far? I don't think so.

Hmm... and then there's Brand and Ross and that phone call, and Celebrity Juice, and the horrible "jokes" that nasty git made about Katie Price's son... oh, and singers who look and act like porn stars on stage. I wonder how people will look back on us in 40 or 50 years?

Yes I was left wondering how much we have really moved on.

At least we could all watch top of the pops without it being some sort of soft porn fest.

Christ I can't let my little girls watch MTV in case they start bloody twerking or whatever .

I don't think much has changed really

Well, I look at those latest Kim woman photos and I clutch me pearls! Wrong on so many levels. There is this woman, all oiled up, she's got an artificially enhanced arse, silicone boobs, can hardly move her face for botox, then there's all the other stuff going on... she's pointing her arse at the camera like one of those monkeys that go red when on heat. And if that objectification and providing of wank fodder for the simple minded isn't enough... in reality she's a rather dumpy little individual wearing spanx. (I have nothing against dumpy individuals wearing spanx, sometimes I am one!). So oh yes, to give the simple-minded a completely unrealistic view of what's normal in a body, she's been photoshopped to have a body less in proportion than Barbie.
Don't get me started on Rhianna.
Seriously though, I think that as long as we've got this sort of image being pushed at us from all angles we haven't actually developed very far at all. All we've done is change the nasty.

I don't think we should be congratulating ourselves too much TBH. As others have mentioned, much worse material involving the objectification of women is readily available online these days. Not to mention the casual violence on television. And the rigid gender stereotypes which seem to be becoming worse, not better.

"the idea that the girls at the school would be gagging for the young doctor is an old perv's fantasy rather than realistic. I really felt that they should have been pointing that out just as explicitly."

Yes and No. I recall there being an attitude that, if one was of dating age, age limits on who you might date largely depended on how good a catch the man was perceived to be. At 17, i was allowed to date a med student, in the US, he would have been 24 or 25. I (nor my friends) wouldn't be able to date men that age in general, but he was going to be a doctor! This was in 1982.

Back it up to a decade to when marrying well was even more expected the teenager gagging for a young doctor is even more likely. In 1961 when my aunt began college at 17, many women hoped to get their MRS degree as soon as possible. College seniors, law students and medical residents were top prey being almost employed, and if getting to know them brought you in contact with men another year or two older and actually employed, so much the better for your prospects.

So, depending on the girls in question, in the 1970s their thinking could have been on that continuum. Some girls would not have been interested in a young doctor as he would be too old. But others would be thinking that dating a MAN with a profession was their best plan.

I found some of the commenting along the lines of "Why did women put up with that, then?" to be patronising, tbh. (I was born 1961). I remember seeing beauty pageants on TV in the early- mid 70s, and saying at the time it was a vile cattle market. I grew up in Leeds at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper. Some of the younger victims were around my age. It literally felt dangerous to be female and many of us, even very young women, felt fucking angry.

We did complain. We did hate it. But no-one listened.

TV in the 70's was awful in its view of women. It was exploitative and plainly nasty tbh. But I don't think things have really changed for the better.

Now the casual sexual violence of modern music and the easy availability of violent porn is desensitising young men and giving them a completely skewed idea of women and sexual relationships; the attitude of young men like Ched Evens and his view of what is an acceptable way to treat women is pretty chilling, and I'm not sure his attitude is at all rare.

Sexism, racism and the exploitation of women were all more overt in the 70s it's true, but make no mistake, these things are still very much alive and kicking.

Not much has changed, it's more of the same just in an altered state.

Very easy for 30/40 year olds to sit here and rubbish the 70's. Is today really that much better? In the 70's very very little nudity on TV, nowadays Channels 4 & 5 almost nightly show programmes one step up from porn. Today's TV people should hang their heads in shame at shows like Geordie Shore and the Valleys. Also the Inbetweeners is one of the most popular programs around with its gratuitous sexual references that objectify women and the constant swearing that is just taken as the norm.
You only have to look at the topics discussed in teenage magazines nowadays compared to the 70's to see where society is now.
Perhaps the 'critics' being asked for their views last night should think about the phrase 'get your own house in order first' before criticising.

Bikket I'm with you (born in the 50s). We thought the 1970s were quite liberated as far as women were concerned. The 1960s were far worse. Don't believe all you hear about the 1960s being all drugs, hippies and "summer of love"

With hindsight it's all cringeworthy and in places vomit inducing but I can only say that most of it didn't seem so at the time (I was in my 20s in the 1970s and newly married). The Miss World contest was seen as (and called) a cattle market but Benny Hill was deemed OK (altho I found him singularly unfunny). BTW Hill in the 1960s had done some seriously funny "observational " comedy shows. It seems he found in the 1970s that chase scenes with women in lingerie get higher ratings and require less (if any) thought.

BTW please don't anybody think I'm defending the situation in the 1970s and how it was shown on TV. I'm not.

As posters have said its very easy to look back at this and (in hindsight) point out how bad it was. I find the "ironic displeasure" (love the term) as bad as the programmes that were on.

Bu there is a lot of things out there (many posted) that are equally as bad.

It's different now, but not better really.
What are child pageants all about? 30 / 40 years ago we looked in horror at child pageants in the USA, now they are here.

Cheerleading is taught as a sport for girls in our schools.
Pole dancing is taught as a sport in some schools- though obviously the sexual connotations to that are all in my perverted mind.
As others have said we have Rhianna, Miley and many more acting as role models for our girls.

Hmm, very selectively picked and presented. One can't excuse the content though and times have really moved on in terms of enlightenment even in the last decade.

What it would be really good to see on TV is a series that put current tastelessness under the spotlight. That awful Keith Lemon prog, for example. Yes it is knowingly distasteful and shocking but is that really any better than what was on the 70s prog.

My other top picks of current stuff that will be considered amazingly bad taste by future generations are 1. Crimewatch 2. Embarrasing bodies 3. Snog, marry, avoid 4. dating shows 5. super violent and exploitatative crime stuff - scandi, linda la plante etc.

Top thing they will find shocking - women and men shaving all hair off intimate parts and shaving arm hair (the latter being weird even now when you think about it)

I wonder what will people think in 40 years time when they look back at things that we currently accept without question?

Impossible to predict exactly what but guaranteed (imo) that some things which we are all just fine about, don't even question or stop to consider will seem utterly untenable in 40 odd years time.

So it won't be internet porn, or dangerous dogs, it will be something which is right now just not on the radar ?

Joffrey: "We did complain. We did hate it. But no-one listened."

Oh, indeed, Joffrey. Not only did they not listen but they told us we had no sense of humour, we were all ugly bra-burners who couldn't get a man and it was only a bit of fun, after all.

Just like today, in fact.

Windy Miller - we have the DVD. The clip failed to show that Johnathon doesn't have a drink because he is driving which was probably quite enlightened for those days. Also, the full episode is trying to educate about the problem with drinking so the really shocking thing is that this was for a preschool audience whom we might not expect to need to know such things for a while longer!

Then again - Shrek etc has a bit for the parents. Maybe that is what is going on.

Also - it's not from the 70s, it's 1966. Not that that makes a lot of difference plus they were showing it in the 70s.