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?

as I replied on the other thread (in Telly Addicts) less has changed than we might think. At least we weren't smug about it in the 1970s. Girls still need to learn that modelling and shrieking on reality shows are NOT something to which to aspire.

interesting to note differing standards of beauty; the contestants in the parades were slim but not skeletal and there were no silicon boobs. Also the swimsuits were cut to cover normal pubic hair, so I assume they didn't have to remove it all.

the smoking thing was startling, but Windy Miller and his cider was a bit OTT.

Miss World is still going!!

Depressingly similar imho.
The same underlying reasons - male domination of the media, exploitation of the powerless for entertainment, sexism, racism and homophobia etc still running rampant but now often oh so cleverly disguised. We may not use openly racist / sexist / homophobic language but so many of the values that are currently promoted via the media all mentioned upthread are identical.
depressing, depressing, depressing.

..so our job is to be smarter, and to teach our children to be smarter.

nothing stopping that.

I was 20 in 1978 and remember all this dreadful rubbish as exactly that. Brought up in a very equality focussed household and no, not everyone thought this was ok even then.

We certainly didn't watch Carry On films (they were seen as very sexist) or programmes such as "Love Thy Neighbour" (dreadful racism and not to be tolerated), so it wasn't all acceptable even then. Thank goodness.

I watched it with DH and we were both at all the outrage - we haven't really progressed at all have we?

Yes, I can't decide whether it is a good thing that the world has moved on so far people, even if they are still racist, homophobic, misogynistic, at least now know they have to pretend it's unacceptable and shut up - or whether we have still failed to tackle those issues..?

I've often thought my generation's legacy is 'PC-ness' - that we rejected attitudes our parents and grandparents accepted as OK, and now our PC ness is the norm and that is one good thing we have done. But a few posts here are thought provoking and have made me wonder whether we succeeded at all? UKIP, shows like TOWIE and Geordie Shore, and the patronising attitude you sometimes detect to gay people (one example I can think of my gay son went to my niece's wedding and was immeidately 'adopted' by the groom's rather square, middle aged bank manager's wife, saying "I have a lesbian friend. Now with you I have the full set" which I found vile).. all these things make you wonder if we haven't just sent the racism, sexism, homophobia into new and different channels...

It was an excuse to run footage of girls' bums while pretending it was social commentary.

The clue was having Rod Liddle talking about sexism and Matt Lucas narrating.

Joffrey I agree. I think when later ages look back at the role of 'PC' in our culture it will bear comparison with the way the Victorians were about sex. Don't mention it, ostracise anyone who even hints at it, but underneath all the posturing and hypocrisy there's a thriving culture of prostitution and sexual deviance.

IMO for most people PC sentiments are mostly skin-deep and about appearing moral, rather than really believing it. Programmes like this just play into that fiction, by pointing in mock-horror at the past so as to imply that we're really all so much more enlightened now.

I have a lesbian friend. Now with you I have the full set" which I found vile

I have a very dear friend of 30 years who's a little like that. At one of her parties about 20 years ago I looked around and realised that DH and I represented the white, heterosexual, married, meat-eating contingent in her friendship circle.

She's a little right-on. But she's still my dear friend.

OThe Agree about PC being skin deep (if that) for many people and appearance is all. That's what pisses me off about it. Not the "PC gone mad" brigade but the fact that so many people seem to have been fooled in to believing that if someone says the "right thing" it must mean they are behaving that way.

TobyJugg 'twas ever thus, I suspect. It doesn't matter if the vehicle for moral posturing is religion, sexuality or 'equalities', for a certain majority percentage of people the content is less important than the ability to make yourself look good and others bad, just by saying the 'right' things and denouncing people who get the words or gestures wrong.

It's this more than anything that makes me roll my eyes at those smug types who believe we're so much more enlightened now than in previous ages.

IMO the people on MN who descend on another poster and torch them for getting PC wording wrong are the very same people who, in the Victorian era, would have hissed at other women in the street for showing too much ankle.

It is depressing interesting isn't it - can't watch some of the stuff from that era, it's too racist/sexist/homophobic whatever now, but can still show barely dressed women squatting and thrusting in what purports to be a music video - some of which are almost soft porn! Although what I think of as soft porn now is very very very soft porn, given what levels that has reached. :(

I loved the Carry On films when I was a child, and the Doctor films - but watching them now, it's shocking to the adult me what was considered acceptable!

Today I was talking to DH about behaviour his Dad would have considered acceptable - his Dad and mine were born in the same year and both from similar backgrounds, but his Dad died years ago - and he agreed that some of the things he thinks it's ok for Ds1 to do, his Dad wouldn't have dreamt of allowing. But then his Dad used to use a belt on him if he misbehaved, and that was "normal" back then - my Dad never used a belt but would smack us, and that was "normal" too. But what DH's Dad did would now be considered a criminal act (as it should!) - and we both agreed that if either of us should sufficiently lose the plot to inflict anything like that on our boys then the other one would be calling the police! Of course we're never going to need to do that unless one of us actually loses our mind, the mere thought is horrifying!

When I read stuff on here from people justifying the '70s I wonder.

Like smacking, for instance.

My mother was born in 1923. My father in 1918. I grew up in the '60s and '70s. I cannot ever remember being smacked and I don't remember my brother and sister being smacked either. I can't say it never happened, but I cannot remember it.

We were reasoned with. Sometimes very strongly. I've read some posters ridiculing that; I conclude that their powers of reason or imagination aren't as good as my parents'. And maybe when I was really small I was removed from the situation, and so did my my mum, until we'd both calmed down.

My parents weren't weird childcare revolutionaries. Hitting their children, which is what smacking is, was just not something they did and in my mother's case, wasn't something her father, born in the late 19th century and widowed with four young children to bring up and not much money to do it on, did either.

limited - are you suggesting that I'm justifying the smacking?

We haven't moved on much at all really.

Sexuality of wimmin is just used in a more covert way.

I watched it with DH (52), DD (17) and DS (13). It was enlightening for DD as she's slightly obsessed with the 70s, particularly the music and thinks that it must have been a fantastic time to grow up in, which on some levels it was, but in many others, a big no no. She was in shock at the "rape" references and the casual peado stuff. Further episodes are illustrating homophobia and racism and I'm planning on watching them with the family to let them see how difficult it was to be anything other than white, middle class and hetero at that time.

...My parents were born in 1922 and 1924 and were working class but I vividly remember watching an episode of On The Buses and my Dad being horrified at the sexual references. He ended up pulling the plug out of the telly and storming out of the room, he had a pathological hatred of Jimmy Savile as well. Quite switched on, my old Dad.

limitedperiodonly, yes, I was not smacked by my parents, don't think they were either as children.

Having grown up in the 70's nothing has changed much really.
I think we shout about it a lot more now, whereas then we just took it as the way it was.
Women everywhere weren't complaining about their lot as many feminists would have us believe, most were happy with the status quo.
Throughout history it was the middle classes that campaigned for better and fairer society, the working class were busy working.
It is good that we seem to be heading in the right direction and the isms of the past are becoming less acceptable to some, but when you look deeply enough its the same shit but a different smell.

I grew up in the 70s and remember:
a) every one of my peers got smacked from time to time (and some probably were hit all the time
b) everyone had a 'drinks cabinet'
c) everyone got excited when someone was visiting 'the continent' and people would go out with huge lists of requests for duty free fags and booze.

d) there was always a barking stray dog somewhere on your way to school and at seven years old it was scary to walk past on your own

e) there were always strange folk about - I remember one old man you used to smoke roll ups while crouching on one knee by a wall in the high st. I think he was an old soldier - no one batted an eyelid.

But yes it's weird to see times you lived through carefully edited and analysed by people you get than yourself. As if they were exotic.

OTheHugeManatee Not all 1960s/70s TV was crap. I recall a documentary about South Africa - then in the grip of apartheid when they talked to an old man who'd fought in the Boer War 60 years earlier. He was disgusted by the treatment of the black population, the black population was created equal in the eyes of God the same as the whites and to treat the black population as 2nd class citizens was a disgrace.

Only he didn't say "the black population" he said another word which I won't type. He was fiercely anti-apartheid but, being a Victorian, he used a Victorian word. One wonders if he'd even get a hearing today.

I mean younger than yourself

limited - are you suggesting that I'm justifying the smacking?

I'm not thumbwitch, and for what it's worth, I wouldn't do that for a minute with you. I respect your posts.

I had, and always do have another poster in mind whenever the smacking vs reasoning debate comes up, but it wouldn't be fair to name her. I don't think I've ever engaged with her on the subject. What works for her is fine. She's certainly not my idea of a child abuser, she just has a different approach.

But whenever I read her posts I do always think: 'There is another way, you know, and my parents, who were old enough to be your great-grandparents did it.'

In regards to this, I'm just struck by the idea that people were so unenlightened in the '70s.

They weren't, and neither were they in my parents' living memory and therefore I guess for generations before that.

Maybe it's because some of the people who are posting are younger than me.

That's all.

Not all stuff from the 70s was bad.

I love Dave Allen His show in the 70s Dave Allen At Large was very funny and insightful and it really stood out amongst the other stuff that was on tv at the time. He also poked fun at and questioned the misogyny in the Catholic Church. Without him we wouldnt have had Father Ted IMO Dave Allen was quite ahead of his time. He was also an investigative journalist and did a few documentaries too.

i agree that in some cases tv is worse today Celebrity Juice all the reality crap and even though its been cancelled now, ITV2 still commisioned Dapper Laughs in the first place. As someone mentioned earlier the expectations of women re beauty standards are worse now.

In the 1960s there was an innovative thought provoking drama called Cathy Come Home about poverty and homelessness.

And what do we have now?! How to Get a Council House and Benefits Street. Things have in some ways changed for the worse. And im 41 btw.