To feel shocked about this on a comedy programme?

[girlfriend44]

Regarding Butterflies the comedy series written by Carla Lane in the late 70s.

It's on I player at the moment. I watched an episode and she was talking to herself loudly about being bored, and feeling taken for granted in her marriage
She expressed quite loudly that she wanted to be raped.

Should a woman ever write that into a script or was it more acceptable to say that back then?
I cannot imagine it in a script today.

In the same vein I recently revisited a book by an author I love - more for for herself than her writing, if I’m honest, because she strikes me as someone who’s warm and witty and wise. Her stuff is generally light-hearted and this was an early one from 2006. I actually had to look at the publication date because there was a throwaway reference in it that stopped me in my tracks, it was so fucking awful and inappropriate and not funny in any way, shape or form.

I don’t believe it’s something she’d write today, and if it was brought to her attention I think she’d be mortified. But if you start from the assumption that she was not somehow a more terrible person when she wrote it, and that she wasn’t intentionally trying to shock or appear morally bankrupt, you have to assume it was deemed appropriate ‘humour’ at the time, by her, her editor, her publisher and her readers. And this was not that long ago!

People get educated and sensibilities change, hopefully for the better. The grim fucking stuff that passed for entertainment in the past can only serve - as with all historical artefacts - as a reflection of the times in which it was created.

Was rape ok then. I see.

It's interesting that Wendy Craig herself has commented on it.

I watched this when it was first on TV. I don't remember the 'rape' episode, but it's almost certain 'ravished' was meant, and also that the heroine wants something, anything to happen to end her total boredom (I came across a similar desire in Joan Russ's 'Extraordinary People', also written in the 70s).

'Butterflies' was a groundbreaking series (my ex-DH got quite annoyed with it) showing a woman attempting to take her life into her own hands and not be forever fitting in with what was expected - she plays with having an affair. Other sitcoms at the time included 'Ever Decreasing Circles' in which Richard Bryers played himself (as usual) with a downtrodden wife who also fantasizes about having an affair, and 'The Good Life',which depticts a marriage where the wife's wishes are often subordinated to her husband (it's R. Bryers again) - a revealing episode was when the wife tears her only decent dress and Bryers tells her it doesn't matter as they never go anywhere that needs more than a pair of jeans and an old jumper.
They are painful to watch now because they were showing the lives of women who were mid-to-late-thirties who were articulate but without any options - only M/C women, of course, working-class rarely done and always badly (ditto now). Those lives were entirely built round their husbands and children, with no outlets to be themselves. 'Butterflies' was different in that the wife searches for options whereas the others mostly do not.
Those sitcoms made us sit up and think. Many women of my generation came to the same conclusion as I did: if I can earn my own money then what am I doing in an increasingly difficult marriage? We were brought to those conclusions not just by consciousness-raising groups (pretty thin on the ground outside universities) but by sitcoms like 'Butterflies'. None of the women in the sitcoms ever did have an affair but the women who watched decided they were not going to be stuck in a marriage like those depicted (all too realistically) and went out to make their own way. We owe Carla Lane that.

Rape was not ok in the 70s but it was frequently disbelieved and rape victims were treated appallingly. What did Wendy Craig say?

All this it was back in the day, acceptable then bla bla bla. I was a child of that time, i did not think it was okay, i did not think love thy neighbour was okay, I watched TOTP and knew something was off.

I knew Jimmy Savville was a weird old guy on TOTP i knew Gary glitter was off.

I knew it was all shit.

Punk came along thank fuck.

Do we know this for certain?

Dear god, are they still showing that episode? My mum wrote in and complained about that in the 80s.

I am with you that the use of "rape" is shocking
However the whole bloody programme was shocking
How Carla Lane has been held up as someone giving women a voice is beyond me.
In Butterflies Wendy Craig played an absolute drip of a woman relentlessly mocked by her sons and others for being dopey disorganized and ineffectual while pining after anything that was not her husband in trousers

In the Liverbirds it was all mock shock at innuendo and boob jiggling

In Bread the mother was a doormat and the daughter a slapper

It was in the era however of Benny Hill, Terry and June, Love Thy Neighbour, till death us do part and other similarly racist sexist shite

Also the black and white minstrel show, and comedians like Bernard Manning

Please lets hope that nothing this shit would be commissioned these days.
Oops sorry we are still getting drag artists shoehorned into every show! Because it is OK to mock women.

You have no idea of what it was like for women in the 70s. No one spoke about rape and even if they did you were questioned on how you got yourself raped in the first place. There weren't any organisations or helplines and it wasn't taken seriously by the police. Rape in marriage was seen as the duty of the wife, it wasn't illegal.

If you got as far as court for stranger rape they would show the jury your clothes to see if you were asking for it and interrogate you on your sex life.

Rape jokes were common and women were sometimes threatened with rape for not doing what they were told.

@Breadcat24 With knobs on

It’s not ok at all regardless of which decade it was in.

It isn't a good choice of word as actual rape wasn't funny in the 70s. But in these sort of scenario it was very much a being swept off your feet by a handsome stranger and having great sex. At the time women had not long had access to the pill which meant they could enjoy sex without the risk of unwanted pregnancy but there was still very much a culture of decent girls waited to be married or at least in a long term relationship before having sex . There was also still a nobody wants to marry the girl who 'puts out' in the first couple of dates type attitude and therefore great sex outside of marriage had to be perceived as non consensual. The fantasy never involved walking home on a dark night being jumped on or dragged down a dark side street, it was always with a good looking man , usually in a nice location and never involved any violence or force. It was always a very half hearted no before the man's 'charms' worked.
Not acceptable today, but ok at the time

I think you can take the point of view that this is an awful thing to think and say but also that comedy including sitcoms are often about awful things and awful thoughts - things that aren't socially acceptable to say can be shocking and funny.

If you read the Nancy Friday books from the 70s and 80s - in which she interviews 100s of women about their sexual fantasies, its clear that rape fantasies are fairly common. This doesn't mean those women want to be raped IRL but that they want to be 'ravished', or relinquish power and guilt, or just have really dirty sex with a stranger. BDSM is fashionable now. Is that much different?

Are women writers supposed to be polite, well-behaved and pretend that their characters only ever have pure, moral, socially acceptable thoughts?

How Carla Lane has been held up as someone giving women a voice is beyond me.

Well, maybe because no-one else was at all? For some reason last night I was musing about the fact that in that era there were no 'sketch show' type of thing fronted by a women (just one or two in the sketches). More chance for a 'female impersonator', come to think. The awful 'The Comedians' had black men to do the black jokes, Irishmen to do Irish jokes which somehow made it ok apparently ... but they weirdly didn't seem to need to have any women comedians, the men managed fine well to do 'jokes' at the expense of women.

I had forgotten about this but when I saw this clip I was repulsed. Saying, 'Oh but it was the 70s' really isn't an excuse. It's an appalling act, no matter what decade and I still find it difficult to stomach that Carla Lane could write that line.

I don’t think it’s played off as funny. Jeremy and Super Hans both tell Mark he was raped, Jeremy tells the woman’s father she raped Mark and there its treated Mark is awkward and doesn’t want to acknowledge that it was rape. It certainly wasn’t treated seriously, but the humour isn’t that Mark was raped. It’s more Mark’s crippling awkwardness – the bit is referencing the idea that men can’t get raped. There’s a bit of back and forth about if it’s rape if ‘nothing went up my [Mark’s] bum’.

I do know rape in the UK recquires a penis and so legally it wouldn’t be.

It is a horrible line and a horrible thought. But it's essential to understand the inner life of a character who is a bland, well-behaved housewife on the surface. Otherwise what would the programme be about? Some people ARE horrible.

Was watching the repeats of that too and struck by how unpleasant Leonard is. How he prowls around the town following her, and because she's a middle aged woman she's meant to be flattered. Meant to be romantic but he just comes across like a pest. I don't think it's aged well at all.

Oh God.

Exactly. You were a child of that time. When things were just starting to change, and as a young person you had not already been indoctrinated by 1950s thinking. And you and your generation were able to surf on the beginning of that wave as it grew. Your parents a bit less so, and your grandparents might not have known what the fuss was about.

What I do agree with, however, is that the episode, or that part of it should be cut out today.

The 70s - when right and wrong hadn't yet been invented? Come on.

I think we should apply the same critical standards to television as we do to literature. The idea we should censure the work of one of the most prominent women writing for TV in the 70s doesn't seem like the actions of healthy and grown up society.

Carla Lane called it a "situation tragedy" rather than a sit-com.