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.

Me and DH were watching a late-1990s BBC comedy called 'Heartburn Hotel' that he downloaded from somewhere. OMG it is awful. Jokes that are misogynist, homophobic, borderline racist, xenophobic. I suspect that maybe they were showing an un-PC idiot up as a figure of fun (like Alf Garnett) to mock those beliefs but it didn't quite come over that way. The lead character was played by the Geordie bloke who plays the transexual in Benidorm, so that will give you an idea. Bottom line... we've come a long way! Still a bloody long way to go though.

Agree. How can we understand the 70s and 80s were a time when rape was minimalised and trivialised if we censor all evidence of that?

I also think the fact that it is Wendy Craig (lovey, gentle, posh, well spoken Wendy Craig) who said the line makes it more shocking. I wonder if there would be as visceral a response if it was say, Kathy Burke or Joan Collins?

But... the script isn't saying, 'Rape is every woman's fantasy in 1980, ho ho ho', it's saying, 'this sheltered middle class, middle aged woman, who is struggling with crushing feelings of dissatisfaction with her limited life and boring husband, is trying to find a situation in which she can have the sort of dark sex that she's been brought up to reject outright, with a man who isn't her husband.'

She doesn't think - as most women would 40 years on - 'I'm going to get a divorce and retrain as a town planner' because that option would be portrayed in a typical 1980 sitcom as the life choice of Babs Neighbour, who cuts her hair short, wears dungarees and is implied to be a lesbian.

Tasteless. I'm glad times have changed and that sort of "joke" isn't acceptable now.

Rape is never funny.

The whole show was so wrong. Leonard tries to coerce Ria into an affair, and he stalks her around town. Ben, her miserable husband ignores her, the sons are rude and everyone laughs because she can’t cook. Ria is bored and quite pathetic, this was so called comedy in the 1970s.

As I remember, when Ria says that line she’s sort of floating about wishing for a different, more exciting life then she instantly clamps her hand over her mouth in horror as she realises what she has said. It was meant to be a wild moment where she shocks herself with her hidden feelings. But very clumsily written.

I was never a fan of Carla Lane. Butterflies was depressing and Bread was an awful mishmash of stereotypes and outdated characters.

Let them stay in the 1970s where they belong, nobody needs to see that. Thank god we are all offended by it, that’s progress.

Richard Beckinsale's character in The Lovers expressed his frustration over his girlfriend's refusal to get intimate with him, with the line "Oh god, I want to rape her"

Example of the popular show (doesn't contain the rape comment)

%3D

@dayswithaY it was about the reality of a lot of middle class women's lives. Boring, under appreciated, treated badly by their husband, and men wanting to have an affair.

What would stand out to those of the 1970s is the easy access to porn and the over sexualisation of society but how language is now heavily policed. It is quite odd that words are so offensive now an explict images and content not so much.

I remember reading something by a psychiatrist or psychologist years ago about women and sexual fantasies. In it they said that rape fantasies were fairly common in women in the past as it was socially unacceptable for women to have affairs so, even fantasies of consensual sex with another man caused too much guilt. No doubt this rape was a sanitised version but the lack of consent absolved the woman of the guilt and embarrassment she might otherwise have felt.
Younger women find it hard to understand that not only were the 70s very different in terms of the non-PC humour that was tolerated but also women were far more oppressed and powerless compared to today

YANBU to find the idea of using the word rape in this way very shocking. YABU if you're shocked to find it in a comedy programme of this era though.

Someone even a couple of decades from now will NBU to find the idea of flying to go on holiday very shocking (given climate change). They WBU to be shocked to find TV shows of the 2020s showing people getting on planes though.

Sexism and climate recklessness - just two examples of things where attitudes have changed or will end up changing, with some generation or other having experienced them as the norm at some point.

It was of its time. There should be a content warning and it should be shown or not as a whole. It will be removed eventually if no one watches.

I watched show as a child in the 80s and couldn’t understand why she didn’t do something to change. I had parents both working as doctors in the 70s so knew it was possible. However my parents were from Inda and the children of doctors. I didn’t realise the limitations on women.

Tbh, that’s quite tame to some shows from the 70’s. So many examples of comedies and sitcoms from around that decade which will never be broadcast on our TVs again. They’d have to be redacted so much, that there’d be nothing left of them!

Frankly, none of the characters in the show are attractive. I can only presume it was so popular because there wasn't much else on.

There weren't any shows written by women exploring female characters.

I agree with you to an extent, if you are looking at porn then obviously you will see explicit content. It is easier to access then ever though and I think its extremely damaging to teenagers view of sex.

That said, I don't really have a problem with shows like Game of Thrones, which can be pretty explicit. I suppose there is a content warning at the beginning and you know what's to expect.

I think it would be really strange for a sitcom to make rape jokes today, it's just not acceptable whereas they might show a bit of sex between consenting adults

I guess for me it's the intent behind the scenes. Interested to know your thoughts 😊

Yes this. Very much this. If I remember the scene correctly she claps her hand over her mouth in shock after she says it.

I agree that particular scene doesn't age well. But on the whole this was a gentle, thoughtful comedy that appealed far more to women than men.

That's an interesting point, it's like we'd gone backwards. Considering we had the Jill Day sketch show in the 1950s, which she wrote and fronted. Hilda Baker had her own show in the 1950s too I think. I can only remember Joyce Grenfell, a weird thing with Diana Rigg an odd thing with Pauline Quirk and of course Mari Caine from the 70s.

Absolutely this. To all the posters saying ‘rape was always known to be wrong, even in the 70s’ - well yeah, superficially, but it’s difficult from today’s perspective to truly understand how deeply rooted the normalisation of sexual violence and coercion was.

We still struggle today to effectively prosecute rape, but, as a PP said, to be taken seriously as a victim back then was nigh on impossible. Accusations were automatically viewed with scepticism by everyone, from doctors to police officers to judges, and women were almost always seen as somehow culpable or complicit - wrong clothes, wrong time, wrong place, wrong number of drinks, wrong boyfriend. And you literally couldn’t be raped by your husband in the eyes of the law - it was not a crime until 2003.

At Camden Market in the early 80s, one of the epicentres of youth culture in London, they were selling badges that said ‘Avoid rape - say yes’ alongside ‘Fuck Thatcher’ and ‘Jobs Not Bombs’. All very politically right on, except when it came to the objectification and sexual assault of women, which was just joke fodder.

That prevailing social climate, plus the whole ‘only a bit of slap and tickle’ misogyny that pervaded mainstream 70s TV, where men were men, and girls were basically tits and arses, there to be sexually pursued, meant there was almost a tacit acceptance that rape was just a thing that happened - because boys will be boys, wink wink - and, by extension, that women shouldn’t make such a bloody fuss about it.

I was sexually assaulted multiple times in my teens and 20s - but it never occurred to me for a moment to actually report any of the men involved in those incidents. It would have been almost laughable to try to get anything done about it - it was just life, just the shit that most women experienced at one time or another.

In that context, the reference in Butterflies will - sadly - not have been particularly shocking to a lot of people at the time (except maybe for being an obscenity on prime time telly).

There were complaints about the line in places like the Guardian, so it is not true to say everyone accepted it at the time.
In places like the Sun, sure it was just a joke.

“Should a woman ever write that into a script” - yes, if she wants to, because I don’t believe there should be things women aren’t supposed to write. Other women are allowed to find it inappropriate and in bad taste.

The supposed rape fantasy featured memorably in an episode of Cracker in the late 90s.
I think after that was when people stopped using it.
Rape jokes were still common but becoming unacceptable in 2000s, but still used for shock value by cutting edge comedians in 2010s

Jimmy Car still does rape jokes. They've never stopped. I remember that Cracker episode.

Butterflies was quite ground breaking and cutting edge at the time. Being from the mother's perspective and her having sexual & romantic fantasies (I only watched on repeats later, too young first time around)
So some of the things she fantasised about are controversial.
But I don't think it's as mythical as some say....its just different interpretation.
Some women do participate (willingly?) In strangers rape type role play undoubtedly.
But I think in the butterflies case it's more about being desired, and balancing that against the expectation (at the time) that women were chaste.
You had to make a show of saying no to someone even if you meant yes.....and this just perpetuated this idea that no doesn't really mean no....which gave men free reign.

I take it to mean she wants to be dominated, "taken", much the same as the 50 shades books, which are, or were, so popular in more recent times.

In law you couldn't even rape your own wife back in the 70s. I don't think anything should be censored because it's of it's time. The shock you're feeling is because it's so uncommon to have this sort of input in a TV show now op, which is good. It means we don't have to worry about what was once in them. I actually wish all tv and literature would be left well alone to exist as it is. We can choose what we want to engage with/ agree with etc but it gets a bit Big Brother when people aren't allowed to write anything through fear of being offensive/ being cancelled. It bids the question-if we are all just simply following rules to portray ourselves as good beings who don't say or fail to challenge things that are inappropriate does that actually make us good ourselves? I don't think it does. I sometimes wish nothing was censored and then if people wanted to make jokes I or someone else find distasteful we can choose not to laugh and we also get an insight about them as a person. All the while we cannot say anything anymore, we have no idea what people are really like inside.