Just watched this today and agree with others about the faux shock/outrage expressed though of course it's trendy now. Personally i thought they needed to wind their necks in, stop behaving like a bunch of prudish sissies, and learn how to laugh.
Terry Wogan judging a beauty contest..."how old are you love"...."16"....."wow you are a big girl". I could hear the feminist fundamentalist fruit loops screeching 'perve'...'sexual harassment' and all the other rubbish.
Lewis Collins diving on top of Pamela Stephenson to rip her blouse open and expose......oh shockerrr....a white bra (ermmm it's the same thing as a bikini top folks). Well, at the time Collins was Mr Hot Rocks for the girlies and Pam Stephenson did it for the men.
Nice tits.
I was over 20 by the start of the 70's so nothing 'shocked' me back then just as what i saw on this documentary did nothing other than to remind me of how normal life was back then and how priggish and uptight folk have become since.....particularly those born during the 70's and after!
I broadly agree. I became a teenager in 1976. I recall during the 70s being unable to think about anything other than girls and sex, and it's no different/been no different for teenage boys from any era.
You're right, just a load of hand wringing trendies, looking down their noses at the so called primitive 70s. I hope I live long enough, to see in 40 years from now others looking down their noses at this era, and how we were so incapable of relating to each other, that we had to resort to communicating via social media, even when sat in the same room
They should make it like this for every decade until 00's. I love programmes where people look back at how life was back in the old days.
It's great to look back but not when the show is full of people scoffing and putting down what was a great decade for telly. I would rather have just had the clips without the rubbish in between.
I was born in 1978 so obviously have no memory of the 70s but I do remember most of the 80s and a lot of the stuff featured in this programme did not shock me as some of the humour and attitudes were still prevalent in the 80s. I remember watching The Benny Hill Show until 1989 and the Miss World contest finished showing on mainstream TV approximately at that time to (although the contest still exists to this day. Not sure if it's shown on cable/satellite now).
I grew up watchng Carry On films so busom ladies being lusted after by men and used primarily as sex objects is nothing new to me. I did like that clip from The Professionals with the grenade in Pamela Stephenson's blouse. It was so ridiculous it was hilarious.
The only thing that shocked me really was the use of the word rape in casual conversation. I took the meaning in that context (especially the clip from Butterflies) to mean take me and ravish me and not in the violent or not consenting manner.
I have very mixed views about the programme. On the one hand it was great to see some old 70s shows and to have a bit of a giggle about the rather outdated attitudes towards sex (and to see Windy Miller getting pissed!!) but on the other hand what I thought would be a reasonably light-hearted examination of our changing societal attitudes was instead a rather sneering smugathon from the point of view of a handful of modern commentators proudly displaying their PC credentials and being "offended" on cue.
The clips presented were obviously cherry-picked for the purpose of the point this programme was trying to make but in so doing presented a rather narrow view of TV in the 70s (and well in to the 1980s with 3-2-1, Butterflies and The Professionals) and I'm sure you could pick out many a TV show from the 2000s in which you could extract a clip which we would find shocking, offensive etc.
Obviously I'm not advocating a desire to return to comedies where middle-aged men are leering at the breasts of women half their age, regardless of how impressed I was by Madeline Smith's heaving bosom (sorry...not PC). The days of white, middle aged male TV execs making programmes which reflected their own tastes has gone but I'm not impressed with what's now in place in prime time TV - soaps, reality shows, talent shows, cookery shows. Seems the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction.
I think kim kardashian miley cyrus are dargging us back to the 1970's. Get those women off our TVs and out of the Newspapers and stop watching the TV channels/buying the papers with them in and stop buying the products advertised in them.
It was on Channel 4, but you know that, so what's your point?
Channel 4 featuring a program they aired in a program looking at changing tastes in TV viewing/output.
Channel 4 wasn't around in the 70's so no chance of their output been featured tonight.
They've featured it before in doc, I'm pretty sure, had the producer or director on too, talking about it.
I must say I never saw a problem with Minipops, kids dressing up and singing, having a laugh, I never saw anything sexual in it, I must be wired wrong or something.
I think it was the cognitive dissonance and incongruity re the Sheena Easton cover featured.
I doubt any broadcaster today would make a documentary noting some of the extraordinarily good television that was made in that era. It would show up the lazy throwaway rubbish many of them churn out today. So it suits them to depict that era as a semi-comical age of naff fashions, naive values and unchallenged prejudices.
anyone find it weird the way they acted so shocked at some 'offending' scene and then the editors chose to repeat it over and over , "SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!" "RAPE RAPE RAPE!!!"
I was rather amazed that Matt Lucas narrated this , when you think that his show Little Britain basically resurrected much of the 70's un-pc stuff : funny foreigners , blacking up , men in drag , outrageous camp gays , and what about sketches like a teacher in bed with one of his ex-pupils ??
Quite ironic that whilst most people were probably cringing at Wogan's 'big girl' 1978 beauty contest comment, it was only his repetition of her name, Denise Gyngell, that the penny dropped that she actually did go on to become a very big girl just a few years later in 1982, as one third of Tight Fit, having one of the biggest selling british singles of all time with The Lion Sleeps Tonight !
Quite ironic that whilst most people were probably cringing at Wogan's 'big girl' 1978 beauty contest comment, it was only his repetition of her name, Denise Gyngell, that the penny dropped that she actually did go on to become a very big girl just a few years later in 1982, as one third of Tight Fit, having one of the biggest selling british singles of all time with The Lion Sleeps Tonight !
And according to Wiki she was married Pete Waterman in the 90s and had two kids with him before divorcing in 1999
And according to Wiki she was married Pete Waterman in the 90s and had two kids with him before divorcing in 1999
Tight Fit's only other top five hit, Fantasy Island, was quite a quick, smart move cover, of a song which was ridiculously robbed of representing The Netherlands in their national final for Eurovision in 1982 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ym4GRuGvfw, thanks to one single stupid jury member vote, which led to The Netherlands sending a vastly inferior song to Eurovision instead. If that hadn't happened, maybe Tight FIt would never have found a successful follow up to The Lion Sleeps Tonight at all.
Who on Earth are these talking heads? Not even the usual suspects.
More clips, less needless fake gasps and waffle please
Agreed.
I didn't see the point in soliciting the opinions of people who were born in the 80s & 90s for this show; of course they're going to be outraged/shocked etc.
They didn't see the shows the first time around & have no recollection of the era.
I have very mixed views about the programme. On the one hand it was great to see some old 70s shows and to have a bit of a giggle about the rather outdated attitudes towards sex (and to see Windy Miller getting pissed!!) but on the other hand what I thought would be a reasonably light-hearted examination of our changing societal attitudes was instead a rather sneering smugathon from the point of view of a handful of modern commentators proudly displaying their PC credentials and being "offended" on cue.
The clips presented were obviously cherry-picked for the purpose of the point this programme was trying to make but in so doing presented a rather narrow view of TV in the 70s (and well in to the 1980s with 3-2-1, Butterflies and The Professionals) and I'm sure you could pick out many a TV show from the 2000s in which you could extract a clip which we would find shocking, offensive etc.
Obviously I'm not advocating a desire to return to comedies where middle-aged men are leering at the breasts of women half their age, regardless of how impressed I was by Madeline Smith's heaving bosom (sorry...not PC). The days of white, middle aged male TV execs making programmes which reflected their own tastes has gone but I'm not impressed with what's now in place in prime time TV - soaps, reality shows, talent shows, cookery shows. Seems the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction.
Great post; 100% correct.
PS: Windy Miller getting bladdered must be the finest moment in children's TV history, even if it was made in the 60s & not the 70s, which this programme was supposed to be about.!!!:D
I used to laugh my socks off at some of the Benny Hill sketches, so I'm not going to start feeling guilty about it now. To be honest, many of Spike Milligan's sketches were far worse and even some of Jasper Carrott's routines would cause a few jaw-dropping moments these days.
I have to agree that I find the adverts for violent computer games far more offensive than anything shown during that show. In twenty years' time, people will find it difficult to believe they were ever allowed.
This type of documentary was titled in a way to pretend the 70s was the birth of such antiquated attitudes but it wasn't really.
The 70s was merely the decade in which it became more acceptable to express lewd thoughts after the sexual revolution of the 60s.
Despite the in-yer-face rape jokes in Benny Hill and smut about schoolgirls, Britain, in the 70s, was really just expressing it less quaintly: The St. Trinian films touched on the sexualisation of young women from the 50s onwards.
Incest was always taboo. However the clip from "The Wackers" where a grandfather figure makes lewd comments about his shapely granddaughter was made just a year before "A bouquet of barbed wire" which caused controversy.
But I think it shows how people in the past could distinguish, more easily, the seriousness of committing an act of incest and making suggestive comments to a blood relative.
Today we consider both completely offensive. Political correctness has trained our minds to tell us: "just don't go there" where comments are concerned. Whereas it was possible, years ago, to make such ribald chit-chat without fear of being arrested.
I must say I never saw a problem with Minipops, kids dressing up and singing, having a laugh, I never saw anything sexual in it, I must be wired wrong or something.
I thought it was odd as soon as I saw it on CH4 in the early 80's. Especially some of the lyrics from (Morning train) 9 to 5.
A badly conceived idea.
Blimey! Madeline Smith sitting on her "uncle's" lap and asking him to show how it's done at 7.30 in the evening. Don't remember that!
I was a bit but more at what I'd forgotten. It was fascinating though - when you're immersed in it all again, there's a stark contrast in what they used to get away with then and now. Were we so saturated with politically incorrect stuff on TV at the time we were desensitised? It's not that it's any worse, but clearly there didn't seem to be a filter on when things were shown and then by making something into a comedy, whatever they said or did, no matter how suggestive or sexist, was deemed okay and funny family viewing.
I look forward to clips of Jim Davidson doing his Chalkie White, The Black and White Minstels, Love Thy Neighbour,, Mind Your Language, (haha, actually tge Italian guy WAS really funny) and numerous extremely gay men.
And some girls running about in their knick knacks, chasing a fat man around, which I guess was about female empowerment...
Yes those things were awful and you are right to decry them. However the 70s TV wasn't all sexism and Racism, it was probably the richest period for drama, with very innovative shows which explored human nature like Pennies from Heaven, Sunset across the Bay, Tinker tailor Soldier Spy, Abigails Party etc likewise comedies such as The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and Porridge were excellently written pieces, as well as funny. People tend to jump to the negative aspects of any decades culture, as being backward compared to the present, but it wasn't all trash, and MAYBE they did some TV better back then when they had the freedom to be creative more.
Comments
I broadly agree. I became a teenager in 1976. I recall during the 70s being unable to think about anything other than girls and sex, and it's no different/been no different for teenage boys from any era.
You're right, just a load of hand wringing trendies, looking down their noses at the so called primitive 70s. I hope I live long enough, to see in 40 years from now others looking down their noses at this era, and how we were so incapable of relating to each other, that we had to resort to communicating via social media, even when sat in the same room
I really miss living in the 1970s at times.
It's great to look back but not when the show is full of people scoffing and putting down what was a great decade for telly. I would rather have just had the clips without the rubbish in between.
I grew up watchng Carry On films so busom ladies being lusted after by men and used primarily as sex objects is nothing new to me. I did like that clip from The Professionals with the grenade in Pamela Stephenson's blouse. It was so ridiculous it was hilarious.
The only thing that shocked me really was the use of the word rape in casual conversation. I took the meaning in that context (especially the clip from Butterflies) to mean take me and ravish me and not in the violent or not consenting manner.
It was an interesting show.
The clips presented were obviously cherry-picked for the purpose of the point this programme was trying to make but in so doing presented a rather narrow view of TV in the 70s (and well in to the 1980s with 3-2-1, Butterflies and The Professionals) and I'm sure you could pick out many a TV show from the 2000s in which you could extract a clip which we would find shocking, offensive etc.
Obviously I'm not advocating a desire to return to comedies where middle-aged men are leering at the breasts of women half their age, regardless of how impressed I was by Madeline Smith's heaving bosom (sorry...not PC). The days of white, middle aged male TV execs making programmes which reflected their own tastes has gone but I'm not impressed with what's now in place in prime time TV - soaps, reality shows, talent shows, cookery shows. Seems the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction.
This - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh7NxD9fTGM
??
And according to Wiki she was married Pete Waterman in the 90s and had two kids with him before divorcing in 1999
Tight Fit's only other top five hit, Fantasy Island, was quite a quick, smart move cover, of a song which was ridiculously robbed of representing The Netherlands in their national final for Eurovision in 1982 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ym4GRuGvfw, thanks to one single stupid jury member vote, which led to The Netherlands sending a vastly inferior song to Eurovision instead. If that hadn't happened, maybe Tight FIt would never have found a successful follow up to The Lion Sleeps Tonight at all.
Agreed.
I didn't see the point in soliciting the opinions of people who were born in the 80s & 90s for this show; of course they're going to be outraged/shocked etc.
They didn't see the shows the first time around & have no recollection of the era.
Great post; 100% correct.
PS: Windy Miller getting bladdered must be the finest moment in children's TV history, even if it was made in the 60s & not the 70s, which this programme was supposed to be about.!!!:D
I have to agree that I find the adverts for violent computer games far more offensive than anything shown during that show. In twenty years' time, people will find it difficult to believe they were ever allowed.
The 70s was merely the decade in which it became more acceptable to express lewd thoughts after the sexual revolution of the 60s.
Despite the in-yer-face rape jokes in Benny Hill and smut about schoolgirls, Britain, in the 70s, was really just expressing it less quaintly: The St. Trinian films touched on the sexualisation of young women from the 50s onwards.
Incest was always taboo. However the clip from "The Wackers" where a grandfather figure makes lewd comments about his shapely granddaughter was made just a year before "A bouquet of barbed wire" which caused controversy.
But I think it shows how people in the past could distinguish, more easily, the seriousness of committing an act of incest and making suggestive comments to a blood relative.
Today we consider both completely offensive. Political correctness has trained our minds to tell us: "just don't go there" where comments are concerned. Whereas it was possible, years ago, to make such ribald chit-chat without fear of being arrested.
I thought it was odd as soon as I saw it on CH4 in the early 80's. Especially some of the lyrics from (Morning train) 9 to 5.
A badly conceived idea.
Listening to you it sounds as if you still are.
Probably things will change and they'll think what prudish stuffed shirts we were.
I was a bit
Well that's fine, we'll all be non-gender-specific pan-sexual beings by then
Yes those things were awful and you are right to decry them. However the 70s TV wasn't all sexism and Racism, it was probably the richest period for drama, with very innovative shows which explored human nature like Pennies from Heaven, Sunset across the Bay, Tinker tailor Soldier Spy, Abigails Party etc likewise comedies such as The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and Porridge were excellently written pieces, as well as funny. People tend to jump to the negative aspects of any decades culture, as being backward compared to the present, but it wasn't all trash, and MAYBE they did some TV better back then when they had the freedom to be creative more.