So, my wife has an old black and white Doris Day movie on, and Doris’ character has got a gig where she’s lounge singer. As part of her act, she wears a grass skirt and bra outfit, really racy – I mean, not revealing anything bad like a bellybutton, but midriff and shoulders, woo-woo! And she and her chorus start their act by running between the tables to the stage. Near the front, some middle-age geezer who’s maybe a little or a lot drunk, grabs Doris by the arm as she passes by. Doris smiles and tries to disengage, but the guys’ wife, who’s right next to him, is so outraged by the whole scene that she picks up her drink and throws it right into … Doris Day’s face! Even though her role in the whole scene has been pretty durned close to “innocent bystander.” Still, she’s the proximate cause of hubby’s humiliating horndog behavior, so Doris gets the faceful, leading her to run sobbing from the room.
And that, my friend, is why prostitutes always get busted, and johns never do.
Kinda reminds me of any number of scenes in anime, where everyone (including bad guys), is totally ghast and horrified if a nuke (or it’s obvious analogue) is used, or is attempted to be used—even if it’s being completely justifiably dropped on some utterly deserving target, like a monster or a superweapon that’s about to destroy humanity, the planet, and/or the fabric of reality itself. (Possibly all, and in that order.)
Oddly enough, no one seems to care if you’re already using weapons of comparable destructive power (Death Rays, Mechs, etc.). But using an…A-Bomb? That’s just way out of line!
Why is that odd? Don’t you think that that the Japanese *should *have a particularly fearful attitude toward an a-bomb?
For me, it was a scene in the original Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. One morning, Deeds is talking to his staff; he is dressed but without wearing a tie. Representatives of the opera are coming to meet with him about a donation. Deeds’s butler says, disapprovingly, "You can’t meet them looking like that" and has him put on – an ascot and dressing gown.
There’s also an Ellery Queen novel from the early 30s where the bizarre state of the victim was as rule to keep people from realizing he wasn’t wearing a tie, which would have given everything away.
When Atticus Finch is making his summation in Tom Robinson’s trial, he takes off his suit jacket and loosens his tie. This horrifys his children, who have never seen him in less than a state of full dress.
Rhett Butler describing the latest French fashions to the ladies, and one old dowager remarking that “If she’d given him any encouragement, she was afraid he’d be able to tell her exactly what type of drawers were being worn by the Parisiennes.”
Pointing it out is one thing, but the post seems to find this attitude is mysterious and odd, when it is perfectly reasonable. It’s the same in my examples: they may be hard to understand today, but it’s just wrong to ridicule them.
I got the impression that the poster was saying that the Japanese were so spooked by atomic bombs that they were opposed to using them even against opponents who were using much more powerful and destructive weapons tech – planet busters and such. This does seem a little weird, don’t you think?
If we’re doing anime, adult anime use blackmail as a basis for the guy to get the girl so osten, (and not just the bad guy) that you have to wonder about Japanese culture. But it’s been suggested, I believe on this board, that this is just one of those pron conventions, like the notion in US pron that pizza delivery guys can hardly make any money because of all the hot housewives who want to have sex with them instead of paying for pizzas.
Right, and normal anime has conventions like nose-bleeds, weepoing buckets full of tears, and young women punching young men into orbit, not because normal Japanese people do any of these things, but because Japanese have normal human emotions, can’t express as fully as they would like in reality, and use anime/manga as an outlet for these repressed feelings.
(Not that Japanese are unique in repressing feelings: pretty well all societies have social norms that limit how you can express your emotions in public.)
That said, you need only look to Golden Boy to see a Japanese rendition of the classic naive-guy-who-can’t-figure-out-how-to-talk-to-women. Pretty far off from the blackmailers.
Drat! You mean I can’t punch people into orbit in Japan? Is this really a faux pas over there?
On the nosey. And the especially weird parts, I think, was when both sides are using the planet busters and bone-melter rays or whatnot, with nary a raised eyebrow.
Well, getting back to the OP, there was an episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show where Rob and Laura found out, or thought, that they weren’t legally married. Rob suggests they rectify the problem by finding a JP, and Laura yelps, “But we can’t get married tonight – I can’t get a babysitter!” Big laugh from the audience, because the idea of getting married when you already had kids together (not counting people who had kids with a late or ex-spouse) was ludicrous.
There was a scene in one of J.D. Salinger’s short stories where a limo full of people was stuck in traffic. One of the men pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered them around before lighting his own. Because this was during WWII, and people smoked smoked smoked. Sure, it was an enclosed space, and there was a very elderly person in the car, but you lit up when you felt like it, and since cigs cost, what, .25 a pack? You shared them like they were candy.
In 9 to 5, Dolly Parton’s character is secretary to Dabney Coleman’s character, and endures a lot of inappropriate remarks and actions from him, until she gets fed up and warns him that she has a gun in her bag. In 1980, it was still like that. Not only did she not have the recourse of taking a sexual harassment complaint to HR, but she was able to get into the building, presumably every day, with a handgun.
I recently saw an Ed Sullivan show from maybe 1963 or so. One stand-up comic was doing a bit about marriage. All his jokes were about what the man does at work and the woman does at home.
This one was mentioned in the Obsolete Joke Thread.
On an episode of All in the Family, Gloria asked a riddle about a doctor refusing to perform an operation on a patient because it is discovered that the patient is the doctor’s son – BUT! – the doctor isn’t the boy’s father. How could this be???
Well, Archie and the Meathead go over various scenarios and can’t figure it out for the life of them.
When Gloria reveals that the doctor is a woman and therefore the boy’s mother, Archie cries foul that this is too far beyond the realm of possibility.
I’m going purely on recall here but I remember thinking people couldn’t have been that backward thinking in the early 70’s. Could they? I also wondered if the viewing audience was equally perplexed with this brain teaser.
I stumped enlightened, educated friends with that brain teaser around 1990-3 (can’t remember the exact year). So the prejudice against female surgeons held for quite some time.
Well, I think the point of Archie’s character is that he represented people who were backward even for their times. But women doctors were probably rare right up through to the 70s.
When it was made. Otherwise, we’d just be reprising the great points of “Pleasantville.” But if you’ve got some killer point to make about a film that made some killer points about earlier cultures, go ahead and share. It’s not like this thread is unreadably long.
Uhm, I can’t really define it to one particular scene but what about Peyton Place? The film wouldn’t have had any of the controversy it garnered had it been made today.