In the movie, Notorious, Devlin (Cary Grant) , who is a US spy, allows Alicia (Ingrid Bergman) to drive when obviously near blackout stage drunk. A cop pulls them over but lets them go as soon as Devlin shows him his badge… I can’t imagine that happening in a movie today.
Right now I’m reading an old Lester Del Rey SF novella–Nerves, (1942)–where a couple of doctors take a big belt of Scotch to steady themselves before surgery.
I never saw Peyton Place so I don’t really know. Don’t remember much about it. What was the controversy?
That’s a great example. I also get a jolt occasionally when I see a doctor smoking in a patient’s room in some old movie.
I have one from a TV series, but what the hell. “I Dream of Jeannie.” Think it would be possible nowadays to have the female lead obviously in love with the male lead, running around half neked all the time and calling him “master” and have no one point out the obvious?
Don’t think so.
Another thread prompts me to nominate MAS*H, the TV series. Hawkeye is the principled hero, right? Yet his sexism and objectification of women jars when I watch it now. Cannot imagine anyone getting away with that level of harrassment now in RL, and I can’t imagine a positive comedy character being written to quite that level now either.
Much like the Roger Moore James Bond. Just excruciatingly sleazy to modern eyes. In the day, seemed adventurous and witty, daring, transgressive.
In her book “With Love From Karen” Marie Killilea goes to an specialized OB for a very high risk pregnancy–She had one child that died soon after birth, a child with celebral palsy, a son that almost died soon after birth, and five miscarriages.
The doctor gives her a cigarette!
The book was controversial for its portrayal of affairs and sexuality; it carried over to the movie. It wasn’t all that much more racy than Desperate Housewives (or any daytime soap opera) is today.
Heck, as late as 1996 the joke was used in a major film: Tin Cup.
Never read the book or saw the movie but I thought a big subplot was (step?)father-daughter incest.
Yeah, that, or maybe the telling of the riddle itself suggests a belief that it’s weird to have a female surgeon, thus influencing how the targets respond and fulfilling its own prophecy.
Uh, guys? I’m not trying to be offensive here, but it is weird to have a female surgeon, assuming by weird we mean not normal. Only one in four surgical residents are women (according to the AMA) and outside of major urban centers the number of female surgeons is astoundingly small. A quick google reveals that one hospital just got their first female general surgeon three weeks ago (this same link shows that the male-female ratio of surgeons in that hospital is 126-14).
The point of the joke/story is that people don’t think a female is capable of being a surgeon. The answer is right in everyone’s face, but no one can see the obvious because of preconcieved notions about gender roles.
A boy and his father are in an accident.
They are rushed to the hospital, but wen the surgeon sees the boy, states they can’t operate on him, because he’s their son.
If the father is injured and the surgeon is the parent of the child in question – then the surgeon MUST be the child’s mother – but many intelligent people can’t see this point because their head is pre-programmed with the idea that surgeons are male.
That is the point of the story-- as a society we have an inherent prejudice that affects our ability to properly assess a situation.
It is a very telling story.
Oh, and yes, people could be that backward then – this was ther era in which men thought it would be sexy to unbutton their shirts to their navel, wear gold chains, and screw and leave anyone foolish enough to fall for that lie.
(Not that I find the 70’s a cultural nadir for America or anything, but yeah – pretty crappy period for everyone – even those who enjoyed it.)
How many people today would conclude that the boy is the son of two gay men, and that therefore the surgeon is his other father, rather than concluding that the surgeon is his mother?
Speaking of gay men, did any of you people watch Melrose Place? They’d made this huge hairy deal about how one of the characters – a gay man named, I think, Matt – was going to kiss his boyfriend! Right on your television! It was talked about beforehand for weeks.
The actual scene came. The film went into slow motion. Matt leans in to kiss his boyfriend and… cut to black. No actual kiss was seen.
This was, what, 1994?
If you omit the first sentence, this is correct. The point is that most people prejudicially think of surgeons as men, not because they don’t think a female is capable of being a surgeon.
[/hijack]
Science fiction movies are often terribly obvious about when they were made. Most of the cast of Total Recall looks like they stepped out of an 80’s music video.
I’ve always been amused when I watch Blade Runner because they apparently thought that Atari was going to be the technology giant of the future and that the Japanese would “take over” American culture.
Not to be nit-picky or hijack, but I agree with everything you said except for this. I’d say it doesn’t necessarially show prejudice (haha! you fell for the joke, you prejudiced person, you!), but shows instead cultural norms and expectations. Whether a person thinks a woman is capable of being a surgeon or not is irrelevant. The ‘joke’ works because when people close their eyes and envision a surgeon, they tend to envision a man. A person might not be surprised by or adverse to a woman surgeon (or might even prefer a woman surgeon), yet still picture surgeons as men by default, based on experience and cultural images.
I remember that one! Wasn’t it The Chinese Orange Mystery?
In Dashiel Hammett’s novel The Glass Key (written in 1930) the protagonist spends a lot of time researching what happened to the hat of a man that was found dead in the street, because, of course, no man would be outdoors without a hat on.
Two lines from The Quiet Man come to mind.
Michaleen Flynn: "Is this a courting or a donnybrook? Have the good manners not to hit the man until he’s your husband and entitled to hit you back. "
Old Woman: “Sir!.. Sir!.. Here’s a good stick, to beat the lovely lady.”
That’s it.
There was also an Ellery Queen short story whose solution assumed that phone numbers have six digits.