One of the episodes of Gunsmoke where Festus makes an early appearance (he’s not yet Dillon’s deputy) has Festus’ cousin Daisy show up for a visit. A man that Festus had beaten in a fight at the beginning of the episode gets revenge on him by raping his cousin. The way it’s revealed is showing the man coming to the place where she’s staying and advancing on her threateningly-- end scene. The next scene shows Daisy sitting around a table with Festus, Dillon, Doc and Miss Kitty. For a second you have no idea what was supposed to have happened until Daisy says “what man will want me now that my virtue has been stolen?”
The episode ends with Festus tracking down the man and murdering him. The last scene is of Dillon arresting Festus, but saying to Doc “don’t worry, no jury in Dodge City will convict him”. Some of those Gunsmoke episodes, especially the early ones, were dark.
Festus’ character at first was very shady. You really didn’t know what side of the law he was on. Later on, he became your typical good guy, with a lovable hillbilly persona.
At his introduction though, he had a real Ed Gein sort of vibe. He was genuinely creepy.
I was re-reading Bill Bryson’s Made in America, in which he quotes a court transcript for a rape trial. It included a passage stating that the defendent “…struck the victim in the face, kicked the victim in the mid-section, pushed the victim down a flight of stairs (etc.)… and then proceeded to assault the victim”.
A Serial Rapist was the focus of a Quincy, M.E. episode that featured Adrienne Barbeau as a Rape Counselor in 1977.
If you watched many episodes of Quincy, you can probably guess that Barbeau became a love interest of Quincy and then Barbeau was attacked by the Serial Rapist
It’s always been interesting to me how casually this issue has been treated in movies and TV, and I’m only remembering as far back as the 90s. With any action movie you had a 50/50 shot of some almost-rape scenario. Heck, I remember watching a children’s movie, I can’t remember if it was Beethoven 1 or 2, that involved the loveable St. Bernard saving the teenage daughter from the frat-boy rapist. I was probably about ten years old, and old enough to understand what was implied.
It would be nice to attribute that to consciousness-raising about the issue (1996 IIRC was the landmark year where it became a federal law that you can’t rape your spouse) - but the practical upshot of women finally talking openly about rape is that it became fodder for cheap entertainment. Very easy to use it to make a story more exciting, not particularly sensitive to how it might be experienced by a woman viewer.
I’m fascinated by gender politics in the 90s and particularly how that was expressed in media. I mean it was the era where I grew up so I remember many of my formative ideas about gender came from 90s action movies and sitcoms. It was an era of growing power for women but it also seems very regressive by today’s standards. It almost feels like men and women of that era were portrayed as caricatures. But that could be a function of us just having better quality entertainment now.
No , it being against the law means you aren’t allowed to do it. Doesn’t take away the ability. When laws had the marital exception, one literally couldn’t rape their spouse because the definition of rape excluded the spouse. (Same as when the laws were written in such a way that rape was only the penetration of a vagina by a penis without consent - a woman couldn’t rape a man, a man couldn’t be raped and if someone’s anus was forcibly penetrated by an object , it might be a crime, but it wasn’t rape).
BTW , it wasn’t a federal law, it was state by state and even today ,some states treat marital rape differently. Maryland didn’t allow prosecution of a spouse if the couple was living together until 2023.
There’s a federal law but it doesn’t apply to all states.
On July 5, 1993, marital rape became a crime in all 50 states, under at least one section of the sexual offense codes. In 20 states, the District of Columbia, and on federal lands there are no exemptions from rape prosecution granted to husbands. However, in 30 states, there are still some exemptions given to husbands from rape prosecution.
I admit I don’t really understand how a federal law can affect twenty states and not the rest.
It wasn’t written all that clearly. Federal law ( which applies on Federal land in every state and in Washington, DC) has no exemptions. It does not generally apply to crimes on non-Federal land. There are 20 states where the state law has no exemptions. There are 30 states where the state law has at least one exemption, where for example, having sexual intercourse with a spouse without consent is not rape if there is no force used because the spouse is unconscious or asleep. This article describes some of the loopholes.
1961 saw a TV show called Bus Stop, based on the William Inge play/Marilyn Monroe film. Despite decent ratings, it was cancelled halfway through its first (and only) season due to the furor over an episode where Fabian Forte buses into town and immediately rapes a nice lady offering him a ride. Then he goes really berserk and mayhem ensues. Mucho outrage.
They did broadcast the remaining episodes. Stephen King says the last one aired (Robert Bloch’s I Kiss Your Shadow) is about the scariest thing ever shown on TV. Time for a grain of salt.
A lot of inferences, a lot of euphamisms, a lot of movies, a lot of references from the 60’s.
Are there any uses of the word “rape”, on tv, in the 50’s that I missed in this thread?
FWIW, I watched a lot of TV in the ‘60s/‘70s and I think the first time I heard “Rape” on the tube was on MASH when Col. Mary Wickes was caught in the kip with Frank Burns. Hilarity ensued.
There were a lot of taboos up to rather late in the 1970s. Kirk saying “Let’s get the Hell out of here” at the end of “City on the Edge of Forever” caused trouble with the censors (it was one of the first uses of that word on TV - in 1967. In the late 1970s, the title of John Jakes’ novel (“The Bastard”) was considered pushing limits.