Pretty much exactly the same with my mother; I think she also thought “Three’s Company” was stupid and cheap humor.
That’s the only specific show I remember my mother banning, but she didn’t like TV in general - thought that network TV in the 70’s was uncreative. She didn’t have any problem with me watching “M.A.S.H.” or seeing movies like “Kramer Versus Kramer”.
She did have some TV rules, though: the TV is off if the room is empty or no one is watching, and no TV at dinner. Forty years later, I still get bothered by a TV on if no one’s watching it; that’s just trashy.
It wasn’t a question of what viewing was forbidden but what was permitted. Only Sesame Street, The Electric Company and on Saturday mornings The Pink Panther. And occasional family time watching a Peanuts special or The Wizard of Oz or some other classic movie. (This was late 60s/early 70s: one TV in the living room, that was it.)
Once we were into our teens, though, no more censorship, but we didn’t get a free hand with the viewing schedule: we could watch whatever our parents wanted to watch, which was mostly the news and sitcoms.
(And my brother and I did get to watch late afternoon Star Trek syndicated re-runs after we petitioned earnestly for the privilege, and then Dad would pause by the TV and scoff at what he called “the Rover Boys in space”, and we would say “DAAAaaad!”, and pay him no mind. :))
No reading material was ever censored, although there were no really explicitly dirty books or magazines lying around and I didn’t try bringing any in.
I do remember that when I was eleven years old or so and going through my “Gone with the Wind is the greatest book in the history of literature” phase, my mother did tentatively try to discourage me from taking it out of the library (for like the fourth time in a row) by saying dismissively “it’s just a novel”.
That criticism puzzled the hell out of me for years. I had to wait till I was grown up and learned about 19th-century Anglo-Protestant culture’s suspicions about the spiritual hazards of novel-reading before I figured out why on earth being a novel was supposed to be bad.
I must be the only non-fundamentalist American born after 1960 who was ever even mildly and indirectly cautioned about the spiritual hazards of novel-reading. But then, Mom’s own mother was born in 1897, so I suppose Mom caught a dose of it back in her day.
Not allowed to watch “Soap” or “Mary Hartman” in our house (I was a little too young for Mary Hartman, but my sister said she was forbidden to watch it.)
We were also not allowed to watch “Maude.” My mother said it was a stupid show and demanded we turn it off whenever it came up in reruns. Only years later did I realize that my (very Catholic) mother really objected to the abortion episode.
My mother also insisted we turn off an early “Cheers” episode that had Sam & Diane talking frankly about having sex.
Born in 1962. Only attempt as TV censorship was Dad questioning one day whether my brother (age 8) and I (10) should be watching Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS. We reminded him that he’d taken us to the Drive-In to see it at least three times.
There weren’t any TV shows we couldn’t watch but the times we could watch were limited. The B&W (pre-cable) set was usually only turned on during the evenings.
I do kind of regret being allowed to stay up and watch The Picture Of Dorian Gray however. Creeped me right out.
Heh. One of my early forays into babysitting was sponsored by a neighbor couple going to a Halloween party, and when the kids were asleep I had a totally free rein with the TV. Woo-hoo, forbidden fruit!
So I fired up the box and started watching some vampire flick that the network was showing. (Would it have been the 1969 Brides of Dracula, I wonder?) By myself.
Late at night.
In the dark.
With no adults anywhere within call.
I don’t remember a thing about the movie except this one shot where three (two?) lovely vampiresses suddenly seem to swirl out of the gloom and form a tableau with their fanged faces glowing in the moonlight. AAAAAAGGGGH TURN IT OFF TURN IT OFF TURN IT OFF!!! :eek: :eek:
Wouldn’t you know it, that was the one babysitting gig for that family where that damn baby didn’t wake up and start crying so I could have a little company. :mad: Boy was I glad when that evening was over.
When I was a teenager I babysat for a couple two doors down that I nicknamed “The Good Christian Family.”* Think real life Flanderses. They were allowed to watch exactly three things from what I could discern: Davey & Goliath, Some bible-y show called “SuperBook”, and their laserdisk of the movie “Annie” with the caveat that every time we watched it they had to inform me that Mrs. Hannigan was a BAD EVIL WOMAN WHO WAS GOING TO BURN IN HELL.
*At one point I was talking to another mother I babysat for - the one between my house and “GCF” and for some reason I accidentally referred to them as the “Good Christian Family” and went “Oops!” She started laughing hysterically and said “That’s what we call them too!” (Apparently at some point the “GCF” mother had come banging on her door to complain that her 5 year-old and 3 year-old were in the back yard jumping through the sprinkler in their underpants. :rolleyes: )
Didn’t see much of anything prior to 5, the only stuff was armed forces tv or german tv. I seem to remember sesame street in german but not much. After 5, there was only the restriction until I was 10 of lack of signal - we lived in Perry NY, some 60 miles south of the line drawn between Rochester and Buffalo, and about 35 miles southwards. Back in the 60s there was out of Rochester 8, 10 and 13, and ever so vaguely 20[?] at some point in the 70s. I remember we tended to watch the evening news, and in the 60s on Sundays Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom followed by World of Disney we ate dinner and watched it as sort of a special treat - and real food, not TV dinners. In the 70s we moved about 30 miles closer to Rochester and the signal got lots clearer. Oddly enough, nobody objected to our staying up all night on fridays or saturdays watching horror movies, I developed a taste for Hammer horror movies about that time, and Mario Bava movies. And the old Universal horror movies. Never got into westerns though.
Like many Brits in my age range, I was banned from watching “Grange Hill”, probably because my Mum was a teacher. Weird really as the show had some really positive messages. Not least Zammo and the “Just Say No” campaign.
“Barnaby Jones”. Dad thought that the villains were too sick. He was probably right.
The kid upstairs was permitted no tv. He would come downstairs and we would watch “The Flintstones”. When his mom found out, she was mortified. She was under the impression that the show was all about guys that constantly beat each other over the head with caveman clubs and that it would incite her son to homicidal violence.
I grew up in the 70’s and early 80s. I was part of one of those “GCFs” although not quite as strict as it could have been.
We were not allowed to watch “Bewitched” or play witches, or ghosts or anything. Like previous posters, that was considered a path to SATAN (cue evil laugh).
The only other things I remember being banned from was the prime-time soaps like “Dallas” or “Dynasty”. “Soap” was on very late but I remembered watching it alot when I was babysitting for someone - same with “Dallas”. Then, although somehow we managed to watch every episode, was “Facts of Life”. We were not allowed to watch this mostly because of the “kids that sassed”. My parents were very wary of shows where any kid talked backed. :rolleyes:
We were allowed to watch “MASH”, with its adult themes, because my dad was addicted to it.
The only thing I ever remember being prevented from watching on TV was a movie. The first time The Graduate aired, they had one of those Parental Guidance warnings up front, and Mom sent us out of the room.
Nothign was outright banned… however on Sunday mornings, Davey and Goliath was the only kid viable option in a sleep inducing pool of Meet the Press, CBS Sunday Morning or Robert Schuller ministries.
My father, an avowed and relatively militant atheist, would give a disgusted look and shout “Turn that shit off. It’ll rot your brain.” Sometimes parents are right.
Wow. Maybe it’s because I’m old (mid 40s) or because I grew up in ultra liberal SoCal, but there was never anything I wasn’t allowed to watch/read/listen to. I am absolutely floored at the amount of people whose parent’s censored their viewing. I don’t mean that as a criticism-for all I know my viewing habits warped me beyond all repair- I just honestly never knew of anyone who grew up that way. I know it’s a bit late, but it would be intereseting to the know the approximate age and location of those whose parents heavily monitored what they watched (for those that didn’t already expound).
