With hindsight, did Mary Whitehouse have a point?

[RichardCoulter]

Lol, I've often wondered if the look of Mrs Merton was based on her.

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

Lol, I've often wondered if the look of Mrs Merton was based on her.

Mrs Merton interviewed her (series 1 episode 4) and asked her if she'd like a statue put up of her in her home town, Mary thought about it said yes and Mrs Merton said it'd be the first erection she hadn't objected to

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by thedaddy

mrs merton interviewed her (series 1 episode 4) and asked her if she'd like a statue put up of her in her home town, mary thought about it said yes and mrs merton said it'd be the first erection she hadn't objected to

😂😂😂

[heero_yuy]

Warning: First link contains NSFW image(s)

Before she came on the scene TV was getting quite adventurous showing films such as Sebastiane and The Fruit Machine. Play for today was also exploring the limits.

She muzzled that creativity and effectively rendered TV as the anodyne rubbish we have to endure these days. Her legacy is not one to laud IMHO.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by heero_yuy

Warning: First link contains NSFW image(s)

Before she came on the scene TV was getting quite adventurous showing films such as Sebastiane and The Fruit Machine. Play for today was also exploring the limits.

She muzzled that creativity and effectively rendered TV as the anodyne rubbish we have to endure these days. Her legacy is not one to laud IMHO.

I don't think that it has though, there is plenty of sex, swearing, violence etc on television these days.

I'm very broad minded, but have twice been offended by material (films) on TV in my lifetime.

One was about necrophilia and the other actually showed incest between a mother & son.

The first came as a complete shock because there wasn't a warning and the second left me going to bed physically wrenching. There should be no place on TV for this, if this is the end result.

If this anything goes culture carries on and on, what next? An intimate portrayal of children being sexually abused in a 9pm drama??

[Taf]

She seemed to be trying to return us all to "Victorian values". But we evolved as a society, and not entirely in a nice way.

And don't forget another voice at the same time:

Malcolm Muggeridge quotes (showing 1-30 of 32)
“So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over--a weary, battered old brontosaurus--and became extinct.”
― Malcolm Muggeridge

“The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.”
― Malcolm Muggeridge

“If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner.”
― Malcolm Muggeridge

[dilli-theclaw]

Nope, I don't think she had a point either.

[Stuart]

The irony is, of course, that the Daily Mail has published quite a pious article about it, then displayed it next to the infamous sidebar of shame, where they frequently lust after young girls, even lusting after a 15 year girl on the front page the other day.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by Taf

She seemed to be trying to return us all to "Victorian values". But we evolved as a society, and not entirely in a nice way.

And don't forget another voice at the same time:

That's a name from the past, didn't he used to do a high brow quiz show on BBC2 in the seventies?

The points that you quoted do seem to have been correct too.

[Horizon]

It all goes in circles...

We had Victorian "values" that said that people must be fully clothed when swimming in the sea (a bit of a mirror to some Islamic values today) and sent starving little children to Australia for stealing food and just before that, hung them.

Today at the press of a button anyone, including children, can access hard core pornography while their parents stuff burgers and chocolate down their throats.

My parents who were born during WW2 grew up with staunch 50s conservative values which made everything safe and pleasant for all as long as you didn't dare question anything. That inflexibility led to the sixties... where they did question everything and a anything goes culture appeared.

Today we're in the middle, I think. Very conservative on some things (and going back more that way, I think) and uber liberal on others.

As an adult I have the right to watch sex, violence and whatever debauchery I want on tv, but the problem is children have this access to and this was her main concern. She would turn in her grave if she had internet access.

My big "beef" today is manners, or lack of them from many people. When I was a kid everyone behaved the same and was polite. NO exception. Now, you never know what you'll get if you ask someone to pick up their rubbish they've thrown on the ground.

Yes, she had a point.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by Horizon

It all goes in circles...

We had Victorian "values" that said that people must be fully clothed when swimming in the sea (a bit of a mirror to some Islamic values today) and sent starving little children to Australia for stealing food and just before that, hung them.

Today at the press of a button anyone, including children, can access hard core pornography while their parents stuff burgers and chocolate down their throats.

My parents who were born during WW2 grew up with staunch 50s conservative values which made everything safe and pleasant for all as long as you didn't dare question anything. That inflexibility led to the sixties... where they did question everything and a anything goes culture appeared.

Today we're in the middle, I think. Very conservative on some things (and going back more that way, I think) and uber liberal on others.

As an adult I have the right to watch sex, violence and whatever debauchery I want on tv, but the problem is children have this access to and this was her main concern. She would turn in her grave if she had internet access.

My big "beef" today is manners, or lack of them from many people. When I was a kid everyone behaved the same and was polite. NO exception. Now, you never know what you'll get if you ask someone to pick up their rubbish they've thrown on the ground.

Yes, she had a point.

I totally agree.

Bad manners appear to be infectious too, both on & offline as polite people are dragged down to the standards of those around them.