MovieChat Forums > Barney Miller (1974) Discussion > Rape is funny? *Spoilers*

Rape is funny? Spoilers

posted 9 years ago by benbo-3
16 replies | jump to latest

1 shocking episode involves a woman who walx in to report being raped by her husband. Yeah, it all goes downhill from there. From the obnoxious use of the laugh track to Barney trying to talk her out of pressing charges to the woman eventually agreeing not to press charges in exchange for the husband complimenting her & expressing his affection more often, the whole thing plays out like a feminist nitemare scenario. Sorry, but even from 1981 this comes off so barbaric. There was an infamous case of husband rape at this time, the Rideouts. In any case, husbands absolutely can be charged with raping their wife (and this episode makes it clear he cops to it; makes no effort to deny it took place, he just is incredulous that his wife ain't his property and is sure a husband can't be charged for raping his wife). The whole episode is like an Alice in Wonderland/Twilite Zone trip into the surreal, and by the end of the episode I was shaking my head saying "f#ck no!". "Barney Miller" is a great series but I'm gonna make a conscious effort to forget this one.
BTW, the 70s & 80s were a strange time. "Too Close For Comfort", another sitcom on ABC, had an episode where the harebrained annoying Monroe (friend of Ted Knight's daughters) gets raped by 2 women (they jump him in a mall, pull him into a van & clearly get him to sex them against his will). Later, they somehow figure where these 2 women live, so they go there to confront them, and Ted Knight comes close to getting raped too (and all this also with the f#cking laugh track)! Call me a prude, but rape ain't funny, and 1 subject the sitcoms could've avoided, or at least treated tastefully for a 'very special' episode. Strange choices for sitcom plots.

[–] 9 years ago

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[–] benbo-3 9 years ago

So it's ok to allow husbands to rape their wives, and it's PC to actually prosecute a guy for rape. Ur so enlightened. No, it wasn't appropriate even for the 70s, and it's for sure that some men who saw this episode felt entitled to viol8 their wives. There are people stupid enough to take their cues from tv. But I'm sure ud enjoy a sitcom about ISIS atrocities.

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[–] LittleBrother55 9 years ago

This is one of my favorite sitcoms, but I agree that this episode is cringe-inducing. It has nothing to do with prudishness.

And it's not just because of how views have evolved since the series aired. This episode certainly doesn't age well, but I remember being put off when it first aired, even though I was young (25 or so). At the time I thought they set up a serious situation, then copped out by "solving" it with sentimental mushiness.

Having seen the episode many times over the years, I think the "angle", or point, was pure (attempted) social satire. The lesson/moral they were going for is that sometimes personal/domestic disputes can be resolved personally-- but when professionals with agendas take over, their agenda-driven representation "needs" the conflict to escalate.

Whatever their motivations, using domestic rape was a really poor choice-- especially because they relied on such a clichéd plot device: a woman credibly crying "rape" and a boorish husband who doesn't even deny it because he "just doesn't get it"-- but in the end she loves the big lug, and he loves her. So maybe she was a little bit hysterical, dontcha know.

In any case, it's really a matter for Dear Abby, not cops or careerist lawyers looking for an important case. All's well that ends well.

If it were a few years later, they might even have added some coy lines about "makeup sex" at the end.

I wonder if they deliberately decided to show things from a "traditional" (sexist) perspective because they were criticized for generally favoring "liberal" values, civil liberties, etc.

Even though this was before identity politics, aka political correctness, became all the rage, they made the attorneys seem like caricatures of political correctness run amok-- they were the real "heavies". Ugh.

IIRC, they tried to cover their butts with some dialogue about domestic rape being a legitimate problem. But the plot trivialized the issue.

It's one of the few episodes I prefer not to watch. FWIW, though, I think "Wojo's Girl" is worse.

[–] benbo-3 9 years ago

All In The Family handled the attempted rape of Edith well; her reaction of being stunned and deciding not to tell anyone IIRC, is entirely credible. Hell, even the way she tried to reason with the rapist, i.e. "I'm an old woman", "I'm married" sound like a woman freaked out in the face of impending doom. Dunno if they turned off the laughtrack for those couple of minutes, but this was a rare case of a sitcom handling a heavy issue with taste & credibility. The Barney Miller rape episode is a classic example of heavy-handed trivializing. Hmm, I recalled the Too Close For Comfort one. There was the child-molesting episode of Different Strokes. Any other episodes from 70s/80s sitcoms that tried to tackle serious issues like this?

Hey LittleBrother55 what's 'Wojo's Girl' about?

[–] LittleBrother55 9 years ago

Ha! Slowly I turn, step by step, inch by inch...

Disclaimer: what follows is from memory; I didn't check IMDb, etc. to refresh my memory. By all means find it and see for yourself, although I think BM episodes have been pulled from YouTube since Shout Factory acquired rights to the series.

Anyway, this was a two-part episode that reportedly was a trial run for a Wojo spinoff; if they'd been foolish enough to greenlight said spinoff, it would've folded faster than "Fish".

IIRC, Part I takes place at the 12th Precinct, so it's more of a typical episode. But the hook is that Wojo decides to allow his latest girlfriend, an ex-prostitute, to move in with him. This exploits Wojo's well-known penchant, or weakness, for being attracted to "fallen women".

Part II takes place in Wojo's apartment, so it's pretty much all about Wojo's struggle to adjust to his new domestic life. It turns out to be a surprisingly dark episode, since it's premised on the classic "be careful what you wish for" plot device. (If you're familiar with "Seinfeld", compare George's flip-flops over courting and marrying Susan.)

So most of the "action" revolves around Wojo not being in touch with his mixed feelings/deep ambivalence; he wants the girlfriend to be there, but he proves unable to "make room" for her. Instead, he stubbornly clings to his single-guy habits and interests, and the girl is left bouncing along in his wake.

To me, the girlfriend is a lovely, sympathetic character. When Wojo stays in his Neanderthal mode, ordering pizza and sitting down to watch the football game, etc., he is cruelly insensitive to the bitter truth that he doesn't welcome her presence at all. It's like she's just in his way, and he keeps letting her know it.

Not only are the protracted scenes unfunny, they're more like something out of a Eugene O'Neill or Edward Albee drama. They replaced humor with angst.

When I got the DVD box set a while back and watched the series straight through, I couldn't make it past the first half of Part II. I vaguely remembered that eventually Wojo realizes what a jerk he's been, but he's so horrible to the poor girl that I couldn't stand waiting for the sun to come back out at the end. It couldn't have been too happy of an ending, since the relationship didn't continue on the show.

It could be me. Over the years, Normal relatives and friends have often pointed out that you're not supposed to react so emotionally to sitcom characters, at least not to a point where you're too bugged by their character flaws or "morality" to appreciate the humor.

I know that "rotten" can be "funny" the same way "pain" is funny in slapstick, but for me "Wojo's Girl" is a real bummer. We can live with Wojo's early unevolved prejudices and sexism in the precinct, but in this extended one-on-one setting it was sad and creepy.

I always wonder whether the producers/writers, and Max Gail, realized how "wrong" this episode was either during or after they filmed it.

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[–] brad_filippone 9 years ago

There was no laugh in the early seasons of Barney Miller. It was an actual live audience--with some scenes reshot late into the evenings and early morning hours with no audience if deemed necessary. It was only from season four onward that a laugh track was exclusively used.
All in the Family was always shot before a live audience until season nine. The attempted rape of Edith occurred in season eight, and had a live audience. So you hear a genuine response. When you watch the episode, you can hear a faint "tittering" early on when it's obvious that the man she just let in the house is the rapist--but before things get serious. The audience is mostly silent with some exceptions when things do get serious though. At one point, not knowing how to handle the situation, Edith attempts to offer him a coffee--since she's used to showing kindness to people, and the audience laughs, but I suspect they laugh not because it's particularly funny, but because the moment is so Edith. Ultimately, they cheer loudly when she throws the burnt cake in his face and escapes.

[–] amyghost 9 years ago

I think in the case of this episode, it's of a good deal of importance to remember the context of the times. 'Marital rape' was not recognized as a legal concept at that point, and was only just beginning to be recognized as an actual phenomenon, due largely to the feminist movement's calling attention to it (and a couple of high-profile cases which made news shortly after this episode aired). For many otherwise thoughtful adults in that era, the idea would still have had something of the vibe of a cultural joke. I'm not defending that attitude, only pointing out why it would have been less difficult in that time for such an event to be treated with something other than perfect gravitas.

That said, it's not a favorite episode of mine (and I consider the show to be the best sitcom of all time, period), and as a woman, watching it today can give me some sensation of 'what were they thinking?'; however, I can grasp why this could have still been seen as legitimate comic grist at the time, and I think the episode comes off as a pretty singular exception to an otherwise classy and intelligent series. I guess everybody has to have an off day now and again!

[–] 9 years ago

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[–] amyghost 9 years ago

It wasn't always treated with absolute seriousness, either--and that Father Knows Best episode was pretty atypical of its era, when normally a 'family' sitcom wouldn't have broached such a topic even humorously.

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[–] therealshapeshifter 9 years ago

amyghost:

think in the case of this episode, it's of a good deal of importance to remember the context of the times. 'Marital rape' was not recognized as a legal concept at that point, and was only just beginning to be recognized as an actual phenomenon, due largely to the feminist movement's calling attention to it (and a couple of high-profile cases which made news shortly after this episode aired). For many otherwise thoughtful adults in that era, the idea would still have had something of the vibe of a cultural joke. I'm not defending that attitude, only pointing out why it would have been less difficult in that time for such an event to be treated with something other than perfect gravitas.

Is it possible that the episode was supposed to draw attention to the issue without alienating the less-enlightened viewers (probably most everyone at the time) and even get those viewers to maybe think twice about their knee-jerk reactions to the topic?

[–] 9 years ago

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[–] amyghost 9 years ago

realshapeshifter, I think that's a valid point--one that hadn't occurred to me. Perhaps they didn't manage it perfectly, but I think it's certainly possible that this might have been some part of the writer's intent.

[–] benbo-3 9 years ago

<squeamish rant>
Holy sh!t just saw another episode, The Dentist. Care to guess? Yup, molesting women under laughing gas. The money line is when they catch him, he's in the cage next to another guy arrested for making fart noises with his hands. Dentist asks Noise Guy "what are you in for?". Noise Guy says "making a public disturbance with these hands". The dentist says "me too". And the laugh track goes. Later on, a female undercover cop whom the dentist didn't molest asks why, obviously upset that he chose not to molest her (!!!). He says "I don't fondle on the 1st appointment". I'm a dog, and ❤ womens' bodies, and of course sex, but I feel icky seeing this episode & the husband rape one. I was only a teen when these episodes aired, but even for early 80s they're sick to go for laughs on such heinous crimes.
</squeamish rant>