So I was re-watching MASH.... holy sh**

[Hyena Dandy]

Now that I think of it, wasn't one of the characters on M*A*S*H NAMED for rape? I mean I think the implication we're supposed to get is that it wasn't really rape, but still.

[gremcint]

how about the black guy they called spear chucker that disappeared early on?

Because isn't spear chucker a little deragatory in that it's basically calling POC primitives? now they were calling him that because of his football ability but still.

[AccountingDrone]

Now that I think of it, wasn't one of the characters on M*A*S*H NAMED for rape? I mean I think the implication we're supposed to get is that it wasn't really rape, but still.

hm, Trapper John? He was named because when he got caught screwing in a bathroom on a train the girl claimed he trapped her. He didn't but that is what she said.

[Hyena Dandy]

Yeah. As I said, the implication was that he DIDN'T trap her, she just said he did, but it still makes watching it a bit awkward.

Honestly my favorite times in the show are when Burns and Trapper are gone, but before it turned into all-drama, all-the time.

Edit:

how about the black guy they called spear chucker that disappeared early on?

Because isn't spear chucker a little deragatory in that it's basically calling POC primitives? now they were calling him that because of his football ability but still.

Yeah, it kinda is, but I think he's only in the movie and the book.

Edited Edit: Just checked, actually, he's in a few episodes. And yeah, he was named for the javelin throw ability. But I don't think for a second the writer didn't know what he was doing. I suspect the joke there may have been intended as "You think he's called that because he's black, but no, he literally throws spears." But yeah.

[Nyoibo]

Jones was in a couple of episodes but then removed because there were no black surgeons in the Korean War

[Cia]

Jones was in a couple of episodes but then removed because there were no black surgeons in the Korean War

Dr. Alvin Blount, Jr., black surgeon, Korean War vet

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3994465/

[Lindsay B.]

TV Tropes has an interesting page that is dedicated to this sort of thing.

"Values Dissonance" refers to how people from different cultures will perceive an issue or event in very different ways. Or, as in this case, something that used to be considered acceptable no longer is, due to society's changing values.

For example, in the 1985 film The Breakfast Club, a high school student brings a flare gun to school that goes off in his locker, and his punishment is a Saturday of detention. Nowadays, he would have been more likely to be expelled or arrested.

In 1915, the silent film The Birth of a Nation depicted the Ku Klux Klan as heroes.

Now, from a filmmaker's technical viewpoint, the movie had highly innovative production and storytelling techniques that make it a landmark in film history, and its cross-cutting climax was absolutely outstanding. But the Values Dissonance created by its plotline makes the film pretty much unwatchable now. In fact, it wasn't even that well-received at the time. Although it was commercially successful, many people publicly condemned the film's creator, D.W. Griffith, as a bigot. Griffith was actually bewildered by this, and later made the film Intolerance, an exploration of the destructive nature of prejudice, to try to prove that he wasn't a racist. As the TV Tropes page observes :

Nothing explains Values Dissonance more than the fact that its director has to be informed that it was racist to realize it.

Just the mere fact that the film was even made shows what a different place the world was back then.

In the 1984 film Revenge of the Nerds, one of the movie's protagonists, while wearing a costume and mask, pretends to be the boyfriend of a beautiful sorority girl to trick her into having sex with him. When the deception is revealed, she is initially startled, and then decides that she's in love with him because he's so much better in bed than her boyfriend. The film ends with the two a happy couple ... Need I say more?

Here's another example of how bad this can get :

Barney Miller : The show has an episode where a woman comes into the police station distraught and says she's been raped. When it turns out that it was her husband, it's treated as a big joke and she learns her lesson that she should put out. Words cannot describe how cringeworthy this is now.

The original Star Trek series would be considered frequently sexist by today's standards, but at the time, it was pushing themes of gender equality that were considered radical.

One of the great missed opportunities of this was the character of "Number One," the female first officer of the Enterprise in the original pilot, "The Cage." It would have been quite impressive to show a woman as the ship's second-in-command, but the character was dropped after the original pilot was rejected. Apparently, some people felt it was inappropriate for Gene Roddenberry, the show's creator, to cast his own girlfriend (Majel Barrett) in a key role, especially as she was an unknown actress at the time ... although, that doesn't explain why the character wasn't simply recast with a different actress.

Interestingly, it was explained that another reason that the character was dropped was because the test audiences disliked her. Specifically, women in the test audiences objected to the show having a woman in a position of authority. It would be difficult to imagine that happening today.

TV Tropes lists many more examples like these.

[Lindsay B.]

I noticed that the subject of men being victims of sexual assault came up in this thread. TV Tropes also has some interesting, and often cringe-inducing, observations of how male characters in fiction can be physically abused or sexually harassed or assaulted by women, and this is often played for laughs or not taken seriously.

I would not call this an example of Values Dissonance, though, because these attitudes are still very much accepted in mainstream fiction, and society in general. More often than not, attempts to address female-on-male physical and sexual abuse are laughed at.

Two examples that I always found particularly jarring, from shows not that long ago :


In one storyline of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Faith uses a magical charm to switch bodies with Buffy. While in Buffy's body, Faith has sex with Buffy's boyfriend, Riley. Subsequent episodes portrayed Buffy as the victim in this, and focused on how she had trouble trusting Riley afterward. There was very little exploration of Riley's reaction to the revelation that the girl he thought he had slept with actually wasn't.

When this was criticized on TV Tropes, one viewer of the show tried to defend the show's portrayal by arguing that Riley should have known that something was wrong because Faith, in Buffy's body, was behaving differently than Buffy would. This person went on to imply that Riley's behavior showed that he was only dating Buffy "because he thinks she's hot."

This was a good example of completely missing the point - If a female character had been in Riley's place, it would never have been considered acceptable for the writers to depict her as being at fault in any way, no matter the circumstances under which it happened.


Friends was particularly bad when it comes to this.

In one episode, Joey is offered a part on Days of Our Lives, but only if he sleeps with the female casting director. Joey is troubled by this, because he wanted to get his big break through his acting talent. At one point, Chandler asks if the casting director is good-looking. When Joey says yes, Chandler suggests that it's actually a win-win situation - Joey gets an acting role, and he also gets to have sex with an attractive woman. In the end, Joey refuses to sleep with the casting director - who then offers him a bigger role on the show if he does, and he accepts. When his friends find out, they are seen exchanging money, because they were apparently betting on whether or not he would.

At no point in any of this did anyone think to condemn the casting director's behavior, on the grounds that it is both illegal and morally repugnant to make sexual interaction a condition of employment.

In another episode, Phoebe's twin sister, Ursula, sleeps with Phoebe's boyfriend (who mistakenly thought Ursula was Phoebe). Commentors on TV Tropes observed that if this had been a male character sleeping with his twin brother's girlfriend, it would have been an altogether different kind of show.

At one point, a commentor asked if this situation did not amount to rape ... and somebody responded by saying that it looked like Ursula didn't mind, even after finding out that the boyfriend thought she was Phoebe. In other words, this person was essentially saying, "No, it wasn't rape because Ursula consented." Other commentors had to explain to this person that the issue was whether or not Ursula had raped the boyfriend (by having sex with him under false pretenses), not the other way around.

To me, this wasn't so much a matter of missing the point as inadvertently proving the point - that society is so biased toward viewing rape as an exclusively male-on-female crime that somebody failed to realize when the reversed situation was even being discussed.

[NecCat]

I noticed that the subject of men being victims of sexual assault came up in this thread.

In one storyline of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Faith uses a magical charm to switch bodies with Buffy. While in Buffy's body, Faith has sex with Buffy's boyfriend, Riley. Subsequent episodes portrayed Buffy as the victim in this, and focused on how she had trouble trusting Riley afterward. There was very little exploration of Riley's reaction to the revelation that the girl he thought he had slept with actually wasn't.

To be fair here, throughout his seasons there was very little exploration of Rileys reaction to a lot of things, the show followed Buffy and her friend/family group and dealt with their feelings on many things, he was always a satellite character.

[s_stabeler]

In another episode, Phoebe's twin sister, Ursula, sleeps with Phoebe's boyfriend (who mistakenly thought Ursula was Phoebe). Commentors on TV Tropes observed that if this had been a male character sleeping with his twin brother's girlfriend, it would have been an altogether different kind of show.

At one point, a commentor asked if this situation did not amount to rape ... and somebody responded by saying that it looked like Ursula didn't mind, even after finding out that the boyfriend thought she was Phoebe. In other words, this person was essentially saying, "No, it wasn't rape because Ursula consented." Other commentors had to explain to this person that the issue was whether or not Ursula had raped the boyfriend (by having sex with him under false pretenses), not the other way around.

To me, this wasn't so much a matter of missing the point as inadvertently proving the point - that society is so biased toward viewing rape as an exclusively male-on-female crime that somebody failed to realize when the reversed situation was even being discussed.

To me, the situation depends on who knew what. If Ursula knew the boyfriend thought she was Phoebe, she should at least have clarified who she was, as it arguably becomes rape otherwise. ( because otherweise Phoebe's boyfriend would not have consented). If the boyfriend knew? thye are both assholes for cheating on Phoebe. (if neither knew until afterwards ( like, for example, Phoebe walking in on them) then it could be legitimate wacky shenanigans, though Phoebe would have every right to be pissed off.)

[Tama]

The reason Riley didn't last is he wasn't popular with fans...so bye bye Riley.

[Andrew B]

Not arguably, the term is Rape by Deception. It is also the event mentioned earlier with Revenge of the Nerds, and between Faith and Riley on Buffy.

[s_stabeler]

with Riley, it was more a case of "didn't he realize something weird was going on?" considering that Buffy had been fairly emphatic about not having sex for a while- including earlier that same day- then suddenly, it appears that Buffy is all but throwing herself at him,a dn so he has sex with her. Such a dramatic change should probably make him suspect SOMETHING was going on.

[Ginger Tea]

Such a dramatic change should probably make him suspect SOMETHING was going on.

I never got into buffy so I have no idea who he is, I only know Buffy, Willow, Giles, Spike and Angel, but that's mostly "Oh I know that face." more than I know that character.

So I cant say how much of the student populace knew of the vampire and other dark shenanigans going on on a daily basis. Was her boyfriend part of the group or was he just some guy in HS? If he's got no idea that Vampires, Demons and other supernatural beings walk amongst us, then body swapping witch craft is low on the list of things to think about when your girlfriend (who has no known twin) 180's you.

If he knew about the occult aspects and that one of her friends was practicing in the dark arts, then yeah stop and think just a little bit, but also horny teenagers.

But without knowing more about him I'm going with the rape by deception.

Body swapping on the whole is just asking for trouble, Fred looking down at Daphne's body and grinning with perhaps a line about finding a full length mirror or implying intent. It's a Boy Girl Thing could have been a different movie altogether if they aimed for a higher rating.

Thinking of all the body swapping movies I've seen I had a thought, what if in Big Tom Hanks did have sex with the woman? To her Tom's character was an adult, but we know he's still basically a kid (I know its not a body swapping movie, but it's the only one I can recall where the child gets propositioned, though it could have happened in Vise Versa too).

[s_stabeler]

I was more thinking along the lines of drunk, actually.

but as for the occult aspects- he was in charge of an Initative team- in other words, he was actualyl in charge of a team tasked with either capturing or killing demons. He knew, and IIRC, also knew Buffy was the Slayer.