- Anna Maria Junus
When Attempted Rape Was Played for Laughs
Discussion on this subject and sharing is most welcome.
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I’ve been watching Cheers.
For those of you who are under the age of thirty, Cheers was a TV show in the eighties set in a Boston bar. It was a huge success that lasted eleven years, began the careers of several actors including Woody Harrelson, and gave birth to another extremely successful sitcom, Frasier.
For the most part, in spite of it being thirty five years old, it still holds up. And up until about two years ago or heck, even last year, it held up even better.
But this year has changed things.
Sure, the show is still funny and enjoyable. I like this show. But now, some of the plot elements have become disturbing, because our thinking has gone under a dramatic shift.
I’m still watching the Sam and Diane years. Shelley Long was brilliant and had some of the funniest lines of the show and frankly, her character was blamed for far too much by the other characters for being difficult and annoying. There was plenty of difficult and annoying characters to go around. Diane was different from them, and that was what bothered people.
For the purpose of this particular post, I’m going to put aside Sam and Diane’s relationship which tended towards abuse - emotional, mental and sometimes even physical. Yes, it’s upsetting, but I can’t cover everything in one post.
There’s one episode early on, where bar regular, Norm, hosts an office party so he can get brownie points from the boss. The party is a dud because accountants are uptight and boring and can't appreciate a good toga party. Personally, I know an accountant who is anything but dull and boring and if you asked her to put on a toga and come to a party she just might do it - but then other accountants just might be dull and boring. Norm asks Diane if she would “entertain” the boss who is on
his way to the party. Turns out it’s up to the party organizer to find the boss a girl. He assures her that she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to. Diane, is offended and tells him no. She is not about to entertain some doddering old guy. Okay, so strike against Norm for even making the suggestion and a point for Diane for having the sense to be offended and turning him down. The boss walks in the door and as it turns out, he’s a handsome thirty-something – entirely within Diane’s age range and interests. Diane is an attractive, intelligent and educated woman. She changes her mind about meeting him because she finds him attractive. However, she is interested in him on her own terms. She’s still not doing Norm a favor as the “entertainment gal”. She wants to connect with this guy and possibly build a relationship. She at the very least wants to get to know him to make a decision.
Nothing wrong here. She sees an attractive man she wants to get to know and so she introduces herself.
She sits down at a table with him and begins to flirt with him. Again – she is doing NOTHING WRONG.
Sam comes along and makes a joke about how she’s a prostitute. But it’s just a joke so no big deal, right? Strike against Sam for doing that to her. As it turns out, the boss doesn’t know it’s a joke and he actually does think that this is the girl that’s been provided for him. (Question: why does a rich, handsome man need flunkies to hire women for him?) So strike against boss for expecting employees to hire women for him.
Meanwhile Diane, is thinking that this man is genuinely interested in her. He invites her to the back room to play pool. This is not some dingy back room. It is a room that is a part of the bar and holds the pool table. It’s completely public and anyone can go back there. There is nothing dark or seedy about this room. Many scenes are played there. There is no reason for Diane to think that this guy wants to do anything but play pool and have a conversation with her.
So they go back there and while he’s showing her some pool moves, he starts making moves on her that get very quickly aggressive. She gets uncomfortable and tries to politely extricate herself from the situation.
Now, some might say “why didn’t she just hit him?”
That’s not what women were taught back then. Hitting was reserved for those guys that leap out at you from behind bushes and drag you into back alleys, not for guys you were just flirting with. Women have been taught to be polite even to the detriment of our own well-being. It gets to the point where Diane has to fight him off. A thousand strikes against the boss.
Norm walks into the scene and his initial reaction is to apologize and walk away. His friend is lying on a pool table, fighting off a rapist and he decides to walk away because he doesn’t want to disturb the boss. Several hundred strikes to Norm.
Norm, when he realizes what is actually going on – I guess because of the cries of Diane yelling "No”, comes to his senses and he grabs his boss and puts him in a headlock. Point for Norm.
While he’s putting his boss in a headlock, he’s apologizing to him for having to do that. Strike. He’s apologizing to his boss for not letting him rape a woman.
The boss tells him that if he doesn’t let him go, he’s fired. A thousand more strikes against the boss.
Norm hangs on and with the help of friends boots the boss out of the bar. Point for Norm.
End result – Norm has lost his job and as it turns out, is out of a job for a couple of years because of it.
I would love to reward Norm more for his heroics, and I would, except for that initial reaction and his apologies for doing the right thing bug me. At least he did do the right thing in the end at great sacrifice to himself, so I guess we need to give him some leeway although he helped set up the circumstances.
As for Diane, after the incident, she’s talking to Sam and she blames – herself! She shouldn’t have “thrown herself” at him.
I hardly call flirting and playing pool throwing yourself at a man. At no point did Diane let that guy know that raping her on a public pool table was perfectly fine. She was never out of line. She was never inappropriate. She was smiling and talking and doing what people do when they’re attracted to someone. Agreeing to play pool is not agreeing to have sex.
But back then it was ingrained in society that if a man took advantage of a woman, she was somehow at fault. That she did something wrong. That she asked for it.
Furthermore, Diane is hardly shaken by this. Sure initially, she is, but then life goes immediately back to normal. I suppose being assaulted is to be expected by men and women have to be blase about it and laugh the whole incident off.
Now some might say “that was thirty five years ago – things have changed.”
Have they? Or are they just beginning to change? After all, a man who has had many women come forward and accuse him of sexually assaulting them, became the president of the United States. People voted for him knowing full well that he had these charges against him and either decided that the women were lying, or that it wasn't that big a deal. And when women marched about it, they were told to go home and shut up and be grateful that they weren’t being set on fire like women are in other parts of the world. Because, you know, that's such a high bar. If we're not being set on fire, then we're doing well.
This year, powerful female celebrities have spoken up accusing powerful men in the industry of rape, assault, and threats to destroy their careers if they spoke, and people are finally listening. Oprah Winfrey gave a moving speech at the Golden Globes where people wore black and “Time’s Up” pins supporting the “Me too” movement. Instead of choosing one person to be their person of the year, Time Magazine, chose the movement, putting several women on the cover including Taylor Swift who won her court case against a man who assaulted her and took her to court for speaking out about it. She apparently ruined his career. If you're not familiar with this issue, google it and find the strong and smart comments Taylor made on the stand.
Sadly, many people didn't understand why Taylor was on the cover and criticized the choice. In fact, there were several criticisms including the lack of men on the cover because, I guess, it doesn't count unless men are included.
And yet, there are still people who criticize the women of making things up, of blowing things out of proportion, and of causing problems. And here I am watching a thirty-five year old sitcom, which won many awards, is genuinely funny and has realistic characters and excellent writing that is a history clip of what times were like back then – and how much it hasn’t changed.
But times, they are a changing. And it’s about time.
