Dad's Army

[wingco]

Just looking in on a Dad's Army Appreciation site on Facebook and someone put up the following dialogue exchange, approvingly. I love Dad's Army and think, for various reasons, it is generally free of the "different times"-type aberrations of its era. It's gentle, humane, character-driven and, while very much of the 70s in its gentle innuendo, slapstick, etc, endures beautifully, transcends itself somehow, with particular credit to the scriptwriters and the brilliance of Arthur Lowe.

This, however, along with a few other instances, I would flag up as dodgy. Not a reason to cancel the series but dodgy.


Vicar: Could I stand by and watch my wife being raped by a Nazi? Finally I said to myself, no I couldn't.

Mainwaring: But you're not married.

Vicar: I have a very vivid imagination.


Rape joke basically, right? There's a lot of tentatively homophobic stuff around the Rev. Timothy Farthing around this time (series 7) which, interesting, the studio audience don't rise to. I'd appreciate thoughts.

[Sits]

It’s tricky isn’t it? I love DA and get a warm nostalgic glow whoever I catch some of it. And you’re right about Arthur Lowe; as little kids we liked Pike, Jones and Wilson, and Mainwaring just seemed grumpy. But his understatement is just masterful.

Sadly we can’t overlook, dialogue like the above.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Yes that bit is dodgy. And as you say, a few other bits. Scattered across the 80 episodes of superb comedy. What kind of "flagging up" do you have in mind?

[Duncan Gardner]

Dodgy as fuck. But the past was different etc.

I used to watch it with my Dad (ex Army in Italy and Korea). He grumbled regularly and preferred It Ain't Half Hot Mum ('War is 10% terror, 90% tedium').

I was only 15 when DA finished but when it began to be repeated a few years later could enjoy it as quite a subtle dig at hidebound 70s attitudes

[Levin]

The comments at the Vicar's expense seem to come up an awful lot on the episodes on iPlayer.

[Gangster Octopus]

My grandpa hated it because he thought that it belittled the Home Guard of which he'd been a member.

My theory on that is that he hated it because Arthur Lowe's character looked (and acted) just like him...

[Sporting]

Who was the Welshman who featured for a while? His character was something of a poor caricature as well if my memory serves me.

Frazer too: mean Scot, anyone? And are the incontinence jokes surrounding Godfrey mean or affectionate or understanding?

On the whole, though, the ups far outweigh the downs in this marvellous series.

[ad hoc]

My grandpa hated it because he thought that it belittled the Home Guard of which he'd been a member.

My granddad hated it because he had been an ARP Warden and he felt that Hodges (and by association, all ARP wardens) was presented as a little dictator

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

Who was the Welshman who featured for a while? His character was something of a poor caricature as well if my memory serves me.

It was Talfryn Thomas, who played Private Cheeseman. He was meant to fill a gap when James Beck, who played Private Walker, died. Stayed a season, I think.

[Jah Womble]

That exchange seems very un-Dad's Army, I must say.

I can certainly recall 'rape' jokes made in other supposedly-gentler comedies - Wendy Craig's bizarre outburst in Butterflies certainly springs to mind - but, sorry to say, in the 1970s the subject was more often than not portrayed as something of 'excitement and adventure' as opposed to the reality of violent crime.

While one might almost forgive the original scripting here as an aberration of its time, to be laughing at it now seems disturbingly ill-judged.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Vicar: Could I stand by and watch my wife being raped by a Nazi? Finally I said to myself, no I couldn't.

Mainwaring: But you're not married.

Vicar: I have a very vivid imagination.

Is this actually a rape joke, in the final act of trading places sense? The joke here seems to be the vicar imagining that he had a wife, in the context of a widespread (for the want of a better word) meme to do with invasion. Invading armies are generally super into rape. World War II was no different. Indeed it may have had even more of it, because the scale of it was so huge.