Mary Whitehouse versus Rambo hunks

Mary Whitehouse was a socially conservative campaigner who tried to ban what she deemed to be immoral content on TV in the 1970s and 1980s. Here’s a completely surreal bust up between her, the movie director Michael Winner and a bunch of stripped off blokes dressed as Rambo.

A TV clip that took me back to the madness of the early 1980s!

The thing about Mary Whitehouse was that despite her huffing and puffing on the evils of TV, she became an obligatory fixture on the medium she purported to detest so much.

In fact – dare I say it – from starting out as a prim and proper, buttoned-up social conservative, she evolved into an almost sympathetic character on some appearances. That was – until you got the gist of what Mary Whitehouse thought was unacceptable.

Pornography you could take as a given. But her definition of violence extended to trying to censor Doctor Who and even….get ready for this….the Tom and Jerry cartoons. Though, in our more censorious age where content is taken down now for being ‘problematic’, Mary Whitehouse may yet get to have the last laugh – from the grave.

In this clip here, Mary Whitehouse is arguing against Michael Winner. Now, to use today’s millennial parlance, I’m a bit ‘conflicted’. Because some of Winner’s movies were were plain nasty and exploitative. And this is where I suppose feminism and puritanism meet.

His Death Wish movies with Charles Bronson in the lead – recently remade with Bruce Willis starring – hinged on a revenge fantasy where brutality was legitimised as essentially doing the right thing. I tried to watch one of the 1970s Death Wish movies a while back and was actually appalled by the viciously cartoonish assault on a woman in her own home.

But back to Mary Whitehouse. Here she is surrounded by Rambo hunks peddling her usual lines on the disintegration of society due to pornography and social liberalism (for which read equal rights for women and LGBT). It’s actually hilarious to watch.