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Was British society this progressive in 1956?

posted 7 years ago by eYeDEF (5050)
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I've only finished with episode 4 in season 1 but can't help but notice how much further ahead British society appears to be in this period piece than in depiction of US society in Mad Men from the early sixties.

Of course it could hardly be called enlightened by any stretch, but the presence of strong, assertive women in the workplace at BBC appears at strong odds to the environment we witness just 4 years later at the start of the Mad Men series in an advertising firm in New York.

Just finishing episode 4 I was also surprised at how the BBC employees, without a hint of discrimination or prejudice, went to a black nightclub following Freddy's birthday to further celebrate with Sissy Cooper even going home with one of the black patrons that asked her to dance.

I can't imagine such a scene playing out in the US in 1956, I just wasn't aware British society was that far ahead in race and gender relations in that period.

Does anyone know how accurate a depiction this is?

[–] clyons (9) 7 years ago

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[–] eYeDEF (5050) 7 years ago

Never fails that a fragile snowflake would come skipping along to misread and take offense at the most anodyne post in the world.

You're in desperate need of improving your reading comprehension skills since I was acknowledging the enlightened aspect of race and gender relations I saw in the first season of this show was hardly perfect by any stretch simply because GENDER AND RACE RELATIONS WERE NOT PERFECT IN 1956. This is an indisputable fact. My point was to temper anyone from misreading my titled question as suggesting I thought the show depicted 1956 Britain as a race and gender utopia, since I did not, but that UK society appeared to be ahead of American society during that period AS DEPICTED IN THIS SHOW COMPARED TO MAD MEN. I therefore wondered if anyone knew if it was accurate. Once again, I'll repeat myself very patronizingly this time for your added benefit:

but the presence of strong, assertive women in the workplace at BBC appears at strong odds to the environment we witness just 4 years later at the start of the Mad Men series in an advertising firm in New York.

I was obviously asking how realistic these depictions were of women in the workplace in this era and was not making broad generalizations of female assertiveness. If you'd seen either you might have known what I was talking about since Mad Men depicted no women higher than the level of secretary bawling their eyes out in misery in the restroom of 1960 NYC while this show had a couple females in managerial positions with a decent amount of power and pull in 1956 BBC including one of the stars. But it was clear you were speaking from ignorance or you would have mentioned how race relations featured as a central narrative of season two which rendered your tirade about "idealized race relations" depicted in this show utterly farcical. Regardless, context matters for improving your reading comprehension skills. You should do your homework next time so you don't embarrass yourself.

[–] clyons (9) 7 years ago

[deleted]

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Now I'm REALLY curious about what the other person said.

[–] Cranmer (139) 4 years ago

OK two years on but here goes. In some ways 'The Hour' is accurate, in others it's not. In terms of race relations it gets it about right; young progressive liberal/left media types that would work in the BBC would certainly do things like visit nightclubs frequented by black people and date black men. There was no colour-bar as such in Britain and although some frowned on interracial relationships etc they certainly did happen. 'International Clubs' where people of different races and nationalities mingled, often run by churches, were common in London at that time - my own father ran one from 1956 until 1968.

In terms of sex relations, it's a little bit unrealistic. There were some female producers but the first female newsreader did not appear until 1960. Indeed in the programme Miss Rowley's boss says he employed her because a woman would be more malleable. Also, it's highly unlikely that in 1957 a prostitute would be allowed to talk about her work that openly on prime-time TV - this kind of thing did not happen until the Profumo scandal in 1963.

In fact in several ways The Hour is about 5-10 years in advance of what was happening in Britain at the time. Of course, like most period TV dramas it suffers from the 'modern people pretending to live in the past' syndrome where modern attitudes, speech patterns and mannerisms etc creep in, but The Hour is not too bad in this respect and gets most things about right.